howcouldiknow » RIT

April

Jessica Pierotti — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 02:46:34 +0000

I am graduating with my BFA in Photography from RIT in five weeks. Between constant reminders of the horrors of the job market and encouragement to continue on to graduate school we have all lost sight of the value of what we have been doing and will be completing. It is easy to feel that the degree we are about to receive has no value outside of the world of academia and that one could be doomed to food service for an eternity. Fear is a part of change and of course we will feel like this, and of course it does not have to happen. I have been reminding myself lately of the value of this degree, if not on a resume then to me personally. I graduated high school in 2003. I graduated with an A.A. in Graphic Communications in 2008. Do the math, it was a two year degree that took me on and off 5 years. I can list excuses and reasons and critical influences upon those years of my life but who cares. What matters is that for me, getting to the BFA graduation is something I didn’t think would happen. And to everyone I am graduating with: This is a big deal for you as well. I am now thinking seriously about graduate studies which must mean that I have gained some faith in my abilities. This has been on my mind (due to the constant reminder of the end of the quarter on its way) today as I created graduation postcard/announcement/prints. I think they are very nice 5×7 prints on heavyweight matte double sided inkjet paper. I am going to send them out to friends and family to announce my graduation and give them an update on my plans for the future. This is one of the images I used for the front from my series Ordering Systems. I used five different images, even though no one will ever know this. It was more fun to work on printing a collection of images than to create identical prints.

I printed some with this back and some without the text block on the left hand side. Since these are nice prints I am going to put them in envelopes, so in reality they are more like mock-postcards.

On my way and looking forward to it

Jessica Pierotti — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:36:05 +0000

Finals at RIT have finished and tomorrow night I am hopping on the train for eleven hours to go spend my week off in Chicago. I am excited to get away as well as run around the city and see some art and meet some people. I have been taking a class for the last eleven weeks called Museums and Collecting in which we discussed in-depth aspects of museums from public education, curation, funding, and the future of these institutions. We also made many field trips to the small museums of Rochester. It was exciting when Chicago museums came up in class and I felt familiar with the discussions because I went to many of them this summer. This class got me really excited about looking at these public structures in a different light and possibly be more appreciative of the underlying complexities.

Things of interest to me

Art Insititute of Chicago – Irving Penn: A Tribute, Konstantin Grcic: Decisive Design, On the Scene: Jason Lazarus, Wolfgang Plöger, Zoe Strauss, and more of course including spending more time in the Modern Wing.

Museum of Contemporary Photography – Reversed Images: Representations of Shanghai and Its Contemporary Material Culture

Chicago MCA – Liam Gillick: Three perspectives and a short scenario as well as Artists in Depth: Liam Gillick, Jenny Holzer, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt that puts Liam Gillick’s work into a historical context of contemporaneous artists as well as preceding works. AND! Italics: Italian Art between Tradition and Revolution 1968–2008

I am particularly excited about stopping by Zolla/Lieberman to see Garrett Durant’s Weighting Days. I met Garrett when I was living in Chicago and I really enjoy his work and am excited to see him getting a show at a gallery like Zolla/Lieberman.

Check him out.

(P.S. This is one of my favorites)

I would be glad to hear any other suggestions of shows going on while I am in town Monday through Sunday.

I’m BACK!

Jessica Pierotti — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:54:51 +0000

Ok, wordpress and I kind had a messy break-up and I was giving it the silent treatment. Why? Because I got hundreds of spam comments, (also, I was unsure I had anything interesting to say). So, today I decided I did have something to say so I tidied up things around here. I downloaded a spam plugin so hopefully that will help me avoid the various creative methods people have of trying to sell viagra through my blog, and I deleted everything. Sidenote: Don’t they know like 10 of my friends and my Dad read this? None of them want Viagra. Stop trying.

New News:

School is kicking my ass. Which is exactly what I needed. This summer was excellent but I was stuck with no creative outlet and confused about picking up a camera. In the fine art photo program at RIT we are trained in a very formulaic process. Pick a concept, start a project that can produce images for critique weekly, Work for ten weeks and then make final images. Obviously there are pros and cons to every academic method, but stepping out of this structure after a year left me unable to photograph recreationally anymore. Talking with my roommate Nikki we realized we are in such a competitive atmosphere that we have become afraid to recreationally photograph at the risk of taking a bad one. Just shooting like an 18 yr old again is healthy, its like a sketchbook or doodles for a painter as well as a means of documenting our lives. In school we get so busy and overwhelmed but I think it is still important to photograph our surroundings and experiences, if only for ourselves.

I have started a new series of photographs documenting the libraries of Rochester, NY. I am excited about photographing again and I am having fun with it. Fall quarter is almost over and then in less than a week I get on the train to head back to Chicago. I am really excited to go back to my pseudo-home.

Plans for thanksgiving break:

Tour SAIC?

museums

meet some people, talk about art

read a fiction book

update my website with the beginning of the new series

cook real food for the first time in about 2 months

New RIT Faculty

Jessica Pierotti — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 01:00:00 +0000

We are bringing seven new photography professors to RIT in the fall! Four for Fine Art (my department), two for advertising and one for photojournalism. We are beginning campus visits by the candidates in April. Each photographer will give a presentation to the student and faculty as well as make some classroom visits. I am really excited that we have the chance to meet these prospective faculty and give our feedback before they are hired. Coming up in the next couple of weeks are…

Ross Sawyers

and Christine Shank

I strongly encourage anyone who can get a chance, to stop in to the presentations. This is our chance to review the faculty we pay so much to learn from.

Ross Sawyers: Thursday, April 2nd, 12 pm in A201, Liberal Arts Building (6-A201)

Christine Shank: Wednesday, April 8th, 1 pm in Carlson Aud, CIS (76-1125)

(also rumors abound that Joel Wellington Fisher is one of the candidates for a Fine Art Photo position. He taught at RIT before I came to school here, but is notorious among good friends of mine as an awesome person/artist/professor. Everyone is rooting for him to come back to teach here!)

breaking news: I'm cold

Jessica Pierotti — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:41:00 +0000

The other night my good friend Nikki Graziano was over at my place and she ended up showing me some great photographers I had never seen. Also Niqqi is in photo with me at RIT and just updated her website! (See how I slipped that in there, I’m super discreet with the shameless friend plugs.)

Ahndraya Parlato is a CCA graduate and is now teaching at Ithaca College. I really enjoy her work, maybe she can come teach/lecture at RIT?

I was going to add more but I ran out of steam. Yeah, lame.

Pride

Jessica Pierotti — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:04:00 +0000

So just when I was posting about the kids at RIT doing great new things, I stumble upon them again. I was looking through We can shoot too by J. Wesley Brown and found an old post about Too Much Chocolate. It is a really exciting new internet community that contains a rotating gallery, discussion board and interviews. The featured artist is chosen by the previous weeks photographer and then interviewed by them. Right now Will Govus is being featured who has some exceptional work. He is one of the elite flickr group out there producing exceptional photography. This is what he has to say to Keith Davis Young during the interview:

KDY: People pull their inspiration from all sorts of places, people, and experiences. Where do you find most of yours?

WG: I think for me the best inspiration comes from the little online clique of photographers that I exist in. People like Pete Halupka, Ben Lepley, Neilson Tam, Anna Mack, Jake Wolf, Kohlton Ervin, and Hunt Fanelli all make me want to go out and shoot.

Go look all of these kids up on Flickr, remember their names, you will see them again.

Autobiography

Jessica Pierotti — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 02:58:00 +0000

I wrote these statements to go with my still life photographs. I really enjoyed the process of writing as well as the result. It has been a long time since I have written anything emotional about myself. Here are a few of the images as well.

The plants my mother gave me are dead.

I stopped watering them.

It’s unfair that they had to get caught in the middle.

There is a watermelon rotting in my kitchen cabinet.

I bought it to take to a party.

I put it in with my dishes.

I had my windows open all summer.

The wind would whip through and tear the blinds down.

Eventually I gave up and stopped hanging >

them back up again.

My pillow looks like it belongs to a child. It does.

It belongs to me seven years ago.

I guess I don’t know how to let go.

When I first moved here I went through a phase.

There was a time that I always slept fully clothed.

Recently my toaster began burning everything, I swear I didn’t turn the knob.

I started giving up on the little things. That make life more pleasant.