The Dragon’s Hoard

When I took my walk through San Marcos I wasn’t quite sure what kind of vernacular type I wanted to document, but as I walked I started to notice a pattern in what I gravitated towards. I really liked restaurant signs, letters that curved, and graffiti that heavily distorted the text in an interesting way because it had a kind of dancing effect that I liked. 

I also found it very interesting how in some alleys I could see text that had clearly had a purpose as signage at one point, but had fallen into disrepair. On the side of one restaurant there were two letter “S” that seemed to be a couple decades old, the other letters had long since fallen off or been removed. I found it interesting and a little peculiar that these two letters were all that remained, evidently human hands had not been thorough in their erasure of the previous words. No one seemed to care enough to remove them.

I was originally going to use typography from a walk in another location, but I liked the designs that I came up with while collaging my San Marcos text, so I decided to go with the designs I had created in class instead of using my images from France. 

My idea for the final two posters were twofold: I wanted one poster to include circular elements, a nice cohesive, centered composition inspired by the restaurant signs I had seen as I walked. 

I encountered quite a bit of difficulty, however, in getting my text to form a convincing circle. Eventually I found a tool on Illustrator called “polar grid tool” which projected a circle for me to use as a reference in getting my text round.  

For the second poster I wanted something that was peaceful, yet energetic. For this piece I relied more heavily on graffiti and herbalist flyers that I saw as I walked. I intentionally misspelled the word “early,” the largest piece of text in my poster, in order to not let it distract from the composition. The word forms a diagonal composition cutting the poster into two sections, one filled with dancing, falling, whimsical looking words. I decided, while making my final digital design, to move or remove all letters and text above the diagonal stream to leave this side contrastingly bare and draw the eye to the text beneath it, giving the piece a sense of a falling, downward motion.

Once I got to the stage of choosing colors I already had a certain feel in mind, so I picked some light, slightly cool, pastel like shades. And then, after having to reprint multiple times because people kept printing on my paper, I finally mounted my posters. 

-Alana Radkevich

April 4th 2023

Since I had to walk for an hour, I let my feet take me where they would, impulsively deciding to wander around the parts of campus I hadn’t yet fully explored, searching for interesting colors. It was really nice to wander around campus in no hurry, with no place to be anytime soon, with no heavy backpack to carry. I was able to enjoy walking more than I usually do. My mind and body were free to enjoy the sights and sounds of spring’s first days. 

I started my walk at the parking garage where I leave my car and usually walk to class, looking for interesting trees and flowers, the things I usually notice and appreciate on my habitual path, but don’t always take the time to fully enjoy. After I found some purple flowers and interesting bright green tree moss, I dropped my backpack in my locker, and, unhindered, continued my little adventure, aiming to get to Old Main, since I think it’s pretty over there and should have some pleasing hues to capture. 

I walked over to Alkek and took detours when I saw little nooks and crannies that I hadn’t stepped into before, taking the opportunity to explore them and search them for meaning. I eventually meandered over to Old Main, where I was greeted by the big, old, trees with spreading branches and deep shadows of green, brown, and black. They’re very comforting, giving off a sheltering yet mystical feel. 

I took a lot of pictures of trees and flowers. I seemed to gravitate toward green things and anything that stood out next to the green things. For example: I found some early bluebonnets, which stood out nicely against their highly saturated green grass background. A thing to note about bluebonnets, they aren’t entirely blue, they contain white, blue, yellow, pink, and purple. I remembered the flowers start white and yellow before turning blue, but had forgotten that each little flower, once mature, has a pink/red center, probably for guiding bees into the center for pollen and nectar. 

Some other colors also took me by surprise. I saw a small bird outlined against the pale gray sky. It appeared entirely dark gray, like the branch it perched on. When it flew down, closer to my eye level, I saw that the bird wasn’t actually gray at all, it was a vibrant yellow and black. I couldn’t see its true colors until the angle and lighting changed, and I was very surprised. If I hadn’t watched him closely I never would have known he was so beautiful.

It’s funny how little you really see, though your eyes are open. So many images flit across our eyes that we choose to tune out. How many little gray birds have we seen that are actually yellow if we would just be patient enough to watch them a little moment? When you decide to look for beauty in your environment you very often find it. 

-Alana Radkevich (February 23. 2023)

I have noticed the perspective reality of color most when I look at hair, fur, or feathers. My dog and my horse are perhaps the best canvasses for light play to tweak their color schemes, especially my horse, Beau, a mild mannered chestnut gelding whose coat looks looks radically different from one lighting to the next.

Chestnut refers to horses with light brown coats with a red/orange hue. In the sunlight my horse’s fur can take on either a reddish orange tint, a golden halo, or, if I’m lucky enough to catch him in just the right lighting at just the right angle: both. Some of my favorite pictures of Beau are of him during an Autumn Sunset. His fur was turned amber and tinged with gold, his white stripe shining like a band of light. Other days, with more diffused lighting, he just looks brown. with vague hints of red. It takes direct sunlight to bring out his yellow tones.

In addition to the colors I can see in his main coat, the little snip of white on his nose plays with the light quite a bit. When it isn’t covered in grass stains or mud I can see reflections of blue and pink on the shiny white hairs, giving Beau’s nose an opalescent quality that really heightens the visual texture of the fur where it is fine and silky.

-Alana Radkevich (February 20th, 2023)

I did not particularly enjoy the process of building a camera obscura: I ran into several difficulties early on because many of my supplies for the project were in my locker at school, and I was home during the freeze. I had to improvise with many of my tools and materials but I managed to make it work.

One of my major difficulties was getting my tape to cover all of the boxes’ sides, it kept popping off on one end of the joint between two sheets of cardboard, letting a lot of light into the camera and creating a lack of structural support. To fix this I decided to deviate from the original instructions and use hot glue to hold the 2 boxes’ sides together because it was much sturdier than my tape. I also deviated from the instructions in regards to the tracing paper: all we had in the house at the time was wax paper, which still works as a screen, being translucent.

Fortunately for me, working with the camera was far easier than building it. The only difficulty I really ran into was getting just the right amount of light when taking my pictures: too little exposure wouldn’t allow many details to appear and too much light would create an undesirable white spot in the center of the image, where the magnifying glass concentrated the light. In addition to this, the camera did not take clear photos of up close subjects, so I mainly photographed things at least 20 feet away. I may have been able to adjust the boxes inside of each other to fix this: but it didn’t occur to me at the time that it was an option.

All in all I was not overly fond of working with the camera obscura: I see it as a strange filter to put over a real camera (on my phone: the device that actually captured the images). That being said I do like some of the effects I was able to see in my photos: the camera obscura distorted light in a way that was very interesting to me, creating circular reflections that have an almost magical, celestial quality, which can inform my style in future art pieces, so I consider the experience to have been more or less valuable in the end.

-Alana Radkevich (2-9-2023)

Vera Lutter is an artist who works primarily with photography, specifically the camera obscura, to capture scenes of monumentality, emptiness, cities, metropolitan architecture, industrial sites, and art exhibits. It seems that she generally focuses on creating works depicting whatever she is fascinated by at the moment. Her technology specific work allows people to see art and living spaces in a new way that they can’t experience or see with their own eyes. The camera obscura negatives highlight aspects of paintings, places, and buildings that might otherwise be invisible: such as where in a place objects are most stationary in contrast to where they are in constant motion, and highlighting aspects of another artist’s composition that cannot be fully appreciated until inverted.

Vera Lutter in the Inverted Worlds gallery with her print Chrysler Building, IX: July 13, 2014.

I think it is very interesting that Lutter lives inside of her cameras while exposing the photos. She seems to have an incredible dedication to her art that can be seen in her desire to actually live and experience its creation fully. She is in no means distanced from the process, she is an intrinsic part of the process: and present at literally every step. She is willing to spend an almost inconceivable amount of time, effort, and money on making very large cameras, spending “weeks and months…planning” for a single photograph, spending days exposing photos, and even going so far as living inside the cameras for hours or days. This is truly an inspirational level of dedication to the craft, the process, and the product of artwork. Vera says it best herself: “All that matters is whether I make a good piece or not…” and I couldn’t agree more.

Vera Lutter, European Old Masters: December 7, 2018—January 9, 2019, 2018–19, courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery, © Vera Lutter, digital image courtesy of the artist

-Alana Radkevich
1-31-23

Zoe Leonard: You See I am Here After all
QCQ Analysis of: “Photography, the Archive, and
the Question of Feminist Form:
A Conversation with Zoe Leonard.”
by Huey Copeland

Quotation: “Your perspective keeps changing, but your eyes are always in line with the original vantage point of the photographer (Copeland 2).”

(You see I am here after all by Zoe Leonard. Photograph by Bill Jacobson, New York.)

Comment: I feel that this quote seems to imply a sense of movement; of a journey through time and space. One’s vantage point might remain the same, but as one moves the scenery around them begins to transform, and little by little to change into a scenery entirely other than what the traveler began with. Perhaps the experience of seeing all of these postcards in this way is similar to that feeling of traveling, and seeing the world change before one’s eyes, giving a new and expanded sense of perspective.
In this way the audience can begin to understand the differences in multiple perspectives and to start to expand their thinking to encompass other points of view. It is almost a though exercise of sorts, walking through this installation and thinking about how other people look at the world.
Additionally, the collection of postcards seems to hint at another motif of travel and exploration: one’s tendency to collect things like stamps and postcards to remember the places visited and seen. Postcards are nostalgic symbols of a single point, often a climactic point, in one’s travels.

(The Culturist. Installation view, Dia:Beacon, New York, 2008. Collection of the artist. courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne. Photograph by Bill Jacobson, New York.)

Question: What similarities exist between the subjects of the postcards? Are they picked at random, or was there more intentionality involved in the decision making process? If so, how does that influence the meaning of the art and the potential interpretations of the viewers?

(image: google.co.uk photographer unknown)

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