I have been interested in Andy Goldsworthy, a British sculptor and photographer, since highschool. I was given a book of his photographs, which are images of natural sculptures. The thing that really interests me about this artist is that all of his works look impossible. They are one hundred percent natural, but they all seem as though they defy nature. Everything he uses in his sculptures are found objects. They way he manipulates these objects look almost unnatural. The way he uses color and shape to make sharp, unnatural edges is beautiful and breathtaking. His precision attributes to his patience and crafstmanship. Andy Goldsworthy's artistic process is to immerse himself in nature while he is making his sculptures. He will often live out in a forest for a few days while he works. A lot of the time his sculptures take many days and require a lot of manual labor which includes melting icicles together to make intricate webs and rolling boulders to stack together like a stone monument. He has also gone out into fields before its going to snow or rain to lay on the ground while the percipitation falls all around him. Once it is over, nothing but a silhouette is left. I love the simplicity of this idea.

I also love how like nature, none of his sculptures are permanent. I've read how sometimes he will spend days working on a pieces that fall a part as soon as he is done, but he is okay with this and he moves on to his next piece. He uses no type of glue or anything man-made. He uses no tools other than his hands.

These photographs make me stop every time and think,

How did he do that?

I chose to blog about Ute Behrend because her diptychs are my favorite from what I've seen. I would like to be able to use some of the same ideas for my own project 2.

She writes:
‘Fairy tales are more than children’s stories… they reveal fundamental truths and wisdom. If there is a collective unconscious, then fairy tales are surely firmly grounded in it and whoever is prepared to get involved with them can find them everywhere, knowing full well that everything will always end well.’

Ute Behrend's diptychs have a very beautiful and surreal quality. They remind me of a dream because they seem to be a hazy or incomplete memory. A lot of her photographs evoke a fantasy world, like a fairy tale. I personally would relate these photographs more to a dream than a fairy tale. The diptychs are so strong because they reference each other. While they are still pretty vague, they complete each other to make one strong visual image. I absolutely love the softness that she achieves in these photographs. There is also an old-timey quality that I love.

http://www.utebehrend.de/small_silent_city.html?page=4

I love the images in her series, "Small Silent City". I especially love the ones that have children in them. To me, these are the ones that are strongest because I love the idea of these diptychs being representations of childhood dreams. Thats what I see when I look at these images. It almost makes me remember those faint memories of how I saw things when I was a child and how I dreamed about them. The children almost give these photographs an innocence that translates to the other pannel. Its like you're seeing it through the eyes of a child. I love how the color ranges relate as well.

I think these diptychs are extremely successful. I would hang them all over my house if I could afford to buy them all. They are so beautiful not just because of their content, but they are visually stunning as well.

An artists whose work I really enjoy is Lucia Ganieva. She is a Russian photographer that lives and works in the Netherlands. Most of her photographs are portraits. Most of these portraits are people in their natural habitat. These photographs really grabbed my attention because I love to take these kind of photographs.

I've always been very curious about people, and what it is that makes us all different. I've always been intrigued by these differences and by how different other people's lives look from an outsider's perspective. For me, portraits are a great way of exploring these differences. I've always had a habit of staring. I stare at people and I ask questions,

Where do they come from?

Why do they look the way they do?

Where are they going from here?

Where do they live?

What do they do there?

I've always wished I could be a fly on the wall, to follow different people around and see what they're all about. Especially people from completely different backgrounds than myself. This is what Lucia Ganieva's portraits do for me, provide a window into her subject's lives. She has an amazing way of representing the character and the situation of the people that she's photographing.

http://www.luciaganieva.com/frame.php?catId=17362

Her photographs called "Abi" are all of women standing in similar backgrounds with similar clothing. Although these scenes look very similar, but upon further investigation, they all began to differentiate. All of these women have different facial expressions and posture. Lucia Ganieva really captured their character in these photographs. Putting them in similar backgrounds with similar clothes helped me to see the dissimilarities which attested to their individuality.