REFLECTIONS OF HOME is a somewhat originally composed if unoriginally titled digital photograph of my apartment, taken as a reflection off the back window of my van using my cell phone. This image is exactly as taken except for some minor cropping. As I start experimenting with digital photography as an art form, I am initially concentrating on composition rather than image manipulation.
WE ARE NOT ALONE was taken with my cell phone camera around 3 pm on July 19, 2021 looking out my sunroom window towards Warminster Park. While I suppose it could be part of my “Views From a Third Floor Window” Series, it actually predates the start of that series and was essentially a reflex action on my part. Shortly after I took this shot, the image was gone and I’m going to have to leave it to the viewer to determine what they are seeing. WE ARE NOT ALONE, with the exception of some minor cropping, appears exactly as I took it with no staging, alterations, enhancements, or manipulations.
A lot of my work involves using found objects and recycled and repurposed materials. FEATHER is just such a piece using a molted feather from a broad tailed hawk and a sheet of handmade paper using asparagus and kale stems, corn husks, pineapple, day lily, and daffodil leaves, grass clippings and abaca. I have a large variety of handmade papers, and went through them all, but this combination really seemed to work best. FEATHER is a one of a kind piece because while I do have a couple more sheets of this particular paper, I found only the one feather. To the best of my knowledge, no hawk was harmed in the making of FEATHER.
LIVING HIGH, part of my “Views From a Third Floor Window”, has nothing to do with beverages or substances. Instead it references the feeling of knowing that when you live on the third floor of a retirement community, no matter how much it snows-you don’t have to shovel it. LIVING HIGH was shot with my cell phone camera early one morning just before breakfast and with the coffee already poured. The image, except for some minor cropping, is exactly as I took it with no filters, alterations or manipulations.
URBAN CENTER started out to be part of my “From Negative to Positive” Series of paper collages, but after I made the first preliminary cuts I realized that the inside of the packaging material I was using presented as many opportunities as the outside and gave me the chance to work white on black. URBAN CENTER more or less titled itself while I was doing the initial lay-out, and I only had to make a couple of reinforcing changes.
MOLTEN SKIES # 6 like MOLTEN SKIES #1 and all of the pieces in the Series is presented exactly as photographed without any alterations, (except for some minor cropping), enhancements or the use of any filters. I am continually surprised by the range of colors and vistas that the sunset sky presents.
MOLTEN SKIES #1 is part of my “Molten Skies” Series which, in turn, is part of my “Views From a Third Floor Window” Series of digital photographs. While I have used digital photography to submit images of my art work to juried shows, I am just starting to experiment with it as an art form in and of itself. MOLTEN SKIES #1 was shot using my cell phone without any filters or changes except for cropping and is of a late January southwestern sky just after the sun dipped below the horizon.
YOU ARE HERE is both a “conceptual” and a “process” piece. It is a conceptual piece in that it is neither representational nor abstract, nor is it a statement or commentary. It is more of a Rorschach test than anything. Do you get a sense of adventure and excitement, of almost endless possibilities, whichever way you go will lead somewhere; or do you have a sense of indecision, there is no way to make the right choice? It is a process piece in that I had a single, 22” x 28” sheet of white poster board and wanted to see if I could make anything two dimensional out of it. (16” x 20”) (2021)
DECEMBER MORNING FOG #3 is a paper collage inspired by a digital photograph I took as part of my Series “Views From A Third Floor Window” which is, in turn, part of my experimenting with digital photography as an art medium, but it is a very different collage form than DECEMBER MORNING FOG #2. DECEMBER MORNING FOG #3 is composed of “financial service papers”, i.e. the linings of financial communications such as credit card and bank statements and is more representational than DECEMBER MORNING FOG #2 and draws less on my stained glass and mosaics background.
DECEMBER MORNING FOG#2 is a paper collage inspired by a digital photograph I took as part of my Series “Views From A Third Floor Window” which is, in turn, part of my experimenting with digital photography as an art medium. DECEMBER MORNING FOG#2 is also part of my “Negative to Positive” Series which takes the background, i.e., the negative space, from a single piece of advertising or packaging material and repurposes it as the positive image in a collage. The “Negative to Positive” Series is intended to force me to be both creative and disciplined.
John Fansmith 