Grounded

Grounded A Senior Project Exhibition Christopher M. Hutchinson Opening 12/11/10 Senior Project and Academic Advisor: Stephen Shore Senior Board: Dave Bush, Tim Davis, Stephen Shore Artist’s Statement These images are a compilation of 4x5 color photographs selected from a yearlong project. As an artist and an individual, I am very influenced by nature; my senior project reflects this in the selection of images exploring the elements. The images are all digitally printed from scans of color 4x5 negatives taken on excursions in search of the most emotive forms of earth. These selections of mud, stone, and sky demonstrate the ever-changing complexity of nature and the emotional power these shapes can possess. In some images, complicated illusion mixes with the simplest of forms, while others show how the plainest forms are made immeasurably complex by the forces of time and nature. My desire to capture all of the minute details that excited me about the images led me to choose the 4x5 view camera. The large format allows me to get the finest details possible, which make a huge difference in the final images. Large format negatives give greater depth of tone in color photography, and the variety of the earthen tones add to the power of the images. This project has evolved dramatically since its conception. The concepts derived from my affinity for the shape of spills changed as I worked on the project, and became much more flushed out. These spills made the normal seem alien to me, and I began seeing similarly resonant images in the earth. In my search for new images I often ended up in places of great physical change, such as gravel yards and rock quarries. These places feel isolated from the modern world. They are like alien lands where sheets of earth sheath off like ice chunks from a glacier and piles of sand melt slowly. The project is comprised of both images of organic shapes and concepts such as gravity and erosion. Throughout the project this concept changed as the selected images were found/taken. All of the images in this show are as undoctored as they were found in nature, and have not been changed in any way by myself (except for color correction)