Barbara Smith + Blog

I have a studio space!

I still have a few things to set up and am waiting for a few new tools I ordered to come in, but, there you have it. I have never actually had a jeweler’s bench to work at, but I like it. Quite handy, those little benches.

The first week of classes was a bit hectic. As of today, I am finally registered for everything I am supposed to be taking class wise….including a class on Virginia Woolf in which we read ALL of her books. It will be a great class, but a lot of hard work.
Mostly I am still getting settled in to the new space and studio….and this Wednesday is our crit for the “100 drawings” we worked on over the summer. Then the fun begins!

Today, 3 of the other new grads and I ventured into the city. It was my first time attending MoMA and the Guggenheim. We went to MoMA first (where we got in FREE with our SUNY IDs). I didn’t get to see everything, but I was quite taken with the photography. Many of the galleries (with the larger, color, digital prints in them) were closed for installation. What I did see was some amazing black and white work from Steiglitz, Arbus, Josef Albers, Gertrude Kasebeir…. The prints were gorgeous, smaller photographs that made me think to myself about how beautiful photography really is, as if I had forgotten. There was definitely a certain magic to it; my re-realization about the jaw dropping beauty of a well printed photograph. And I sat there and looked around and thought to myself…why would anyone want to work digitally…. I know why, and I do, but there is a quality inherent in a printed photograph that just doesn’t exist in digital work, at least in many of the things I’ve seen. (I’m also tired of large prints! Yes, I said it, I’m really sick of seeing them.)
One piece that made my day was a recent acquisition of ” Ninety-two photographs in which the photographer’s shadow appears.” They were all unknown photographers; a collection of snapshots.

After some coffee, we hit up the Guggenheim during the $1 admission time to see the Louis Bourgeois retrospective. There was a little bit of a wait, but not too bad.

Despite the fact that the place was PACKED, it was an absolutely amazing show!! I am so excited that I was able to go see the exhibit and see so much of her work (prints, drawings, sculpture, etc) in one place. Today marks the fist time I’ve seen one of her cells in person. The cells are the architecture for her memory. She says, ” I need my memories. They are my documents.”

I hate to cut this short, but I have a 400 page Woolf book to read, among other things.