Society
for Photographic Education
SW / WEST Regional Conference
COLLABORATION
Tucson, AZ
November
16 - 18, 2007
SPE West/Southwest 2007 Regional Conference
Portfolio Reviews
Sign
up for 20 minutes of personal interaction with noted curators,
artists, gallery directors, art historians, and educators! The
SPE SW 2007 Regional Conference Panel of Experts will meet with
conference attendees to discuss portfolio selection & editing,
presentation for exhibitions, application to graduate school,
aesthetics and techniques. Please see the accompanying insert,
Portfolio Reviewer Biographies, for information about individual
reviewers.
Portfolio
Review Sessions are scheduled from 9:30 AM until noon and 1:30
until 4:30 PM on Saturday, November 17th at the University of
Arizona School of Art in rooms 103 and 203 of the School of Art.
The School of Art is right across the street from the Center for
Creative Photography.
Conference
attendees interested in participating in the Portfolio Reviews
MUST get a Portfolio Review Number at Registration in order to
participate. Each participant will receive a number – numbers
will be randomly selected by drawing to determine the order for
sign-up. The sign-up for Portfolio Reviews will begin promptly
at 9 AM in the School of Art – right outside Room 103. Interested
parties MUST be present to participate. All Portfolio Reviews
begin and end promptly.
Reviewers please show up 5 minutes early for your session so they
may begin promptly. Thank you!
9
– 9:25
Portfolio Review
Sign-up
9:30 – noon
Portfolio Reviews
– Morning Session
Liz
Allen, Krista Elrick, Cinthea Fiss, Bob Galloway, Lisa M. Robinson,
Martina Shenal, Nancy Solomon, Nancy Sutor, David Taylor, Melanie
Walker, Will Wilson
1:30 – 4:30
Portfolio Reviews
– Afternoon Session
Sama
Alshalbi, Connie Begg, Victoria Mara Heilweil, Patrick Herbert,
Dennis Keeley, Joseph Labate, Michael Rauner, Betsy Schneider,
Ann Simmons-Myers, Albert Stewart, Jeff Smith/AT Willett
Liz
Allen serves as the director of Northlight Gallery at Arizona
State University. Although she earned her MFA back east in Rochester,
NY at RIT, she couldn't wait to get home to the southwest. She
is interested in a broad spectrum of photo-based work including
work that uses alternative presentation and installation methods
or combines media.
Sama Alshaibi is assistant professor of art in the Photography
Department at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Born in Basra,
Iraq to an Iraqi father and Palestinian mother, her work negotiates
the shifts between personal, familial and official history, creating
a context to understand the impact of war and exile. She is co-founder
of the 6+ women's art collective. A multi-media artist, Alshaibi's
photography, video and installations are widely exhibited internationally
including South Africa, The West Bank, Israel, Ireland, China,
Jordan, Guatemala, Mexico, Colombia and the United States of America.
Her art and essays have recently appeared in Nueva Luz, Frontiers:
A Journal of Women's Studies, and Refuge & Rejection. Alshaibi
studied at Columbia College, Chicago and University of Colorado
at Boulder where she completed her Masters of Fine Arts in Photography
and Media Arts.
Connie Begg is a full-time professor and fine art coordinator
in the Graduate School of Photography at the Academy of Art University
in San Francisco. She holds a Masters degree in Fine Art
from Mills College. Her personal work deals with identity,
memory and obsessiveness.
Krista Elrick grew up in both the U.S. and Guatemala and has lived
in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her husband and daughter since 1993.
In 1990 she received an MFA in Photography from Arizona State
University, and in 1980 a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Hampshire
College. Her work has taken her to Europe, the Middle East,
Central America and many regions in the United States where she
has explored the relationship of people to their land, families
and past. She has collaborated on projects with writers, folklorists,
and historians. In addition to her work as a photographer, Krista
teaches photography workshops and college courses. She offers
a series of lectures about photography of the Southwest through
the New Mexico Humanities Council. In her slide presentations,
historical context is examined in the lives and work of photographers.
Krista's has held positions as visual arts director for the Western
States Arts Federation and the Arizona Commission on the Arts.
She received a fellowship with the National Endowment for the
Arts in arts administration in 1989. To see Krista’s images
and read more information, visit
www.KristaElrick.com
Cinthea Fiss received her MFA from California Institute of the
Arts in 1993 and participated in the Whitney Independent Studies
Program from 1995 – 1996. She is currently a Visiting Assistant
Professor and Co-coordinator of the Photography Program at Metropolitan
State College of Denver. cintheafox.com
Erika Gentry is a multi media artist with a concentration in image
making. An early advocate of the creative digital domain, she
has been teaching and presenting digital imaging, photography
and multimedia at the institutional, organizational and individual
levels nationwide since 1996. She is on the Board of Director
for Fotovision.org,
a non-profit which advances photography through education, dialogue
and community. She has been an independent project director and
digital consultant for corporate clients such as Apple, Kodak,
Business 2.0 Magazine and industry-celebrated photography books:
John Sperling’s politically divisive The Great Divide: Retro
vs. Metro (2004) and most recently renowned documentary photographer
Colin Finlay’s Testify (2006). Gentry completed her master
of fine arts degree in The School of Imaging Arts and Sciences
at New York’s Rochester Institute of Technology. She is
currently a full-time Instructor at the City College San Francisco
in both the Photography and Multi Media Departments.
Bob Galloway has been a photo educator at the college level for
over twenty-five years. He is interested in reviewing all levels
of work in any media. He is especially interested in seeing work
of individuals who are interested in preparing portfolios for advanced
education or pursuing graduate degrees.
Patrick "Pato" Hebert is an artist, educator and cultural
worker based in Los Angeles. His art has been featured at El Museo
de las Artes in Guadalajara, Longwood Arts in The Bronx, the Japanese
American National Museum in Los Angeles, The Oakland Museum of
California, Galería de la Raza in San Francisco and Voz
Alta in San Diego. His work has received support from the Rockefeller
Foundation, the California Arts Council, the Creative Work Fund
and the Durfee Foundation. His writing has appeared in the Journal
of Visual Culture and disClosure, and his images can be seen in
the premiere issues of the magazine RealTALK LA and the journal
Encyclopedia. He currently serves as the Associate Director of
Education at AIDS Project Los Angeles, where he develops public
art, community-based publishing and creative interventions as
an innovative form of HIV prevention. He currently teaches in
the Photography and Imaging Department at Art Center College of
Design.
Victoria Mara Heilweil is currently an Adjunct Instructor at City
College of San Francisco where she teaches traditional and digital
photography, and a team-taught, multidiciplinary, collaborative
deisgn class. Victoria is also team-teaching an Upper Level Interdisciplinary
seminar at California College of the Arts entitled "Waste
and Excess". Victoria is continuing to explore how to balance
her teaching, art practice and motherhood. Her artwork draws from
her own personal experiences, beliefs, fears and questions. While
her photographs were primarily of the body and portraiture in
the past, she has become increasingly more enamored of objects.
Dennis Keeley has worked as an artist, photographer, teacher and
writer for more than 25 years. His work has been exhibited in
one person and group shows and he is published internationally
in numerous studies concerning urban circumstance and condition.
His book "Looking for a City in America: Down These Mean
Streets a Man Must Go" Getty Publications, won numerous awards.
In addition to being the current chair of the Photography and
Imaging program at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, he
is also the Western Regional Co Chair of the Society for Photographic
Education and sits on the boards of the Santa Fe Center for Photography
and the Angel's Gate Cultural Center. In 2005 Mr. Keeley spoke
at the United Nations NGO Conference concerning photography as
a tool in peace building and non-violent conflict resolution.
Joseph Labate is an assistant professor and the Chair of the Photography
Division in the School of Art at the University of Arizona. Labate’s
artwork and his teaching focus on the use of digital technology
as applied to the medium of photography. He has a B.S. in engineering
from Clarkson University, a B.F.A. in photography from Massachusetts
College of Art, and an M.F.A. in photography from the University
of Arizona. Labate is a recipient of a Visual Arts Fellowship
from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, an Artist’s Grant
from the Contemporary Forum of the Phoenix Art Museum, and an
Artist’s Grant from Polaroid of Tokyo, Japan. His work
is in many private and public collections including the Center
for Creative Photography, the Tucson Museum of Art, the SnellWilmer
Collection, the Streitch Lang Collection, the Weeks Gallery and
Roussenski Lom National Park in Bulgaria.
Michael Rauner is a San Francisco-based photographer, bookmaker,
installation artist, and teacher. His photographs have recently
been published by Chronicle Books in The Visionary State: A Journey
through California’s Spiritual Landscape, a collaboration
with author Erik Davis. He has shown his artwork at many venues,
including Denver's Museum of Contemporary Art, George Eastman
House, photo-eye Gallery, The Center for Photography at Woodstock,
and Internationale Fototage in Germany. His artwork and handmade
photographic books reside in numerous private and public collections,
including the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum
of Modern Art and The Bancroft Library. His photographs have also
been published by City Lights Books in San Francisco: The Political
Edge, by Steidl in Picturing Eden, and he is a contributing essayist
to First Exposures: Youth Opportunities Through Photography published
by SF Camerawork.
Lisa M. Robinson (MFA, Savannah College of Art and Design) was
formerly a printing assistant for George Tice and has been photographing
in the snow for the past five winters. Awards include a Fulbright
grant, as well as fellowships as an artist-in-residence at Anderson
Ranch, VCCA, Light Work and The MacDowell Colony. Her first monograph,
SNOWBOUND, is being published by the German art book publisher,
Kehrer Verlag. SNOWBOUND is currently being exhibited at Etherton
Gallery in Tucson and will be shown at KLOMPCHING Gallery in NY
this January.
Betsy Schneider is a photo-based artist working in a variety of
photographic formats ranging from point and shoot to view camera
to computer generated video. Her work addresses issues of childhood,
time, decay, the body and culture. She has received degrees from
the University of Michigan, The School of the Art Institute of
Chicago and Mills College. From 1993 to 1995 she worked as a live-in
assistant to Sally Mann. While at Mills College she studied with
Catherine Wagner and Larry Sultan and received numerous awards
including the prestigious Jay DeFeo Prize. Her work has been exhibited
internationally, most recently in the Odense Triennale in Denmark,
the Arizona Biennale in Tucson and the Platform International
Animation Festival in Portland, Oregon. Her work is in several
notable collections including that of actor Jamie Lee Curtis.
Over the past ten years she has lived and worked in London, England,
Trondheim, Norway and Tempe, Arizona. She is an Assistant
Professor in the School of Art at Arizona State University.
Martina Shenal graduated with her BFA in Photography from The
Ohio State University and her MFA from Arizona State University.
She was an Assistant Professor of Art and Division Chair of the
Photography program at the Memphis College of Art from 1998-2004.
She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art in the Photography
division and the Assistant Director of the School of Art at the
University of Arizona
Ann Simmons-Myers began her graduate studies at the Art Institute
of Chicago and finished her MFA at the University of Arizona.
She has studied, taught and photographed throughout the world,
and now lives, works, and teaches in Tucson, Arizona. A solo show
of her work, Bikers: Photographs by Ann Simmons-Myers, was
recently exhibited at the Tucson Museum of Art. Her work
has been written about in more than 20 publications, and is contained
in the collections of many museums, including The Bibliotheque
National de France, the High Art Museum in Atlanta, and The Museum
of Fine Arts in Houston.
Nancy Solomon is an artist who makes books, photographs, prints,
and paper. She began creating her own books when she was four
years old and never stopped. In addition to her own work, Solomon
is a publishing consultant who has edited and designed fine art
photography and scholarly books for thirty years.
Albert Stewart is an artist/curator, who lives and works in Tucson,
Arizona. He completed his undergraduate credentials at the University
of Texas at Austin, his graduate studies at Pratt Institute and
the University of Washington. He has held curatorial and directorial
appointments, ranging from public institutions to private foundations;
among them: the Benedictine Collections, Florida State University
Galleries, The Phoenix Art Museum, The Yves Klein Archives and
Foundation, Arizona State University, The John Cage Trust, and
The Belger Family Foundation Collection. Since 1968, his work
has centered on the understanding of change and the exploration
of significant developments in contemporary art. He has organized
over seventy (70) exhibitions, including artists: Yves Klein,
Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist, Richard Anuskiewicz, Vincent van
Gogh, and William T. Wiley. Stewart has authored numerous critical
essays and publications, and has lectured and exhibited his work
extensively in the United States and Europe.
Nancy Sutor is a working artist and Interim Director of the Marion
Center for Photographic Arts 2006-present. She was a founding
partner for Eidolon, late late 20th Century Art, in Santa
Fe1994-1996, and has been a Board Member and Curator for the Santa
Fe Center for Photography 1983-1987, curated Space X, Armory for
the Arts Santa Fe 1984-85, and was a board member Santa Fe Council
for the Arts 1977-83.
David Taylor is an associate professor of photography at New Mexico
State University. He has an MFA from the University of Oregon,
1994 and a BFA from Tufts University and The School of the Museum
of Fine Arts, 1989
Melanie Walker has been a practicing artist for over 30 years.
Her expertise is in the area of alternative photographic processes,
digital and mixed media as well as large scale interactive photographic
installations. She has received a number of awards including an
NEA Visual Arts Fellowship, Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship
and an Aaron Siskind Award. She has also been the recipient of
numerous public art commissions in various national and international
locations, including Arizona, London, Florida, Alaska, and California.
(There is a collaborative public art piece in Special Collections
at the University of Arizona.) She currently teaches in the Media
Arts Area at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Will Wilson was born in San Francisco and moved permanently to
the Navajo Reservation at the age of 10. He attended the Bureau
of Indian Affair's Tuba City Boarding School from 1978 to 1983.
He holds a bachelor's degree in art history and studio art and
a master's of fine art in photography. Wilson has worked in a
variety of media and has produced large-scale multi-media installations
that incorporate photography and sculpture, monumental art pieces
and intimate photo essays. In addition to his profession as an
artist and photographer, he is also an arts educator and community
organizer. Wilson has taught sculpture at the Institute of American
Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M., and he served two years as a photojournalist
in Central America for the Associated Press. He currently resides
in Tucson, Ariz., where he is the co-director of the Barrio Anita
Community Mural Project (BAMP), the largest public art commission
in Tucson's history. BAMP features a 12,000-square-foot mural
alongside the Interstate 10 sound barrier wall. The project involves
the creation of a multi-media arts center for the community. The
arts center features digital photography, Venetian glass tile
photo-mosaic, metal work and more. Beginning in this fall Wilson
will be Visiting Professor of Photography at the University of
Arizona in Tucson. Most recently Wilson's work provides a glimpse
into the complex contemporary negotiation with a land we have
become alienated from, our dis-ease in understanding who we are,
and possible paths for healing. Wilson's work focuses on Navajo
people and their relationship to the land. "His works are
poetic and gritty meditations on the human condition and Wilson's
relationship to Dinetah, Navajo land," notes Joe Baker, Lloyd
Kiva New Curator of Fine Art at the Heard Museum.
A.T. Willett a Tucson photojournalist / commercial photographer,
creates images with commercial clients ranging from Guardian Newspaper
in London to IBM. Willett started his photographic career
in 1983 as a photojournalist covering breaking news stories with
the Gannett owned, Tucson Citizen newspaper . In 1986 Willett
moved to New York City where he was offered a contract with worlds
leading stock photography agency Imagebank. Imagebank which became
part of Getty Images marketed his work internationally through
more than 60 sub agents. Willett is currently an assignment photographer
with Getty Images and his stock photographs are now represented
by Alamy.com. Willett uses developing internet technologies,
like Paypal, Google (Images, Adwords, Analytics), Myspace, and
Youtube, to market his editorial assignment work, stock images
and fine art photographs. His most recent show at Etherton Gallery
in the summer 2007, “Out of a Clear Blue Sky”
a collaboration with Tucson photographer Jeff Smith, featured
photographs of extreme weather from the past twenty four years.
His fine art photographs are in the Special Collection at the
University of Arizona, the Alliance Bank collection and with other
private collectors A. T. Willett and Jeff Smith will be conducting
reviews together as a collaborative effort.
Jeff Smith is a commercial photographer. Mainly shooting
people for publication, he has vigorously stayed in touch
with current digital technology and technics, while also staying
true to his film roots. Earlier this year his work
was chosen by A.I.R. Gallery to document performance artist Kate
Long Hodges’ work for the A.I.R. 7th Biennial in New York
City. Most recently, Jeff's photography was featured in
"Out of A Clear Blue Sky: Severe Weather Photographs"
at the Etherton Gallery in Tucson, AZ. Smith has owned
a commercial studio for the past 17 years. His clients include
Timberland, APS, Humana, University of Arizona, Bonhams &
Butterfields, and Phelps Dodge among others. Jeff also
has an extensive stock collection available thru the
photo stock agency Alamy.com. Jeff Smith and A. T. Willett will
be conducting reviews together as a collaborative effort.
Portfolio
Reviews – Morning Session / 9:30 – 11:30
9:30 – 9:50
9:55 – 10:15
10:20 – 10:40
10:45 – 11:05
11:10 – 11:30
11:35 – 11:55
Noon
– 1:30 – LUNCH BREAK
Portfolio
Reviews – Afternoon Session / 1:30 – 4:30
1:30 – 1:50
1:55 – 2:15
2:20 – 2:40
2:45 – 3:05
3:10 – 3:30
3:35 – 4:15
Sponsored
by
The
Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona School
of Art
and
the West / Southwest SPE Regions
Questions:
Mary Anne Redding mredding@comcast.net
