Hey, everybody.
It's April, which I hereby declare
Participant Appreciation Month.
Hey, happy Participant Appreciation Month.
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Whoa!
That was loud.
This show exists because you guys make great art in response
to these videos and also because you watch and comment
on the videos and contribute to the Art Assignment community.
Because we appreciate you and also because we're really
behind on highlights videos, we're
going to have three straight weeks of highlights videos
so we can show off all the fine work you've been doing.
We're also going to be calling out on Tumblr and Twitter
some of you who've been especially productive
in your art making or your general participation
in the community.
So be on the lookout for that too.
And because we're giving you a little spring
break from new assignments, you can take this opportunity
to do some past assignments and/or you
can read the next Art Assignment book club book, which is John
Dewey's "Art As Experience."
It's a classic and I think pertains
to a lot of what we discuss on this show.
But it was also written in 1934.
So let's read it together and think about how it
is and is not relevant today.
My first act in honor of Participant Appreciation Month
is to share with you my favorite responses to Tonya Hollander's
art assignment.
Tonya's assignment is to take a formal photographic portrait
of a friend and is closely related to her ongoing series
"Are You Really My Friend?" where
she's traveling around the world taking
formal portraits of all 600-plus of her Facebook friends.
Her series and this assignment explores what friendship means
in the age of the internet.
And so it was fitting that many of you
made portraits of long-distance friends
or those who you see primarily by a screen.
One of the responses that captured such a friendship
was between two frequent Art Assignment
contributors, Meg Gilbert and Betty from Articulations.
They got to know each other through the Art Assignment
community.
And Betty asked Meg to be the subject of her Photo a Friend
portrait.
I appreciated the care Betty took
with composing the photograph despite their distance
and the seriousness with which Meg took her role as subject.
It was interesting to watch the two of them
negotiate their respective roles in this,
and I think it yielded really lovely results.
Other successful portraits of internet friendship
came from Lydia, who posted two portraits.
One of Cassie, of whom she says, "A friend
is someone you'll drive three hours to see and then spend
hours in companionable silence making tissue paper
flowers for her wall."
And the other is of Amy.
Lydia says about her the following.
"Internet friends are different from other friends.
Here on the internet, we don't have
the limitation of proximity.
You had your pick of all the other billions and billions
of people with blogs and profiles and URLs.
And out of all of them you choose me."
But there were still many of you who
chose people they see in the flesh every day
to be the friends they photographed.
Like this one from the blog "Goat Eyes and Howard,"
described by the photographer as a formal portrait of a friend,
my sister, with her things.
I love the somewhat eerie color balance in this one
and the narrow depth of focus.
Seeing the subject clearly amid a blurry battlefield
of her stuffed animals and the faraway look in her eyes
as she clutches the one bear, which must be more
special than all the others.
Or there was also this portrait of siblings by Aubrey.
It's a fantastic picture, accomplished in its composition
and clarity, and it's just such a dynamic image.
Aubrey says, "I know this was supposed
to be a formal portrait with the subject still,
but I think this captures being a young boy better."
I thought it was kind of funny Aubrey
assumed the subject had to be still for it
to be formal because this assignment made me think
a lot about what formal means.
Portraits like this one made me realize that formal, to me,
means well considered and thought out
and not necessarily still or serious.
I also enjoyed this family portrait
by Hannah, who said, "I often find the greatest friends come
as package deals, the entire family for the price of one."
So I like that for Hannah, showing their friend
in their environment meant showing them
not just with their things or in their own room
but showing them with the people they
care about and in their shared family space.
And earlier we saw Meg choose her "prop"
to be her daughter, Lily.
And we also saw some others depict their subject
with their children.
Like Peter, who took these two lovely portraits of friends
with their babies.
Peter says, "For each of these portraits,
it was very important to me to have both them
and their children in the picture
because, for each of them, motherhood
is intrinsic to who they have become.
For each of them, motherhood wasn't
something that just happened without difficulty.
And they both face their own challenges
with grace, strength, and determination."
For the assignment, Tonya told us
we could define "friend" however we wanted.
And a fair number of you made portraits
of people who weren't necessarily your peers
or those you talk to all the time.
There was this accomplished portrait by FoundOnLand.
She says, "In a Ukrainian village,
this is the kindest lady I've ever met.
She survived the gulag.
She had been a prisoner from the age of 17 until 28.
And despite all of this, she still
only has love in her heart."
Or this one by TheArtofBeingHuman,
who says, "A friend is someone who teaches
you everything about fishing."
A fair number of you made portraits of pets, more dogs
than cats, as it happens.
And I especially like this portrait by Trishy199.
It's not only a great photograph,
but I'm so amused by how this dog is completely
holding its own and presenting itself
in such a dignified manner.
There were also these beautiful photographs by Laura.
She says, "Don't get me wrong.
I have human friends.
But my dogs will forever be the most loyal.
The friends who will sit and stare at the view with me.
The friends who will always bring back the stick
or pose like the diva she is for my camera."
And speaking of posing, something
I was greatly amused by in a number of the responses
was the idea that a friend is someone
willing to pose for your picture.
Like LindsFromCO shared this great picture of her roommate
and said, "I'm glad she is a friend
and allows my creativity to go crazy."
I like that the roommate is clearly amused
by being the subject of this.
And I like imagining how she's frequently
pulled in to be a guinea pig for her friend's art projects.
Or there was my YearByDesign, who photographed her best
friend and husband, Nick, and she depicts him
as he's studying at home for his MBA.
She took a few photos, saying, "I
wanted to demonstrate how Nick sometimes deals
with Jen's crazy art projects."
It's mentioned casually, but as I
kept seeing this idea come up in responses,
it started taking on more weight.
You can look at it like your subject "putting up with you"
taking their picture, but it's more than that.
A friend is someone you can ask to put themselves out
there and be viewed through your lens
and to go through the intimate and possibly awkward experience
of having your photo taken.
I was really touched by how generous that act is,
of saying yes when a friend asks to take your picture.
That generosity is on display in other pictures like this one
by Safarox of McKenzie.
Safarox says, "The more time I spend with my friends,
the more I learn about how to care and listen and be
grateful for the little things in life.
And most importantly, how to be a good friend,
which is a lesson often forgotten."
And I was really moved by this series of portraits, posted
by Wolfs-Toeter, which weren't actually
created for this assignment but were taken in years past.
The description says, "So here's some, all of them
completely spontaneous.
So no formal portraits and objectively not even very
good photos.
But they capture the people's personalities quite well
somehow.
Or I just have a lot of memories attached to those photos."
I love these portraits, and I have
no memories attached to them.
And I think that's what maybe makes for good photography
sometimes, images that communicate
the intimacy of the photographic encounter despite your distance
from it.
And these do that impeccably well.
And the last response I'd like to share with you
is by MurderByRoseStem, and it's a selfie, a splendid selfie.
And as far as I know, it's the only selfie
that was posted in response to this assignment.
The description says, "While I give my friends slack,
I tend to be overcritical of my actions.
While I would give anything to spend time with my friends,
I would love to get away from myself.
I want to be friends with myself, though.
And being friends with yourself is a process.
It hasn't been easy.
But a friend is someone you want to spend time with, trust,
and love.
And I will be my own friend."
I was incredibly moved by looking
at all of your responses to this assignment.
And I'm immensely grateful to all of you
for sharing these portraits with us.
So keep photoing your friends formally
and posting them with #theartassignment.
And I'll see you next week to talk about more highlights.
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