Kelly Wrage

A Tree Falls in Swarthmore

2011-04-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

One of our trees fell on the house the other day. We estimate the height of it to have been somewhere around 60 feet. It got a little windy, the trees swirled a bit, I went to Accuweather.com to look for weather warnings, and as I was about to click on the first link there, the world came down around me. Well, that's what it sounded like, anyway.

The tree hit the chimney, sending the block and brick toward the new egress dormer. It took a massive hit but stayed up there (testament to good construction--gotta thank our contractor for that!). The window looks undamaged. The chimney debris hit the ground, taking out grill #1. The top of the tree snapped off, flipped over, and hit the ground, taking out Scott's second, and favorite, grill.

You get a better idea of the size of the tree with the guys standing around it.

The tree fell right along the corner of one of the hips to the roof of the sunroom--good thing, because the branches straddled it there and preserved all of the new work inside (drywall, mudding, taping, etc).

This is a good tree.....

.....and this is a bad tree.

Sliced right through that supporting corner and there are several cinder blocks resting on the unsound roof at this point. The chimney liner you see in there was installed with the new fireplace insert on the first floor. We're pretty sure the insert is okay. Losing the liner is no big deal.

Not bad, considering the weight that fell on this part of the house.

This was almost our first finished room--my studio. I'm of the understanding that it will be gutted. It's covered by insurance though, thankfully.

The Place I Keep

2010-09-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

Going through the archives and putting together the website--finally. I'm uploading a few images here first to get a feel for what I want on the site. This group of images represents a series I've been shooting since 2007. It's the zen project I turn to when the highly controlled work becomes too much. Funny that it's supposed to be a zen project because it's actually been fraught with all types of hazards. Many of the images have been posted here before, but this is the first time they're being posted together as a full group. The first ones up are here for the first time, and there are new ones on the way. An explanation and rough draft for an artist statement follow the images.

Summer-Fall 2007

Senior Year, 2009-2010

This is a rough (very) draft from Dec '09 for an artist statement for this body of work. It was cobbled together from a couple of random thoughts and comments copy/pasted from emails sent to my sister Erin, also a photographer, with whom I’d been discussing the project in depth off and on for about a year. My original artist statement from 2007 was lost, and I found that in my conversations I’d said a lot about where the imagery was coming from. One good thing about email conversations vs face to face, I suppose. The grammar is poor, but the meaning is there. The last two paragraphs were part of an attempt to pull 5 of my 20 images from my thesis project to create a sub-project. For our senior show, I would only be able to hang 4 images and felt a need to pare things way down. Didn't go over very big, I'm afraid. So, stick to what you know, I guess. The images pulled from that thesis were actually supposed to come out like the original fuzzy, tangled tree images from 2007, but when I switched cameras for the sake of swiftness in the woods (4x5 with hazy brass lens to Lubitel), the effect wasn't the same. I loved the look of the new images though and would have enjoyed pursuing it more, but the images were too much like a group that an instructor of mine had done. That was his baby, and for me to go that route when he was already exploring it wouldn't have been right. I continue to shoot these things when I see them, but it's not a project I actively work on.

Dec 9, 2009:
I grew up in the vast concrete wilderness that is the O.C. in CA. My
family went camping a lot, but we usually went to the deserts for that.
Occasionally, though, we would go to the mountains and the woods. It
was like another planet for me. All of the trees and small waterways
were completely foreign to me, and each moment spent in those
places was a true exploration. These images are as close as I can get
to that same sort of discovery.

Memory is a fluid and creative thing. It alters reality, as I’m sure it has
altered my impressions of the places I saw in my childhood. Those
places seem almost too enchanted now to have ever been real. Maybe
that’s how they really are for a little kid—I don’t know. There seemed
to be a purpose to their existence because they were so rare.
Southern California is very dry, even in the mountains, so these green
and wooded areas with running streams are isolated and not easy to
find. The places I shoot in out here are totally surrounded by suburban
developments. They seem every bit as isolated, rare and enchanted as
the places I remember from camping in California.

What I want to convey is a sense of an uncommon and natural place
that is off the beaten path and hard to find. Something that is rare,
mysterious, and has a purpose and life all its own.

The Lubitel (original Lomo camera) has a cheap lens on it that isn’t
corrected for spherical or chromatic aberrations, and I knew that this
would create a swirling in the background blur and some strong
vignetting. I chose this camera because I felt the swirling would call
attention to the tangles of the plants and trees and to the dizzying
effects of the high canopy.

I look for anything that seems a little extraordinary and what a
person won’t necessarily see if they stick to the trail. I get into some
pretty hard to reach places and fully expect to get a bad case of poison
ivy one of these days. The trees and other plants have a symbiotic
relationship that is sometimes beneficial to each and sometimes
deadly to one. They support each other and weigh each other down at
the same time. Life in the woods is very much like life elsewhere
except that it moves very slowly. I look for relationships between the
various elements in the scenes.

I want to draw the eye to those specific relationships and the
beautiful contours and shapes that have been created by them over
time. Most of these images have been shot at the edges of the woods
where man has cultivated the land adjacent to it with farms or
suburban developments. The plants create a barrier here that is sort of
like a scar. It’s thick, complex, and tough to get through.

Home reno projects

2010-09-23T15:17:00.001-07:00

Okay, I'm starting to nod off here--getting old. The first images are of the front of the house, and the contractors are bringing the sheetrock and other supplies up through a hole they made in the roof which is where one of the two new dormers went in. It was a lot of fun to watch. They looked at me like I was being silly making a fuss taking pictures and all, but it was pretty exciting. All in a day's work for them though. The front of the house was painted last year, and all of the over grown shrubs were taken out a few months prior to that. We plan on putting in an informal/formal french country garden all around the house. A few weeds are totally welcome in Swarthmore. I like that.....

The following images are inside the space where the two new dormers went. It was completely unfinished, but two original and unused metal windows (no glass in them) were found in an attic loft space when the A/C was going in. We could have used one of those but since code now says you need an egress size window in any new finished space that's closed off with a door, we had to put in one large dormer. We ended up replacing all of the windows in the attic, wavy antique glass and all, for the sake of uniformity.

This is the sunroom before drywall demo. We could see from the outside of the house that the room had boarded up former openings (windows? screens?) on three sides, and a hole in the main attic that peeped into the peek of the sunroom showed us that the orginal beadboard was still up there between the rafters.

Someone was a heavy smoker. We have traces of their life all over the house, but none are as prominent as the ones in this room were. I actually liked the look of these walls so much I had to make photos just to be able to remember what they looked like.

Sunroom, post drywall demo. I don't think the blue is original. There is a bright green on the old woodwork in two of the openings in this room, and I'm pretty sure that is original. It was painted carefully, as opposed to the sloppy blue paint, and the green is a theme with the woodwork throughout the house. The woodwork for the side-facing (end) wall is gone. The cracks above the windows are fine as long as we put some new framing in the one that's missing its woodwork and has the nastiest crack. We had a structural engineer in the other day, 78 years old and named Fred. Nice guy who's been doing this for a long time. He gave us the go ahead as long as we put in that framing before we put in new windows. There are still hinge marks in the opening (the one that was COMPLETELY closed off) where french doors used to be. Can you believe someone actually dropped the ceiling in this room to 8' and covered all this up??

The fuzzy little people are Sheba and Molly, and they're back in one of their favorite places after we destroyed it. I think they like it even more now. They are such good cats and great little buddies to have around. The image just below this shows the framing that still has the hinge marks from the french doors.

Should be a happy little oasis someday soon. :)

Paintings from my DCAD days.

2010-09-03T18:39:00.000-07:00

Just a couple of paintings that date back to '05 or '06. They were rushed (as usual) and so, aren't finished. They were fun to paint though, and it made me smile when I came across them.

Warts and all...

2010-07-13T17:49:00.001-07:00

Well, the folks at the Impossible Project stated that the white speck problem had been addressed, but I'm afraid those specks are still present and in great numbers. Bummer. I had high hopes for this stuff, but perhaps they'll pull it together sometime soon.

Factory of Photography Exhibition

2010-06-04T14:13:00.001-07:00

This year I was asked by the photography faculty at the University of the Arts (now my alma mater) to participate in the 2010 FotoFestiwal International Festival of Photography in Lodz, Poland. Fellow student, Lou Caltabiano, was asked to participate as well with his Shower series. Judging by the images I've seen online, it was a great event, and I really wish I could have been there. I've seen some amazing images of the work that was hung (is still hanging??) there. Phillip Toledano was also present with an exhibit of his series Days With My Father, a wonderful series I've admired since I first heard about it several months ago.

I've posted the images of mine that were in the Factory of Photography portion of the festival. They have appeared on this blog at an earlier time, and since I'm still working on the series, there will be more to come. I'll post some links here......

Link to my images on the fotofestiwal site:
http://fotofestiwal.com/2010/kelly-wrage/

(polish version of events)
http://www.fotomargines.pl/2010/05/08/subiektywny-przeglad-obowiazkowych-wystaw-na-9-fotofestiwalu-lodzi/

(google english translation of the above mentioned events)
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pl&u=http://www.fotomargines.pl/2010/05/08/subiektywny-przeglad-obowiazkowych-wystaw-na-9-fotofestiwalu-lodzi/&ei=E2kJTKidFsGAlAf93IjcDg&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=62&ved=0CLECEO4BMD0&prev=/search%3Fq%3D%2522kelly%2Bwrage%2522%26num%3D100%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DwwJ%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26as_qdr%3Dall

I'm not sure if the translation link will work, so I posted the Polish version as well. On this particular page, you will see an image of Toledano giving a talk on his work with that work on the wall next to him. Some of my images are at the bottom of the page. If you haven't seen Toledano's series yet, I highly recommend that you do. It is very moving and beautifully executed.

A few new ones

2010-02-19T18:46:00.000-08:00

Complicated Relationships

2010-02-10T21:10:00.000-08:00

This is not even a working title. I honestly don't have one yet. This series seems to morph a bit depending on what is going on in my life while I'm working on it. I started the project a few years ago but took a break from it for a while. I resumed shooting for it last November or thereabouts. I have written a couple of statements for it, but that changes as well. I'll dig up the most recent one and post it if anyone is interested. It's pretty close, I think, but still needs some updating because I've found some more correlations in regard to its connections to me personally. These images need further editing for actual showing, and I'm working on that now. I have several new ones which need to be scanned and edited, and I'll be adding those to the group soon.

Holga Randomness

2009-10-17T00:20:00.000-07:00

As I start on my final project for my studies at UArts, I think it's a good idea to put these older toy camera images up. I've been using various "toy" cameras for years; always searching for one tool or another to get me the mood I'm looking for in a particular type of imagery. I keep coming back to my Holgas. I started using Holgas in early 2006 because of an emulation assignment I was given in school. I chose Keith Carter as my model, but needed a camera that would afford me some kind of out of the ordinary selective focus. I couldn't afford a camera with movements; I had just purchased a Hasselblad and there was simply no money for anything else. So I did some research and came up with the Holga. The look was different, but the mood was very similar to what I saw in Carter's images. I can't do a real emulation of anyone anyhow. My work has to be my own, so it was a relief to find something similar....but different for that assignment. Problem was, I fell in love with the look I got out of my Holga. I had just blown a huge amount of money on my Hassy, but it was my Holga I wanted to use. I even went to a great deal of trouble to make glass filters for my Hassy to get a similar look, but it just wasn't the same. It killed me to leave that beautiful Swedish camera on the shelf, but I did it and went plastic for a while. That was just the beginning. I now have three Holgas, a couple of wide angle 35mm plastic cameras, a few TLRs from the old Lomo factory, various old lenses for some old 4x5s, and a Diana. I print in old processes as well as digital. I shoot both film and digital, and with both good glass and cheap plastic lenses. I would like to think that my images all look as though they come from the same photographer, regardless of the tools used to create the images. I love having an arsenal of tools within reach so that I can always find a way to get what I see in my head into my final image. I suppose one of these days I'll settle into something and sell off a lot of the extraneous gear, but for now, there's a certain comfort in knowing these things are there for me if I need them.

Right now, I'm shooting Swarthmore, PA. I've always photographed the places I've lived in, and a few of them have ended up in my class assignments, but I've never loved a place as much as I love this one. I'm using my Holgas again and many of the images will end up as gum dichromate prints. I've been a little crazy about printing gum using digital CMYK negative separations lately, not only because of the type of imagery it affords me, but also because I like mixing the old or rudimentary techniques with the new. I think they feed and validate one another.......

That talk could go on, so for now, I've got some old images up. I've shot several rolls of Swarthmore and am about to get out and shoot more. The gum prints might be a little slow in getting up here as they will take a lot of time to make and need to be photographed, copy camera-style, to get digital captures. I'll be making mostly digital prints from my negs, then making gums of the ones I like the most out of CMYK separations.

Lum's Pond, DE

Stan's laboratory

Utterly random Holga shots....

St Helena's annual carnival, 2006

Random Studio Images From Last Semester

2009-08-22T18:47:00.000-07:00

Just a few images from last year. School starts in a week and a half. This semester is going to be jam packed full of work, but it should be doable. Soooo many major projects. I just hope it isn't as tough as last semester. I made it on the dean's list again, but pulling 3-4 back-to-back all-nighters every single week for three and a half months might just kill me if I try to do it again. If I find it's too much, I can always get rid of one class because I'm taking more than I need.

The image of me and the washing machine was the impetus for my final. The rest of the images are pretty formulaic and not done particularly well. We crammed a lot into one semester, so there was really only one week's shot at each. I know how to do them all properly now, so it should make each type of shooting easier in the future. I'll be buying my set of strobes soon and have some ideas in mind for that, but it might have to wait for winter break.

Studio II images

2009-07-07T15:13:00.000-07:00

Just some images from my last studio class at UArts. They are about my feelings of being overwhelmed by the mess in our house when we were moving in. We actually packed up and moved everything in the week before finals, so I had to do all of this in one week. Not easy. I was trying to merely use the studio strobes to get the feeling of real room lighting, but without the dim shadows, light fall-off, and tungsten yellow-orange color cast. For some reason, I felt the need to get a window into every shot. It's nice that by looking out the windows and seeing light outside, the room is expected to appear darker inside. It is simply not expected and therefore a bit cinematic--not real. Perhaps it's the fact that I love the old metal windows in this house.

2009-04-23T22:08:00.000-07:00

A few more from my latest series. I would say more about them, but I'm exhausted and keep falling asleep....

The Altered Subject

2009-03-25T21:18:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I'm pretty sure this is the last prescribed sort of assignment I'll be getting from my Junior Workshop instructor, David. We were to alter our subject in some way without using Photoshop. I had the toughest time coming up with something. I've been pretty out of my element and out of it in general for a couple of years now, so I didn't know how to handle this. I had a couple of ideas, but they were weak at best and still not "me". So, I talked with my instructor, he gave a few examples of what the concept means, and I said, "well, the last thing I was doing that really worked for me were these little set-ups". He said, "Well, there you go." I think I was able to visualize what I wanted to do within minutes of the end of that conversation. That was a just a few days ago, and the assignment was due today. I had two weeks to do this, and spring break was one of them, so if I'd known what I wanted to do, I could have gotten many more than just the three images done. I thought I was done with the set-ups, but I like how these turned out. I think I'll finish out the semester with this work and make it my final. Should be fun--tons of work, but fun.

I started these at 3am and worked through to nearly 1pm. The furniture in the rooms is purchased dollhouse furniture which I have painted to make look aged and used. I wanted the rooms to look run down, colorful, textural, and off-kilter. My subject here is still life, but I've tried to make it look a little more surreal. Strange thing, a couple of days after I spoke to David, I took one of those ridiculous Facebook quizzes. This one was "which painting are you?" The result was Magritte's Son of Man. Silly, but it was like an omen. I wanted the still lifes to overpower the rooms they were in to transform them into completely new objects. Just something a little ambiguous, unexpected, odd, and maybe a little uncomfortable. The rooms feel a little oppressive to me. I wanted the color to be both muted and intense, hence the browns mixed with the almost neon colors. I like that play. I also like the way the vibrant freshness of these fruits and veg contrast with the dirty surroundings--feels kind of like hope to me, and they elevate the importance of their surroundings in that respect for me. The fruit and veg were attached to the boxes they were in via large screws jutting into the boxes from behind. I wanted them to appear to be floating--just there, like that's where they should be in that environment.

.....I could go on and on about this, but I have reading to do and am already feeling sleep taking over......

The Altered Print

2009-03-09T20:46:00.000-07:00

There is a longstanding project or topic I've been considering and working on in bits and pieces for a while now. A few months ago, I came across this little book in an antiques mall. It's titled Addison's Sir Roger DeCoverley. It was published in 1917, but I believe the story predates that. As I started thumbing through the book, I found many parallels between this character's situation with a pretty, highly intelligent, and ultimately deceptive widow, and a situation of my own.

This work is part of recent assignment I had at UArts. It was titled. "The Altered Print". It was designed to get students to consider all portions of their work, from start to finish: shooting, processing, and the final print. The final print was to be altered in some way, and concept was to be considered when making the decision as to how to alter these prints. I shot the images digitally, then made a print. I altered that first print by applying a solvent (of sorts) to the ink so I could move it around a bit. I tried to make them look like monotypes at this stage. I then put these altered prints back through the printer. I made a high contrast version of each image with text taken from the book and printed that on top of each of the altered prints. I wanted them to resemble handmade illustrations which might belong in a book, reflecting the source of the text, the story in it, and my own vague little tale. It was also important to me that these have an altered digital feel to them. I like the idea of hand-manipulating something digital which itself makes the notion of manipulating the hyper reality of photography a problem for people today. My intent here was to obscure the obvious, to confuse, to be vague, and to allow the viewer to draw his own conclusions. I think I may have obscured things a little too much, and perhaps erased more than I would have liked of my own story. My situation is my own though, and no one can ever really know another's experience.

Alternative Camera Assignment

2009-02-28T13:18:00.000-08:00

It took me a couple of weeks to find the time to put this work up. It's just been one assignment after another--busy busy busy. This one was based on using "alternative cameras". This was of course an experiment that forces the photographer to consider what he or she is photographing based on what the camera "sees" or how it functions, quirks and all. God knows I have a plethora of what would be considered alternative cameras because I've been using them extensively for the past few years, but in the spirit of the assignment, I decided to get a new camera--a couple actually. I loaded each one with films of differing speeds because there is no other way of adjusting for changing light. One of the quirks that these cameras have concerns framing problems. It's similar to that of most Diana cameras, where the viewfinder is a little off in relation to what the lens sees. This camera is WAY off, and as a result, there is too much space to the right of and below almost all of what I was framing for. It takes some getting used to. My Holgas don't seem to have this problem, but my Diana does--same thing for a couple of students at school who used a Diana. The thing I liked most about the camera I used this time, was the angle of view--nice and wide. I purposely chose sweeping vistas for most of my shots, but I think the images where the subject is a bit closer work better. With many of these toy cameras, there is a lot of vignetting, although I think it's more a matter of having a blown-out center rather than dark corners. I think there is a difference and this should be taken into consideration when choosing film speed. This camera really plays up this sort of imagery, so that you see a wide view, but you're confined to the space with the boxing in of the corners. It's sort of like trying to capture a huge space in a small box. I had noticed the numerous power lines throughout the greater Philadelphia area and am fascinated by them. I think I'll try photographing them with a toy telephoto lens next time though to make them look even larger in relation to what exists below them. As for what I'll be using this camera for now--it's my new snapping camera. I like to have one with me at all times, and this one is just great fun. It really is good at getting a lot in at a closer range, and the color contrast is just crazy--especially with chrome film which has been cross-processed.

Reinventing the Familiar: Family Photos

2009-01-28T21:04:00.001-08:00

Homework due this week was fun and creative, not to mention, fairly easy. Just one image and it could be created however you chose. This was my take on a photo of my brother-in-law and his family. I thought it would be funny to use one person to portray all of the members of the family. I only had myself, so that's who I used. It's a creepy image, but it makes me laugh.

Last in this series

2009-01-08T18:37:00.000-08:00

These are the last few which I have digital files for in this series.

Same series....

2009-01-08T18:29:00.001-08:00

Some more from the same series

2009-01-08T18:26:00.001-08:00

Some old work but new to this blog

2009-01-08T18:17:00.000-08:00

I tried posting these the other night, but they were originally files from digital captures of the actual photographs. Can't remember now why I documented them that way rather than scanning and adjusting the negs. Probably part of an assignment. Photographers are often hired to professionally photograph the work of other artists, and I know I've had assignments where we had to do this so.....

The scanned negs would have been much better--lost a lot of detail and the blacks were more gray than black. That meant having to adjust the levels and a tad more detail may have been lost trying to bring up the blacks. Hopefully, the burning in of the reflected light around the edges won't look so spotty this time. Fingers crossed.

And the last.....

2009-01-04T16:52:00.001-08:00

I feel the middle image here shows the true bond between these two he-men and exemplifies their intense fondness for one another. It scares me.

Another.....

2009-01-04T16:47:00.000-08:00

The last one cracks me up. Mike "lecturing Scott" and what's on the board above Scott's head.

Looks like I'm going to have to do this in separate posts if I want decent sized images

2009-01-04T16:45:00.000-08:00

An evening with the Devil at UArts

2009-01-04T16:32:00.001-08:00

It's been a while, so bear with me Cohn. I really don't know what I'm doing here. And in my defense, this project was called "Intuitive Camera" where we were not allowed to look through the lenses of our cameras. We could only point at something we saw and wanted to capture, then fired the shutter. The focus is often not right because of shooting in low light conditions--meant I had to use a wider aperture which blurs objects in the foreground and background. The camera was sometimes set to autofocus, so getting it to focus on what I wanted it to wasn't always easy. I also shot city scenes, restaurants, and stuff out the car window as I was passing.

2006-08-21T00:05:00.000-07:00

Since certain people seem to be all Gibralter happy these days, I thought I'd put this up for them. I'm afraid that since the print I scanned is 9"x9", it suffered a bit of cropping.

I'm kind of in the midst of a shooting blitz right now, so it's still old stuff that's going up here. I started out way ahead of the game with the summer's photo assignment, and then just sort of shut down for a bit. I've been in a funk for a while now, but hopefully with a new semester there will come some new inspiration. These two photos were taken with a Holga in one of the classrooms at DCAD. I have to try shooting with my Holgas again--I seem have had a little more success with them than some of my other cameras--though I did just buy that 4x5 on ebay.....and a lot of pencils and drawing pads from AC Moore and Dick Blick if memory serves me correctly. Hmmm But then, I've been wanting to break out the gouache lately, but that leads to guilt over not shooting, so I make a half-assed effort at that instead. I can't wait to get back to class!

More tests (okay, I'm having fun)

2006-08-07T23:54:00.000-07:00

Just trying some more test images for size and pixelization...

This was an assignment from the 2DII class I took at DCAD. It was one of the toughest and one of the best classes I've ever taken. For this, we had to take objects of different colors and set them up under two different colored lights with different temps.

For this next assignment, we had to paint the same set-up twice---once under a slightly warm light (incandescent), and again under a slightly cool light (daylight). The object of this class wasn't creativity. It was all about color--what happens to it when a color is laid upon it or reflected off of it, etc. Also, what colors do to one another when placed adjacent to one another. The instructor was Teresa Vadala and the class was great.

Granted, I'm having some formatting problems here. Why is my "preview post" format so different from what I actually get?

2006-08-07T23:13:00.000-07:00

Just a test image....

Is this thing finally working or not?

2006-08-07T13:36:00.000-07:00

This is just a test to see if blogger is teasing me or not. For some reason, my blog is finally showing up, whereas I used to get a "URL not found on this server" message. Be nice if it is working. If anyone sees this, please let me know.....