New website / gallery of works

http://cargocollective.com/andrewgodsalve

New site to show my work, free from all the rampant verbosity of this blog. I certainly intend to keep this blog going, but any new completed works will be added to the portfolio there.

Artist Statement, 05/12

Geologic processes and digital processes exist on scales of time that do not allow for direct human observation, one being impossibly slow, the other impossibly fast. While both processes determine characteristics of the spaces we inhabit and the ways in which we inhabit them to a significant degree, for the most part our perspective only allows us to see their effects, not the process itself.
My artistic practice attempts to bring together these polarities visually. My photographic interests are drawn to geological formations, such as shoreline rock outcrops.  I shoot using a digital camera, and after importing the images onto my computer I use them as the raw materials in my technique of recombinant photography. Piece by piece, I import fragments from many different images into a new digital canvas, where they are arranged according to precise geometric guidelines. The resulting composite image retains recognizable characteristics of rock, yet any definite horizon or perspective are abandoned. The geometric arrangements suggest physical structure, yet without reference points of human scale a disorientating effect is created. This confusion of physical scale reflects the incomprehensibility of the time scales of geologic and digital processes, drawing into focus that which operates outside of human perspective.

Andrew Godsalve, May 2012

Embryonic Meta-lithics V, and a plan for the Park

Started on this fifth Meta-lithics image recently, in an attempt to get back into the right head-space for revising my artist statement. The focus of my work has changed significantly since the fall, and even my statement as it was in the January post no longer fits with my current aims.
Prior to the spring I was incorporating images of human-made and natural elements into my composites, with only very loose parameters for what type of material or setting I would use (wood paneling, concrete wall, construction site, etc). Since then I have realized that the "human-made" need only manifest itself in the reality of the medium as a constructed image. This gives my work tighter focus, not only in visual terms but conceptually as well. The strange dynamic I have arrived upon - fusing the geologic and digital as two extremes of temporal inaccessibility - has now become my primary concern and my revised artist statement will convey this.

In terms of the new image, obviously it's in the very early stages yet but I'm pretty keen on how it's shaping up thus far. Bringing back the circular shape that I felt worked quite well in Meta-lithics III, and also hoping to take into consideration the expansiveness noted in IV.
As an additional note, this fifth image will still be comprised exclusively of geologic forms of the Victoria area, despite the fact that I've now returned to the redneck backwater of my hometown on the other side of the mountains. It is a strange feeling of dislocation to be working on an image from photos taken very far away, but I'm fairly certain I have plenty of resources at my disposal without needing to re-shoot to complete the composition.
For a new project I plan to document the geologic forms of the nearby Rocky Mountains, in the Jasper National Park area. This Jasper project will still utilize the hyperphotographic technique of the Meta-lithics series, but I am curious to see if my method may change due to the different geography/geology. I intend to keep the Victoria series separate from the Jasper project; I won't use images from both areas in one composite as I feel that would compromise the locational specificity important to my work.

To the mountains, I go.

Meta-lithics IV, end-of-term sum up

Meta-lithics IV

Up there is the fourth image in the Meta-lithics series, the last piece I did this past term and last I did as an undergrad. My mentor Brad mentioned that this image, out of all that I did in this series, is the most suggestive of what might lie outside of the picture's edges, not presenting a single resolved "thing" so much as an isolated (selected) part of a landscape. I think this is a good impression to strive towards in the future, of interest especially because the potentiality is there for one to guess at shapes and movements outside of the picture frame when what lies within it is so purposefully inscrutable.

Documentation of the Grad Show install:

Putting up four prints that size, each one at around four feet wide, was a laborious task that took a few solid days of work. But thanks to the much needed assistance of Remy Anhorn, Chris Grandy, and Sam Rose, I managed to get them up on the wall without any lasting velcro-related psychological damage. Thanks also go to Ryan Popoff for storing my prints in his place til I return with a vehicle big enough to transport them.

Some of BLINK (UVic Visual Arts' photos):

All told the grad show was an amazing success and I was immensely happy to be a part of it. We put on a fine show to rival any art museum. Check out more documentation of all the stellar art, as well as a photo of me looking awkward with a crooked tie next to my mom, here.