Still Life, in Camera

I wanted to post this quick series while it was still fresh in my brain, some shots I took yesterday trying to figure out how to do an inspired still life for my drawing class at Berkeley City College. The final drawing came out just as boring as ever and I'm now officially convinced that the Still Life as a genre is dead entirely, but photos are still alive and well. Thank goodness.












These are all from somewhere in West Oakland, but many from the intersection of 17th and Campbell.

My Daily Purchase? A Load of Laundries.

I found out about this lady named Kate Bingaman-Burt from a youtube video I was watching recently. It turned out to be the culmination of all these things that keep recurring in my life lately: a Pecha Kucha presentation (these are so hypey right now and crazy!) given by Faythe Levine (awesome documentarian from Mil-Waukee) featuring these drawings. Maybe those associations don't make much sense to you, but they did to me. That's the point, they were all orbiting.



Anyway, they are nice little illustrations of just the stuff Kate buys everyday and they appeared in the most recent issue of Readymade Magazine (R.I.P) as well as in Faythe Levine's book, Handmade Nation. Basically she's blowing up right now, her stuff seems to be everywhere and I just finally visited her website and the whole idea of her stuff is perfect. It makes a record, which I love. And its done in this cartoony whimsical way that also calls out the enormous scope of capitalism's consumptive embrace. Reading her blog I further discover that Kate's grandmother also lives in Kenosha, WI, which wins her triple mega bonus points. As if she even needed any. She has a blog and an etsy shop which are very comprehensive.



Bottom line: Obsessive Consumption is smart, silly, super duper.