My Vessel collection series was a winner in the lensculture Critics Choice awards 2022: “The images in Rebecca Horne’s series “Vessel Collection” are brilliant illusions that play with the ideas of volume, depth and containment, while challenging the two-dimensional flatness of a photograph. They look deceptively simple, and the execution of their ideas seems flawless. Each image in the series presents a different take, providing a pleasing rhythm and adding to the sense of wonder.” Jim Casper of lensculture
Valence Inventory poster ready to ship
Introducing Valence Inventory, a playful photographic take on atomic preferences — the joining patterns of elements in the periodic table. Valence can be deduced from the relative position of each element in the table. Valence Inventory is available as a 23x35”poster, digitally printed on 50 lb. Durotone. The poster design is by Francesca Richer, printed by Puritan Press. You can order it here: https://www.rebeccahornephotography.com/shop
Valence Inventory is a grid of 25 images closely related to each other in color, shape and form.
Why Valence? Because observation leads to more linked paths, planes and values. Why Inventory? Because Minecraft players get an object inventory on a grid. Because I love collections of images. Because I have a storehouse of shapes and images.
Why make a poster? It seemed like it would be a lighthearted way to share what I’ve been working on.
The omens
The Alchemist
Oliver is growing before my eyes, and I am rushing to shoot this project with him before he sheds all vestiges of childhood. It has been a pleasure to shoot this with him—he is a really good model. He is willing to humor me and to inhabit the scenes and vignettes with grace.
We also laugh a lot because some of it is so silly. The idea for this series came from The Alchemist, an allegorical book by Paulo Coelho about the journey of a shepherd boy. Oliver recommended it to me and then I read it too—we both really liked it. Initially the plan was a series of four images charting the boy’s journey and epiphanies, but it has become bigger than that. My guess is that this series may never be Great, but it will likely be interesting. It is a collaboration, and one of the more challenging things I’ve attempted as an artist, so I will keep at it.
Air basket process
I recently declared that I was done with vessels—I was moving on! Mainly, I don’t want to repeat myself, and I’m interested in a lot of other directions.
But none of that matters, because, as it turns out, I just have to keep doing what I am interested in. Otherwise, what is the point? So somehow, here I am again—shooting more vessels. As the gallerist Brian Clamp recently reminded me, there is nothing wrong with having a theme.
I just hope that I am truly getting better and going deeper, not just making the same image over and over again, in ever more refined terms. To me, this image has a hint of a clumsy archeology display and/or explanatory literature, where so much is conjecture.
I feel pleased with this picture, but it didn’t come together instantly. It was the result of weeks of experimenting with a ‘basket’ form. I saw this very cool basket at the textile show at MOMA a while back, it was a very loose weave so that the form seemed to be to be a special kind of air basket. A vessel with indistinct boundaries, maybe. The artist is Ed Rossbach, but I am only interested in his basket, below, not his other work. It was also the only object in the show that could have been an artifact in basic archeological sense.
by Ed Rossbach
Some of the experimentation involved drawing the basket several times, then shooting the drawing in various ways and more. You can see some of it here in the sketchbook page, below, along with an early version of the orbit paths image I have been working on.
Video tour of my show at Galerie Confluence
Galerie Confluence sent a short video tour of my exhibit. It is exciting to see the different print sizes together—the giant mural of the lunar calendar, the two floors, and most importantly, viewers! Actual people looking at my pictures. Intently. For a long time.
I am sure artists with more exhibition experience are nonchalant about this, but I can’t help being pleased and kind of amazed.
It is amazing to think how this polished looking show started with me puzzling over the gallery floor plan and test strips all over the living room floor. I am so grateful that I had all this work for the show and the book to keep me busy during the worst parts of the pandemic. It has kept me sane.
I mailed the second half of the books today, and nearly all of the small prints. Still to send: a few of the larger prints, and some books and smaller prints to the people who haven’t sent me their addresses. It seemed I would never get to the end of this mailing task, but it is happening! Hooray for the post office. I only had to wait 40 minutes instead of the usual hour to get to a clerk. Partial view of the usual line below. This is before you even get into the lobby!
"Buried Intentions" installed at Galerie Confluence
It’s been both exciting and sad to see the photos of the installation of my show “Buried Intentions” at Galerie Confluence in Nantes, France. It looks great, and it is gratifying to have a solo show with a gallery that believes in the work. This is the culmination of months of hard work, riding my bike to Duggal labs early in the morning before work to view tests and finals, slaving over color correction and calling in favors from my old friend and Photoshop expert Alex Hestoft when I was overwhelmed by color correcting issues. One challenge of the show was balancing all the whites—there were a lot of different whites that had to look good next to each other. And some of these were underexposed images, so balancing was tricky.
The sad part is that because no international travel is allowed, and my country is a mess, as an American I most likely I won’t be allowed into France see the show. In one of the photos of the installation I can see some cobblestones and some graffiti on the street—makes me really want to see this place!
Kickstarter fully funded
I am so relieved the Kickstarter was a success! It was a bumpy, emotional marathon of anxiety and excitement. Would anyone be interested? Would anyone care about an art book exploring the ‘metaphysics of daily life”? Undertaking what felt like a relentless campaign of self promotion would be challenging for me under normal circumstances, never mind in the middle of a global pandemic and waves of institutional violence and murders by the police.
I struggled with this for the entire campaign. You can’t pause a Kickstarter—you get 30 days and that’s all. My book, in the works for 4 years, needs to be published by September in time for my exhibit at Galerie Confluence.
Fortunately, my friends old and new, acquaintances and complete strangers were supportive and happy to see the Pseudologia book and to learn about the project. I was so grateful for all the positivity that people shared.
I am so grateful to all the friends, family and supporters that made this possible. Pledges came from all sorts of unexpected places, including my friends who are freelancing and may not be in the most stable situations. I feel so blessed to accept this gift from my community.
I looked at the final layout of Pseudologia last night, and it is so exciting to see it coming together. It does look good. I am nervous and excited to see the test from the printer.
Going out and demonstrating every week and consistently showing my support for Black Lives Matter in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, and elsewhere in the city, as well as donating to bail funds and other orgs is something that has made me feel a little bit more hopeful about where we are as a country. We have to make dramatic changes: defunding the police, planning for restitution, abolishing institutional racism.
Right now, I’m learning and listening to be a better ally and supporter of BLM. I am also working to actively hire more POC and Black people as an art director, and working to better educate my son about institutional racism. I am also aware that this is probably not enough, and that I need to do more, and also that I still have a lot to learn. The institutions that trained me are not diverse, and the art and photography world has a huge white male fixation.
Lensculture article is live, and only 4 days to go on Kickstarter!
The thoughtful article by writer/artist Liz Sales is live on Lensculture, and already some photographers have been getting in touch after seeing the work there. It is very cool to connect with some new people through this article, which I hope will be seen by photographers all over the world, since Lensculture is such an international site.
Incredibly, I am nearing the final stretch, and it looks like my book Pseudologia will be fully funded. It’s been scary, exciting and so affirming. Now that I can see the finish line I feel like I can finally take a breath. It’s been a marathon of self-promotion, which does not come easily to me. Self-promotion should be easier going forward, but I hope not to have to push like this again anytime soon. It’s also a crazy time between COVID19 and pushing for police reform, so I am just incredibly grateful for the interest in the work.
Link to Lensculture article: https://www.lensculture.com/articles/rebecca-horne-pseudologia
Kickstarter is heartwarming and hair-raising experience
It has been so incredible to re-connect and connect for the first time with people about my work. It really is profound for me—it is true that since my solo show in 2006 at Roebling Hall in NYC, and a group show in San Francicso’s City Hall in 2013, I really haven’t shown my work to anyone other than a few friends, and on my blog, for over 10 years.
I was making work though, steadily, through all that time—I was not showing it, but I was making it. Which was pretty lonely, except when I worked with friends as models. Being a solo parent when Oliver was little really did require the rest of my time. In those days, I raked myself over the coals—was there something wrong with me, why didn’t I get out there and show/share the work? Didn’t I want to succeed? But I see now I was being hard on myself. I really couldn’t do it all, especially with a young child.
The Kickstarter has been affirming and also a little hair-raising. Perhaps more so now that I am nearing the end of the campaign. Most days, I check the status of the Kickstarter, and see how I am inching forward, and bite my nails while I worry about reaching the funding goal. Just 11 days to go!
To reach the goal will be an incredible boost for me—not only will I have the satisfaction of the completion of a project that has been in the works for 4 years, but I will be certain that yes, there are a fair amount of people who like my work and are interested in it. After working alone for so long this is monumental. Kickstarter link: https://bit.ly/36ZOTiH
17 days to go!
I continue to be amazed and grateful at the interest in the book.
This past week I was interviewed by a super smart, cool and talented writer/artist, Liz Sales. She will be posting about Pseudologia on Lensculture sometime soon. I look forward to sharing the link when this goes live. I found myself in the position of answering that predictable final question in an interview, one I often have posed myself: “Is there anything you want to add?” So I mentioned that my father was an archeologist, and that going on digs with him as a child was formative. I remember all the forensic details around a ceramic shard, or a bit of stone, and how much could be reconstructed, filled in, imagined or understood from this one piece. I think this process does have something in common with the creative processes I use today.
I've been a working single mom since my son was 3, and I have continued to make artwork during that entire time. It has only been in the past two years, now that my son is a teenager, that I have been able to start sharing my work--for better or for worse, this campaign is a little bit of a coming out for me as an artist. So it is especially meaningful to me when people show interest or support the work. THANK YOU.
Pseudologia launched
Today is the second day of my Kickstarter campaign for my book Pseudologia. I can’t pretend that right now feels like a good time to launch a Kickstarter for an art book. Coronavirus is ravaging the world, hate crimes are being committed by those in power, protesters are risking their lives to have their voices heard, and our President is doing all he can to divide the country and destroy democracy while looting what he can from the American people.
Right now I wish I was the kind of artist who could make work about current events. But that isn’t who I am as an artist. I can’t ‘decide’ to make anything, it just never works. I have to let the process lead. My brain isn’t good at directing my art process consciously. At least, I know I’ve never made anything good that way. And I know it can’t sustain my interest over time. That’s not to say I can’t get involved in other ways in what is happening now, because I can and I do.
I am not yet posting on social media about this campaign. I know I should be, but it just feels irrelevant at this particularly sharp moment to be talking about my artwork. Nonetheless, people are looking for a few moments of inspiration, and many are still stuck at home. And art can provide respite and a reminder that we are capable of good things. Link to my Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rebeccahorne/pseudologia/
Pseudologia homemade mockup
Pseudologia Kickstarter launches tomorrow
Pseudologia is a book that was born about 3 years ago, on a day when I was home sick from work with a really bad cold. Laying in bed wasn’t making me feel better, so I proceeded to work in my studio. I drank cup after cup of coffee to try to lift the fog in my head, laying the photos down all over the floor of my apartment. There were too many of them to fit on our big kitchen table. I arranged and re-arranged, photographed the arrangements then arranged again, for 8 hours or so, until I had something I felt good about.
These photographs really did add up to something more together than they did alone. Seeing the story emerge was exciting, I could see areas I needed to fill in by shooting more. The book allowed me to work in new way—instead of chasing perfection I was digging as deep as I could into my singular obsessions, to see how far they would go. Would I get bored? I wondered. The answer was no. After scratching and digging my way into these shapes in hundreds of images, I still wanted to shoot more. And I was finding new ways to do so.
In my working life, I’ve almost always had a full time job. Since my son was 3 years old, I’ve been a solo parent, supporting us both. I usually get a lot of satisfaction out of my day jobs, and sometimes they even inspire me in my studio. However, this means I have to be disciplined about my time, and often means working my butt off in the studio on vacations when other people are on holiday, on weekends, early mornings, evenings, and on sick days.
On that sick day, and on many days afterwards, the book was simply called Book One. I intended to make a series of three slim book that would fit together in a case. However, when I finished Book Two, I started to realize this was really one book, and there was no point in overcomplicating things with an arbitrary set of divisions between the photographs. So Book One and Book Two were re-edited and merged to form one.
The book Pseudologia has been edited and updated since that first day, but the bones of Book One are still there. The themes in my work, which I have been returning to over the years, remain intact.
"How to design spaces for people with autism" video wins a Gold Telly
My design video for Spectrum has taken home a second award, a Gold Telly award in the documentary category. The video is a four minute documentary on two schools, built from the ground up for people with autism. I am psyched, and I hope the video will find a completely new audience from its location on the Telly awards site. See the 2019 winners here: https://www.tellyawards.com/winners/2019/online/general-documentary-individual
Autism design video takes home prize in the AI-AP Int'l motion art awards 7
I am happy to say that my autism design video (above) for Spectrum is a winner in the 2019 Int'l motion art awards 7.
The pre-production work on this video took me almost two years to finish, as I was only able to work on it during rare breaks from an intense daily workflow at Spectrum. I started interviewing people on the topic in 2017, and maybe even earlier. I learned so much on this project—highlights were interviewing Magda Mostafa professor at The American University in Cairo, Cathy Lord, distinguished professor at UCLA, and Merilee Meacock, architect at KSS.
It was great working with the talented Vanina and Johannes of Ninetyninefilms who directed, shot, edited and helped script-polish. Truly, it was a lot more fun, and more meaningful, than shooting bland corporate videos and CEOs in White Plains. Which we definitely did. In the past.
Walking stick
Working in the studio today felt disjointed, trying to catch the light in the morning before it gets to bright, and then again in the evening before it gets too dark. In between, all the other stuff: groceries, running, housework, cooking, playing soccer with Oliver in the park. All in all, a good day.
Not sure exactly what I am up to right now in the studio. I am in a transition and trying to roll with all my impulses. I am working on several different images/threads at the moment, seeing where things go. One of the threads is a kind of custom collage where I shoot, print and cut stuff out. Another thread is deconstructing and rebuilding a few of the simpler Hilma af Klint images, and reading some science papers on how proteins and fluids inside living cells behave.
Chasing volume
Cornelia modeled for me earlier this month, and this is one of my favorites from the shoot. I am still figuring out where to shoot in the house, I guess it is good to have options. Cornelia is a great model, anticipating what I want and reminding me that I can control the camera when I get too involved in a shot and forget...
It was great to catch up and talk pictures with Cornelia--she makes a great model because she is such an exacting photographer herself!
This shot evolved out of a kind of chroma-key image I had sketched--three disks of primary color in transition. This photo is a double exposure, here the hand was only in frame for one of the two shots.
Forging a new path
It was the last meeting of Salon 28 for the summer, and we met at K's Parisian style apartment in Park Slope. We feasted on food and wine and conversation, on goals and expectations as artists. C. talked about the many projects in her life, and how the stress and crazy parts of her life are transformed into her work in the studio. Somehow, it all ends up in the work, through some alchemical process.
M. talked about her experience with the implosion of the Artist Pension Trust, and finding alternatives to the art market, and the art world. Trying to find a new or different way was a theme that came up a few times; the need to find another path, and what that might be. Artists do talk about the soul-hollowing experience of having an art show in a gallery. I've had this experience too. It seems like there must be a better way to share art and have dialogue. What are the non-traditional options?
K. and S. talked about their moods since both of their recent shows closed. A. reminded everyone how in the 1970's in NYC galleries would be begging artists to show in their galleries-- but many artists didn't want to participate in the capitalist economy. They all really thought that things were changing, and becoming more egalitarian, but turns out change is slow.
I think a discussion topic going forward could be ideas about alternative paths for artists outside of the art world, alchemy in the studio, and other ways life turns into art.
Reading Chekhov
More snow is due tomorrow, public school is closed. Reading Anton Chekhov on David’s recommendation--some of these I’ve read before, but the majority of the short stories are new to me. Something about reading Chekhov puts one in a mood. The stories pry into all manner of human flaws and vanities, and it is impossible not to see and suspect your own among them. Special punishments await the characters who use philosophy to justify their own indifference, apathy or cruelty; sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between these three.
Last few shoots have yielded slightly underwhelming results, Oliver modeled for me on this shot a few weeks ago, but only in a desultory way. Next time I hope to find him more amenable. This weekend I plan to work on a shot of a box folding and unfolding. It is something I have tried before, but still haven’t got it right..hopefully this next shoot will yield satisfactory results.
Reviewing an earlier, smaller version of the book on Sunday.
Book 2 mock up completed
I wrestled with a few different versions of the book yesterday, until I finally came to a point that feels resolved, if not totally final. Having an mockup with actual, turning pages is essential, I can't fake or imagine the way the images will read together within that format and rhythm otherwise.
I think this book might be better than the last one--which is a good sign, I hope. I really can't wait to have these books printed. It will be amazing to hold them in my hand. I am looking forward to having something people can buy from my website, and these books will be the first. I will be selling them cheaply.
This weekend David and I were among the first 100 people into the Met Saturday morning to see the Michelangelo exhibit in its last weekend. As we were leaving we were astonished to see a massive line of people snaking all the way through the museum and out onto the street. As it was, you really had to elbow your way in to get close to any of the works. This is the biggest grouping of his works I've seen in one place before, and it was overwhelming. It included sketches the artist probably had discarded, images he had crossed out, and pieces of paper worked on both sides, which gave a sense of his time and his personality as an artist.
The portraits shimmered, with a spooky aliveness. Red chalk limbs floated in space, filling in every spot on the paper. I noticed the absence of female figures. In the sistine chapel sketches and finals you could see how he used his male assistant to stand in as a woman, and just how manly the female figures looked as a result.
The David Hockney show, just a little ways down the corridor was a blast of light, color and contemporaneousness after the low light gloom and archeology of the Michelangelo. It is not possible to make a complete report here, but the famous portraits of his friends and of his parents stood out from the rest. The way he painted furniture was also amazing--the attention to detail; the shapes and colors and angles that suggest independent personalities and movement. I love the still life in the foreground here; playful, and funny, but so beautifully executed that the little joke seems barely possible.
"Camouflaging" and Pinterest mood boards
Pinterest has turned out to be a surprisingly useful tool for me as an art director. I've been using it to corral and share my visual ideas in advance of making a more formal art proposal. Currently I am working on feature about so-called "camouflaging" by women with autism.
The illustrator picked for this story is Alessandra Genualdo, someone I have not worked with before, but her images came up again and again in my ideas stage, and in the end my Pinterest folder was full of them. The germinating image for this collection is the image in the lower left below.
This is a fascinating problem from a visual standpoint--women with autism often feel they are 'faking it', or that they are trying hard to blend in socially, or even that they are disappearing, or losing themselves. There's a lot of mental strain, and distorted self-image. Its a scary feeling to imagine, and a terrible thing to live with, but it is a rich concept to tackle in art.
The collection is around different iterations of the idea of 'camouflaging', including an actual kind of camouflage, wallpaper, or pattern that would surround a female figure and hide her somehow in her surroundings, or emphasize potentially awkward gestures, or stimming. The logic of the collection is not based around a particular style, but rather variations in ways the concept could be expressed. See it here: https://www.pinterest.com/skyone1/camouflaging/