Flash Powder Retreat

This past July, I was invited to a photographer's retreat in Highlands, NC by the Flash Powder Project duo David Bram and Jennifer Schwartz. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed my time there talking about work, getting to know a wonderful community of photographers, learning important dos and don'ts of the business, and just goofing around.

If you have a sec, check out Flash Powder Projects. David and Jennifer are both wonderful people who really want to help artists get their work out there. You can find links relating to David and Jennifer's efforts below:

http://www.flashpowderprojects.com/

http://www.crusadeforart.org/home/#book

http://www.fractionmagazine.com/

Here are some of the highlights from Highlands, NC.

Work in Progress

Inside our living spaces, we collect, we organize, we squander—our things, our memories, our leftovers. In Contained (title TBD), pieces of Tupperware are removed from their everyday context, merging with, protruding from, or floating in the space around them. Unstable and unfamiliar, the images become a metaphor for our often-misguided ideals, our lack of control, and our need to fill the empty container with a fantasy.

Artist statement and installation shots of Gradations

Gradations

Artist Statement

My house is not my home. We expect a house to be a place of comfort, a place that shelters us from the outside world. Underneath the personal clutter, however, houses are banal, sterile spaces, controlling the air that we breathe and the motions of our bodies. The structure of a house becomes a marker of boredom, and a barrier causing isolation. So what does it take to feel at home in a house where anxieties rise and fall? Can we ever feel at home in the world?

Through the works in Gradations, I reassert my control over my living space and transform something mundane into something new—a strange, moving, breathing dreamspace. The bare walls come to life, set in motion through animation and the construction of an interrelated network of subtle variations. I skew the perspective of the house, wrenching the head beyond its normal axis, revealing the fragility of our perceptions. This instability becomes a metaphor for our often-misguided ideals and our need to fill the unknown with a fantasy.

- Megan Metté

Coming in November @ the University of Rochester

Gradations

In Gradations, Megan Metté questions what it takes to feel at home in the contemporary American house. Through a combination of moving and still images of her own living space, Metté transforms the sterile, banal house into something new— a strange, moving, breathing dreamspace. Bare walls come to life, set in motion through animation and the construction of an interrelated network of subtle variations. Skewing the perspective of the house and wrenching the head beyond its normal axis, the images reveal the fragility of our perceptions of the home. This instability becomes a metaphor for our often-misguided ideals and our need to fill the unknown with a fantasy.