on todd hido


one of the things i miss about graduate school is the access to constant art lectures. i know they are still there - happening on art campuses all over the bay area, but when i was a grad student it was so much easier to find the time to go. it was a treat at the end of a day of making to stop and go hear another maker talk about their work and their process.

wed. night the little spent the night at her grandparents house so i escaped to hear todd hido speak about his work. 



i have gravitated toward his work for some time. i think for obvious reasons [negative space, the integration of home- and what that means, the pairing and fusing of seemingly mismatched ideas]. but instead of my interpretation. i'll just share my notes with you.


sources/influences/kinships > origin. his: taking pics of his toys in his living room with an instamatic camera. BMX biking. 

from OHIO [denise dr.]. came to CA [mills actually] for a workshop that changed his life and influenced him to come to grad school here. when to tufts/museum school in boston and then was an assistant to a commercial photographer as his printer. 2 years. this was good for making work w/out thinking. 

be open to change
the hyperreal = artifical
architecture as container for memory


building an archive [he uses folders and cheap costco prints]
plug in to build bodies of work - shuffling
repeat until redundant
ambiguity is key

uses a pentax 6x7
was in first bay area now [w/ barry mcgee and margaret kilgallen and chris johanson. he was so excited and honored]. 

compulsion is good for artists.

he's blissfully influenced by everything he loves including:

he shoots like a photographer, but thinks like a painter [and thus i'd say is also influenced/related to gerhard richter's landscape paintings]
he lives between the two



the search for home
his work featured on raymond carver book covers - highlight for him [and stunningly gorgeous].
put 2 things together to make a new truth
always exploring and shuffling images together to combine them in new ways. particularly true with new work : excerpts from silver medows [some of which are below]. 


like robert adams he often works on an idea of a monograph as a way to put imagery together. 
sometimes he's looking for characters. for a way for the pictures to tell a narrative [to which a viewer brings their own perspective].


for his recent exhibition with transformer station he created a series of movie posters. you can buy a set [i did - signed - can't wait for them to arrive]. 

have a great weekend.

Comments

Anonymous said…
THANK YOU for sharing these images and your notes. His work is powerfully evocative. I, too, am tempted to buy some of it in order to have it around me all the time....
Gracia said…
Yes!
be open to change

Yes!
the hyperreal = artifical

Yes!
architecture as container for memory

Thanks for this, Lisa. Brain cogs are whirling.
G xo

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