PREVIEW: The 55th Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF)

The Ann Arbor Film Festival is the oldest avant-garde and experimental film festival in North America (from the Web Site).

The festival is full of indie and oddball films, characteristic of Ann Arbor culture. Over the course of the six day festival, viewers can choose from over 180 films from over 20 countries. Genres include documentary, fiction, animation, and experimental.

March 21 – March 26 (Full Film Schedule View)

Michigan Theater, North Quad, & The Ravens Club

Cost: $12 for adults, and $8 for Students/AAFF Members

There are also FREE Events

Facebook event page

The AAFF is popular enough to warrant an SNL sketch parodying the kind of festival it is.

PREVIEW: The Ark Open Stage (Open Mic)

Have you been honing those keytar skills throughout winter break and want to show off? Want to show off the results of all that practice singing to yourself in the car on your morning commute?

This is your chance!

On Wednesday, January 11th at 8 PM, 15 performers will be invited to the stage at the Ark for 8 minute performances each.

Sign up: 7:30

Selection: 7:45 and 8:30

It’s only $2 for students!

As the Ark states on its web site, locally famous acts such as Dick Siegel to nationally known artists like Gilda Rader have performed at open stage.

REVIEW: David Zinn Workshop

Photo courtesy of Viral Forest

The Ann Arbor District Library hosted local artist and University of Michigan alum David Zinn for his workshop—Drawing from Your Imagination with David Zinn—on January 5th in order to share his artistic techniques with those who attended. Although Zinn is well-known for his chalk and charcoal works on city streets and buildings, this artist used the Thursday afternoon to delve into the creative thought process of his artwork.

The workshop took place in the library’s multi-purpose room, located in the basement. I arrived five minutes past one and found myself in a room bustling with locals both young and old, all enthusiastic to hear from the artist. After they found their seats and chatter hummed down to faint whispers, Zinn introduced himself to us through light jokes and references. His words were accompanied by a slideshow of his latest street art pieces, which were certainly entertaining to look at.

One of the works that Zinn featured in his slideshow. Photo courtesy of Demilked

Zinn’s introduction eventually transitioned to demonstrations of his creative thought process. The artist first explained to his audience how blank canvases were intimidating to him, as ideas for art were limitless and therefore overwhelming. Having a canvas with a mark, however, gave Zinn a starting point for his ideas, even if that canvas happened to be a sidewalk with a line of grass. Zinn then elaborated this point by having attendees engage in drawing exercises where everyone would make a scribble, swap papers with someone else, and see what they could draw from that scribble. After everyone saw the products of this exercise, Zinn facilitated another drawing exercise where one person would draw on a folded sheet of paper and another person would complete the drawing on the other side. By viewing art that was created from canvases with a mark, everyone, including me, had a better understanding of where Zinn was coming from.

One of the drawings made from the second exercise of the workshop. The top half was drawn by me, while the bottom half was drawn by another attendee

The workshop ended ten minutes after two, with applause from attendees. I was content with what I learned from the workshop, and am considering on attending future workshops by Zinn in the Ann Arbor District Library.
If you happened to miss out on this opportunity with a local artist, be sure to check the AADL website to see when the next David Zinn workshop will be!

PREVIEW: David Zinn Workshop

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A local to Ann Arbor and University of Michigan alum, David Zinn will be holding a workshop at the Ann Arbor District Library this Thursday, the 5th of January. Zinn has been making his mark on the city with artwork through  murals, business logos, posters, and cartoons, but he is well known for the chalk art he makes on the streets and sidewalks of Ann Arbor, Manhattan, and other locations. In recent years, Zinn has recieved global attention from outlets such as Facebook and the Huffington Post. This local artist is now sharing some of his artistic experience through the workshop, Drawing from Your Imagination with David Zinn, where he will be demonstrating illustration techniques with color pencils. Take the opportunity to meet and learn from David Zinn this week, one of Ann Arbor’s local artists!

Details
When: Thursday, January 5th
Time: 1:00 -2:00PM
Location: Ann Arbor District Library, Multi-Purpose Room

Workshop is intended for kids grade six to adults, free admission.

REVIEW: Artists of the Photo-Secession Gallery Tour at UMMA

When did photography become an art form? At some point, the technology for capturing images of people, places, and things developed enough that people could start adding artistic flair.

At the turn of the 20th century, a young Alfred Stieglitz had a radical idea that photography could be art, which clashed with ideas of older, more established members such as Charles Buadelaire, who considered photography nothing more than a “servant of the sciences and arts.”

Luckily for us, Mr. Stieglitz would have none of that. He formed the Camera Club of New York and started an avant-garde photography journal that changed how people saw photography.

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These new artists, rather than simply pointing and shooting, used more artistic methods for their photographs. They took pictures with a soft focus to try and emulate the “look” of paintings. They used more expensive materials to get better contrast of lights and darks. They printed on Japanese paper, because nothing says classy quite like Japanese paper.

Seeing the pictures was enough to see the transition to photography as an art form, but going on a tour of the exhibit helped place the photos in a social context.

Our photo-secession-3stupendous tour guide compared two images of the Brooklyn bridge and pointed out how one was a standard picture of a bridge, while the other focused on the shapes and form of the structures of the bridge.

At the end, we learned about Stieglitz’s most famous work, The Steerage. He considered The Steerage to be his most important work because, while I only saw an interesting photograph with a lot going on, we learned that there was a deeper meaning.

The Steerage was one of the first photographs to make a social statement. Before the photograph of the protester in Tienanmen Square, or anything from Vietnam, there was a photo showing two separate classes in one photograph: the immigrants both literally and figuratively below the rich on the same ship.

The exhibit made it easy to see why opinions changed from viewing the camera as merely a gadget, to viewing it as a tool of the artist.

All the hard work put in by the photographers to distinguish their work as art, however, made me stop and think. In the era of iPhones and Instagram, where anyone can take a decent photo, are we regressing to a time where the photography is becoming a lesser art form?