Digital middle schoolers; the light of celebration

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

By Henry Sweets

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Lost in a maze of lockers and angst, middle schoolers’ lives are far from simple. Recently, the Teton County Library and the National Museum of Wildlife Art (NMWA) joined with the Jackson Hole Middle School to teach eighth graders how to tell their stories using visual images.

“My So-Called Digital Life,” features more than 100 photographs by local middle schoolers, who learned some photography theory and were lent digital cameras.
Allie Gillen, the library’s teen programs coordinator, said the idea for the program came from a book with the same title from the library’s teen section.

Photographs contained
The project helped kids understand the power of expression that visual images can have.
“The kids were encouraged to look at the same subject from a different angle, to take something you might see everyday and look at it in a different light,” said Wendy Rominger, the middle school art teacher. She said guest instructors Bronwyn Minton and Amy Giocea from the museum talked with the students about perspective and how what you include or exclude in a frame can change the story you telling.

The photos will be shown alongside artistic statements from the students.
Gillen said there was a common sentiment found in the artist statements: “This might look boring to you, but this is a part of my life.”
Most of the photos were taken during school or on school property.

Rominger said that many of the students used their cameras to capture sculptural views of everyday objects like lamp posts, snowdrifts and friends. She said the students did a good job of showing everyday objects in a more interesting, complex light.
“A lot of it was kind of intuitive … they just had a good eye for things,” Rominger said. “They must have been tuned in to what it takes to make a stronger image in the photograph.”

Pizza and buffalo wings will be served at the opening, a menu chosen by the artists themselves.
“We’ll have lots of napkins,” Gillen said.

The event will take place from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. tonight, May 14, in the library’s exhibit gallery. The works will hang through June 24.

Andrew Wyatt lives for celebration
From May to September, local photographer Andrew Wyatt spends weekends traveling the country to photograph music festivals. During the winter you can spot him shooting concerts at the Mangy Moose. Wyatt’s candid shots catch people in moments when revelry and self expression intersect.

For his upcoming show at the Hard Drive Café, Wyatt chose 13 different images of people dancing with huge, glowing hula-hoops.
“[The hula-hoop] images most directly represent the spirit and energy of festival life,” Wyatt said. “When I do these slow exposures, I zoom the lens or pan the camera with the shutter open, to capture the energy of the light.”

Wyatt calls his technique “a new way to do hippie photography.”
Wyatt’s artistic mission is not just to show people having fun. Wyatt says his photographs are a commentary on possibilities of living.

“The reason why I do festivals is because I believe they point to a different way that people can be with each other,” Wyatt said. “I photograph … the people at festivals because they are people who innately know that we don’t have to live our lives in a way that is about drudgery or consumerism.”

Wyatt is currently working on a coffee table book about festival life entitled “Jubilee Erupts,” and he has been researching the history of music festivals and the modes of celebration that people practice there. He said the first known hula-hoop dates back to 3,000 BC in Egypt, when people used grape vines to twine together a hula-hoop.
Wyatt’s show, “Hula-Hoop Light Essays,” will be held from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Friday, May 16, at the Hard Drive Café.

Photo by Andrew Wyatt
‘Hula Hoop Light Essays’ by Andrew Wyatt.

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Digital middle schoolers; the light of celebration | Planet JH News Article: Arts Beat

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