View these photos on flickr.com...

Michael Dickins - Darren Goins
February 17th - March 19th, 2010

Michael Dickins is an interdisciplinary artist, currently living in the mountains of North Georgia, whose work is created with a variety of media  including photography, printmaking, installation, sound and video.  His balance of both digital and material processes allows him to create pieces that are both expressive and engaging.
 
Dickins is interested in the impact that the technological advances of photography has had, and is having, on our visual culture.  His current work has been focused on the importance of the snapshot both historically and in contemporary society.
 
After taking a few years off from exhibiting to focus on raising a family and starting a business, he was never far from art.  He continued teaching darkroom and digital photography as an instructor of art as well as traveling to visit galleries and museums around the US and in Europe.  He is currently enrolled as a graduate student at Goddard College pursuing an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts degree.
 
He most recently provided the artwork for the original production of The Bench at the Pittsburgh Playhouse and has an upcoming sound and video commission for the Houston Metropolitan Dance Company as well as a residency and multi-media installation exhibition at the University of Maine at Augusta.


When George Eastman created the Kodak Camera in 1888, he made a cumbersome and complicated process easy to use and accessible to nearly everyone. Since then, the world has been oversaturated with trillions of images.  Photographs became not only accessible, but expendable.  Within the age of digital, where the discarding of an image is as simple as a push of a button, what makes one image more expendable than another?  Why are some memories more important than others?  By taking images of mundane occurrences and recreating them, I am not only putting focus on the snapshot and that of the “everyday” image; but also, by recreating them in a non-photographic, painterly manner, I am forcing the viewer to question which is more
important, the memory itself or the documentation of that memory?
 
The Photo Memory Project is an ongoing project that involves the collection of old and new family photos.  Some are submitted images and some are rediscovered personal images.  The final pieces are representative of the Polaroid® photograph which is the instant photograph of my youth.  The sound element is a collection of interviews recounting the memories that were evoked by the people who submitted the images.
 
 
For more information on the work of Michael Dickins, please visit:
www.michaeldickins.com or Facebook ID: michael dickins - artist

Darren Goins

Darren Goins is an award-winning, emerging printmaker and photographer from North Carolina. He has shown in several National Exhibitions and been published in The Journal of Arts and Design and New American Paintings.  
Goins received a BFA in Photography and Printmaking from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.  He has exhibited his work in North Carolina, Maryland, and was awarded "Best in Show" at the 4th Annual National Printmaking and Drawing Exhibition and the 31st Bradley International Print and Drawing Exhibition.  Goins currently works from his studio in Charlotte, N.C.


Do you think Atlantis had a government? I don't.  I think it was something different. And I think everyone has a little bit of Atlantis in their heart.  Some people are content with where they are, but sixty percent or so would want to go to Atlantis.  Although we don't have the technology right now to find it - I mean, it's under something - we could probably scan the ocean floor and at least find the shape of it.
I like places like that- like in ancient Egypt.  Places where they communicated with pictures rather than words. A different way of communication.
Whenever you think of indigenous tribes, they're intriguing because you romanticize them. If you lived a long long time before Mexico City was there, with the Aztecs, it was probably pretty crazy, with cutting heads off all the time. But today, if you're looking back at it, it's really interesting. I wouldn't want to be in the real place, but I would want to be in my imagined version of it.


For more information on the work of Michael Dickins, please visit:
www.darrengoins.com

View these photos on flickr.com...