The Cocktail Party Effect

Kangaroo (2017) by Michael Cook Admittedly, photography is not my favorite medium, but I wanted to give the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego a fair chance. I do not hate photography, I just appreciate other mediums (like painting) more. With the ease of a smartphone camera and the abundance of images on social media, photography seems commonplace to me. While I may be indifferent about photography, I have always wanted to go to Australia; luckily for me, the exhibit is called  “Defining Place/Space: Contemporary Photography from Australia.” The exhibit was divided by individual artists who gave a brief summary of what they hoped to achieve in their series of chosen photos. Through this exhibit, I was able to identify what I believe to be the unique strengths of photography. A Moment in Time and Patrick Pound Patrick Pound is a Melbourne-based artist whose presented work is a series of photos that he found making a complication called Air Moving Right . ...

Emergence (2013) Sayaka Ganz At the Stamford Museum and Nature Center , the building was small but the grounds were vast. The Nature Center had a petting zoo area, but I have never been one for animals, so I mostly stayed inside. Alas, the inside was filled with animals as well. The main exhibit featured animal sculptures by artist Sayaka Ganz which were made up of common household appliances like ladles and forks. The exhibit was named “Reclaimed Creations” to demonstrate how prosaic items can be aesthetically repurposed.   Some of the featured pieces were sculptures of horses. These 3D horses had a tremendous amount of movement to them despite being made of a multitude of static objects. Artists like 18th century British painter George Stubbs worked to revolutionize the portrayal of horses by drawing attention to muscle and tone of the animal itself -- demonstrated in "Whistlejacket" (seen below). While Ganz was not painting horses as Stubbs once did, she capture...