Interview with Pamela @ A Small Work a Day

Today we have an interview with Pamela from A Small Work A Day
You will find some beautiful art work over a Pamela's.


Tell us about yourself…

Like many photographers, I started photographing in my teens. I was fortunate to go to a high school that required every student to take an art class that was half studio arts (painting, drawing etc.) and half photography. We all had plastic Diana cameras, shot Tri-X 120 black and white film, and processed our own work. I loved it, went on to take every photography course the school offered and spent a lot of time in a very small, dark room in high school.

Cut to grown up days…I had a 15-year career in the film industry as a freelance production manager on feature films (Black Hawk Down, Hannibal, Peacemaker) doing non-creative work and realized I needed to get back to photography, so a few years ago I came back to photography.

What motivated you to start your blog?
What made you decide to begin this project? And do you feel obligated to create a work a day or is it something that you look forward to?

When I moved to the DC area in the summer of 2006, a respected artist and blogger named Lenny Campello of Daily Campello Art Newsreviewed the first show I was in at the Torpedo Factory. He mentioned me and opened my eyes to the world of blogs. Daily works blogs were becoming popular and I thought it would be a great personal exercise – to force myself to create a piece, good or bad, every day. I started A Small Work A Day with all good intentions, but now I post a few times a week versus everyday, and I don’t beat myself up over it. I like to do my daily piece first thing in the morning, so if I don’t, it gets away from me.

How has your art evolved since you started this project?

It really helped me develop my style. When I started the daily work I was all over the map. It didn’t look like the work came from one person. I worked through a couple of phases before finding my place.

Will you go through the process you take in creating one piece?

So many people ask me about my technique. At the moment I’m photographing landscapes with an eye towards a collection I’m developing for a solo show I have coming up in 2009. The show is titled “The Road Less Traveled By” after the Frost poem.

I start with a digital capture, and begin my post processing by making a technically high quality “straight” image; you know, all the basics – contrast, saturation, tweaking highlights and shadows, color balance. After that my fun begins! I decide how I want the world to look – ha ha! I often combine elements from different images, like putting a flock of birds in the sky where there were none. When I have the subject matter the way I want it then I move on to texture.

Over the course of more than 25 years of making photographic images I have experimented with various types of transfer printing. The use of texture in my current digital work is an outgrowth of that. I have always been in love with the “less than perfect” look of transfers, the unpredictable nature of the process.

Layering textures is where I have the most fun; I shoot all my own textures. Even though I’m using a computer, I still do a lot of experimentation, a lot of “what if” scenarios with the textures and blending methods I use. I’m still able to experience the unpredictable nature of the process!

What is your art background?

As I mentioned, my early training in art and photography was pretty unique. Andover, the boarding school I went to has an extensive art department and I took full advantage of it. Beyond that, I took a few art classes in college, but I’m largely self-taught.

Can you tell us a little about Print for the Cure and how you came up with that idea?

At the beginning of 2007 both my siblings were diagnosed with cancer. First my sister with breast cancer, and about 2 weeks later my brother with prostate cancer. Two years earlier my husband had had prostate cancer. I wanted to do something! I asked myself what I could do to make a difference? I realized that by selling affordable art I could make larger monetary donations to research organizations and maybe get more people involved with the organizations I have supported. By the way, siblings and husband are all doing well.

Are there certain art blogs that you visit for inspiration and/or fun?

I visit Daily Campello Art News all the time to stay current on the DC art scene and I have to say I’m somewhat of a flickr addict, there is so much great work out there it’s amazing!

I really enjoy your art work and it is one of the blogs that I visit on a regular basis.
Thank you so much for your time.