San Antonio Here I Come

As of next Monday I will be leaving Austin for San Antonio, Texas. Thank goodness its only an hour and a half away. I was offered one photography class at the University of Texas and one at the Southwest School of Art Craft. The work is only through May so I'm not sure if this is a permanent move or where I may end up come summer or fall. However I will be in Austin almost weekly teaching courses at Precision camera and the Austin Museum of Art as well as organizing and participating in all the Austin Center for Photography events.

If you are ever in the San Antonio area please give me a shout. If you know of any artists or great people in SA please send them my way. I'm very excited to get to know and become part of the artist community in San Antonio.

HOTMAIL Frustrations

For some reason my hotmail account is no longer working. I have just set up a gmail account sarahsudhoff@gmail.com. My other email address info@sarahsudhoff.com is now forwarding to the gmail account. Even if hotmail comes back to life I'll be making the switch. Please update your address books. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Its Official the Austin Center for Photography is here

I'm am so proud to be a part of the Austin Center for Photography. Its been almost a year since our initial meeting to create and form ACP. We have grown to 8 board members comprised of artists, photographers, educators, business owners and curators. While each of us has a different background, we all bring drive, vision and a desire to make a central location in Austin and central Texas for photographers to gather, exhibit, lecture and learn.

After moving back to Austin after living in New York for several years I was surprised to find Austin still lacked such as space. Recently I have taught and exhibited at the Houston Center for Photography and participated in shows at other non-profit photography spaces nationally. Each board member saw the same need in our community for a photo space and so we began meeting and learning the ropes of creating a non-profit.

Although we only recently became public with our non-profit we already helped sponsor a Slideluck event in Austin last month which had an attendance of nearly 400 people. We have several more events planned including a closing reception for the Salagado exhibition at the Austin Museum of Art scheduled for January 2009 and the first of our "Icons of Photography" lecture series featuring Mary Ellen Mark on March 12.

We have a website as well as a facebook group. I will be starting a blog soon reporting on our progress and upcoming events. If you would like to be contacted about future happenings please visit our website at www.visitacp.org and sign up.

Thank you to all my friends whom I contacted about starting a non-profit. Your pearls of wisdom are much appreciated.

Chris Sauter

Last night I attended a lecture given by San Antonio artist Chris Sauter at Trinity University. I was in San Antonio on assignment for Texas Monthly. After I finished my shoot I headed over to Trinity to meet with Trish Simonite and discovered Chris was speaking.

I first came across Chris's work over a year ago at his show Workshop at FineSilver in Houston. A friend mentioned there was a large scaled uterus at the gallery. At the sound of that I headed to the gallery on my next trip to Houston. It was satisfying seeing another artist use the uterus and ovary in their work in a very different context. Chris works with numerous materials. He combines painting, drawing, sculpture and installation sometimes in to one piece or for an entire exhibition.

My principal strategies are, the transformation of common objects into other recognizable objects, extreme scale shifts, and the juxtaposition of disparate materials and images.

I have converted items from the home into landscapes or sites of natural and industrial processes to show the interaction of nature, culture, and origins, and constructed models of internal organs from common materials to position these connections within the body.

The body and the home are major themes. Because we understand the world through our bodies, it is the starting point. The home is an extension of our bodies and is the primary source for the production and propagation of culture.

Chris now has a website so please check out his work if you aren't already familiar with it.