“There are inherent risks in the operation of nuclear facilities. Dominion operates nuclear facilities that are subject to inherent risks. These include the threat of terrorist attack and ability to dispose of spent nuclear fuel, the disposal of which is subject to complex federal and state regulatory constraints. These risks also include the cost of and Dominion’s ability to maintain adequate reserves for decommissioning, costs of plant maintenance and exposure to potential liabilities arising out of the operation of these facilities. Dominion maintains decommissioning trusts and external insurance coverage to manage the financial exposure to these risks. However, it is possible that costs arising from claims could exceed the amount of any insurance coverage.”
Doing some research for a new project!
One cannot apprehend reality without being involved physically, without inhaling entirely, or nourishing the liberty to act, to unveil desire or lack thereof, to envision violence. The art accomplice impoverishes reality: if the photographer condemns himself to passivity, is satisfied to observe, to analyze, to denounce, to sublimate, to comment, the resulting photo practices a guilty contemplation. I cross my own limits and the ones of reality, and find a vague space between where the bodies burst, flow, crash, penetrate themselves, and invade themselves in a tentacular mass of flesh.
The contemporary proliferation of pictures aims to regulate and neutralize the brutal instinct of the masses–through discernment and free agency. Anguish and oppression are born of abundance. The same can be said of stereotypical pictures, which are symptoms of complicity: soft, loose, cynical. They water us in speech, conventions, clichés. This kindness allows them to abuse a privileged position and cross barriers without ramifications on their social, geographic, or emotional strata.
— excerpt from a Antoine d’Agata interview.
Production images from ‘Nitro’
jckingca: Hi Thanks for posting the wise advice from Teresita Fernandez. I found the full speech and have forwarded it to my daughter Emily who just graduated with her BFA and is balancing motherhood with finding the right graduate school. **PS** I think your work is powerful and true. -John
Hello! Congratulations to your daughter and I wish her the best of luck in her search. Teresita’s speech was powerful and honest, so I’m happy to share it. Thank you for your kind words on my work! All the best!
Advice from Terecita Fernandez’s amazing commencement speech
1. Art requires time, there’s a reason it’s called a studio practice. Contrary to popular belief moving to Bushwick, Brooklyn this summer does not make you an artist. If in order to do this you have to share a space with five roommates and wait on tables, you will probably not make much art. What worked for me was spending five years building a body of work in a city where it was cheapest for me to live, and that allowed me the precious time and space I needed after grad school.
2. Learn to write well and get into the habit of systematically applying for every grant you can find. If you don’t get it, keep applying. I lived from grant money for four years when I first graduated.
3. Nobody reads artist’s statements. Learn to tell an interesting story about your work that people can relate to on a personal level.
4. Not every project will survive. Purge regularly, destroying is intimately connected to creating. This will save you time.
5. Edit privately. As much as I believe in stumbling, I also think nobody else needs to watch you do it.
6. When people say your work is good do two things. First, don’t believe them. Second, ask them WHY? If they can convince you of why they think your work is good, accept the compliment. If they can’t convince you (and most people can’t) dismiss it as superficial and recognize that most bad consensus is made by people simply repeating that they “like” something.
7. Don’t ever feel like you have to give anything up in order to be an artist… I had babies and made art and traveled and still have a million things I’d like to do.
8. You don’t need a lot of friends or curators or patrons or a huge following, just a few that really believe in you.
9. Remind yourself to be gracious to everyone, whether they can help you or not. It will draw people to you over and over again and help build trust in professional relationships.
10. And lastly, when other things in life get tough, when you’re going through family troubles, when you’re heartbroken, when you’re frustrated with money problems, focus on your work. It has saved me through every single difficult thing I have ever had to do, like a scaffolding that goes far beyond any traditional notions of a career.
I would like to leave you with a quote from my dear friend Félix González-Torres, who was an extraordinary and generous artist.
“Above all else, it is about leaving a mark that I existed: I was here. I was hungry. I was defeated. I was happy. I was sad. I was in love. I was afraid. I was hopeful. I had an idea and I had a good purpose and that’s why I made works of art.”
If there is a single thing that you remember from what I’ve said today let it be that being an artist is not just about what happens when you are in the studio. The way you live, the people you choose to love and the way you love them, the way you vote, the words that come out of your mouth, the size of the world you make for yourselves, your ability to influence the things you believe in, your obsessions, your failures, ALL of these components will also become the raw material for the art you make.
—From Terecita Fernandez’s commencement speech at the VCUArts graduation ceremony
The more we consider photography, the more convinced we are that it has come to draw away the veil of mystery with which Art enveloped the represented Form. Art made us believe that without the symbolism inspired by the hallucination of faith, or without the conventionalism inspired by philosophical auto-intoxication, the realization of the psychology of Form was impossible: that is to say, that without the intervention of the imaginative faculties, Form could not express its spirit.
But when man does not seek pleasure in ecstasies but in investigation, when he does not seek the anesthetic of contemplation, but the pleasure of perfect consciousness, the soul of substance represented by Art appears like the phantasm of that Alma Mater which is felt vibrating in every existing thing, by all who understand the beauty of real truth.
Art presents to us what we may call the emotional or intellectual truth; photography the material truth.
— Photography and Photography and Artistic-Photography, by Marius De Zayas (1880-1961)
Archival image of Nitro, WV.
