Cassandra Jones

Dani Galietti
CAP - Oct 6, 2009
6pm -7pm
Cassandra Jones Visiting Artist Lecture

Visiting artist Cassandra Jones introduced herself to the University of Delaware as a Photographer. However, all the work that she showed contained no photographs that she her self took. She began, with the quote “Now a days photography has become as widely a practiced form as dancing and sex.” Jones commented that there were already so many photographs out there in existence that instead of adding to this limitless resource she decided that she would use it.
When she was younger, Cassandra promised her grandmother that when her grandfather passed away, that she would accompany her grandmother in her return to Greece. However this happened at a very unfortunate and extremely hard time: during Cassandra’s last thesis year. She confessed how she put up a fight but however in the end obliged. It was here in Greece where she decided to put her camera away and explore the wealth of imagery that was already in circulation.
For the first few weeks she was on the island, she noted how her grandmother, who hadn’t been on the island in over 36 years would encounter familiar faces. Every time this happened, the two people would stop in recognition, embrace, and cry. This was followed up with coffee and the combing through extensive amounts of photo albums. It was at these encounters and coffee meetings that Cassandra began to notice that almost every person had the quintessential sunset photo. This is where the idea for her thesis work came from.
“Eventide” her thesis piece is a 5minute stop-motion video of the sun setting. The photos came from hour and hours of Cassandra collecting from people’s personal albums, magazine, and the Internet. She would then scan all the imagery in and arrange them so that as the sun set it always anchored in the center of the screen. She did this with another one of her video pieces “Wax and Wane” which showed the different stages of the moon as if moved in an arc from the left to the right side of the screen. Interestingly so, this is not the first time something like this has been created. She showed the audience a video created by the NHL, which has been broadcasted on television. It shows the Stanley Cup positioned in the center of the screen, and as the photos change the players and team change showing a linear progression of Stanly Cup champions and the Cup’s passing through generations of hands.
Another source for her imagery became EBAY. She poured through thousands of photos looking for patterns and trends in imagery, until she found the one she was looking for. This was the $2.99 “cheerleader with leg in the air” photograph- the quintessential crotch shot. She purchased this photo and then used PhotoShop to arrange the figure into a radial design. She did this multiple times, using different cheerleaders in the same position. She continued to do this with as many different cheerleaders in the same position until she had a array of different radial designs of different cheerleaders. She then arranged these into a pattern and created her own wallpaper. This was incredible because when you saw an installation view the wallpaper resembled “your grandmother’s wallpaper”. However on closer inspection you noticed these flesh tones, and if the viewer came close enough they would be rewarded with the fact that these intricate designs were actually composed of fragments and layers of cheerleaders. She did this also with photographs of actually flamingoes. She noted that it was interesting how the flamingo “money shot” resembled that of a lawn ornament. Commenting on how the way in which we think about flamingoes is extremely influenced by these kitsch objects.
One of her most interesting works was entitled “Swarm” in which she described as a drawing. For this series, she collected thousands of images of lightning bolts and then arranged them so that the lighting created a closed connected circuit. However if you really looked at this circuit you realized that the lightning was arranged to resemble different urban animals. In the first collage she showed, the lightning created an outline of a bunny, and in her other arrangement it created the outline of a squirrel.
Though her work wasn’t extremely cutting edge and original, her ideas and the way she talked about her process was extremely interesting and inspiring. The process of searching and arranging added more to the work than just the pure visual element.