My good friend and photography/self-portraiture cohort, Osmyn Oree - sent me a text a few days ago, in which he proposed the most fantastic idea! He suggested that each week, he and I should alternate posing a different self-portrait challenge to each other - which I immediately thought was positively brilliant...because not only would it allow us to continue collaborating with each other (albeit on a completely different level than our last collaboration), despite the fact that we do live four states apart - but it would also put the fire under my butt to stage a new set of selfpics, on the weekly. And let's face it - I've been horribly remiss about being the dutiful self-portraiteuse that I used to be.
So anyway...the more that I thought about Osmyn's brainchild, the more my own wheels started turning like mad! And after conferring with one another about this, that, and the other - we finally came up with this plan:
The Big Ugly Land of Oz is Osmyn's and my new, weekly, self-portraiture tumblr. blog (we just launched it today - yip!) on which, we will feature the self-portraits that the two of us shall publish each week. But we also wanna encourage all of you to participate, by submitting your own theme-relevant selfpics to the site.
Every Sunday, Osmyn and I will each choose one photo from the group that stands out to us individually - and those images will be printed on archival quality, double weight matte, 8.5" x 11" paper, at my 1 lb. Gallery (on my kickass Epson Stylus Pro 9900 printer, no less) and then sent to the winning entrants as our "Thanks!" for participating.
The photo above, is my response to this week's challenge - in which Osmyn and I had to photograph ourselves after, or while - doing something that would contrast with our natural skin colors...so there ya' go!
I can't tell you how excited I am about this endeavor - because I really do hope that it'll help me to prioritize making my art over doing the other things that I've been doing lately (at least one day a week?), but I would love to think that it might also motivate you guys to throw your own hats into the self-portraiture ring!
*Footnote: The Big Ugly Land of Oz is now defunct.