It’s that time of year again, dear readers! With the change of the seasons comes a new edition of our billboards project, Park Pictures. We’ve been promoting Park Pictures here on Untitled for more than two years now, and we’re still going strong! As you may recall, our Pictures are three “billboards” installed along the paved walking trails, commissioned by the Museum to encourage visitors to explore the art available in the Museum Park. These billboards change regularly to feature new works by different artists, both from North Carolina and elsewhere.

Last spring Anthony Goicolea created three billboards in conjunction with his solo exhibition Alter Ego: A Decade of Work by Anthony Goicolea. This time around we’ve commissioned three works by California-based artist Carolyn Janssen, who completed her master of fine arts degree at UNC–Chapel Hill in spring 2011. Janssen’s works are digitally crafted worlds created by the expert superposition of images from Janssen’s own daily environment, including multiple representations of herself. This consistent layering allows the artist an element of control as she focuses on the process itself. “I used individual objects in the same way I would use a single brushstroke,” Janssen notes, “building each scene mark by mark.” Janssen’s knowledge of art shines through in her works, which are reminiscent of traditional landscape painting as well as the complex scenes of Bosch and Breughel. The images also refer to video game worlds and science fiction tableaux, which keep Janssen’s works rooted in pop culture.

The subject matter of Janssen’s billboards pertains to an imaginary dystopic society populated solely by Amazon-esque women who, the artist notes, “question and commandeer the landscape, engaging in narratives and mini-dramas, in which they build, fight, kill, and rest. At times calm, at times acting in apprehension to a present or past disaster, the figures reflect on a landscape broken, uncertain, and strange.”

This work, made possible by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, is part of an ongoing series of outdoor art projects, Art Has No Boundaries, commissioned by the NCMA to encourage visitors to actively explore the Museum Park.

Teenagers tend to see the world a little differently—but that’s not a bad thing! A distinct point of view can be an asset to a photographer. The Museum’s recent Digital Photography Workshop encouraged high schoolers to express their creativity in a variety of media.

The workshop combined a photo shoot in the Museum Park with computer manipulation and hands-on art projects. First the teens took a look at our current photography exhibition, Landscape Sublime, and saw how North Carolina artist John Menapace transformed ordinary daily spaces into extraordinary arrangements of light and form. They took their cameras into the Park to capture worm’s-eye views of oaks covered with kudzu and the geometric angles of the amphitheater stage.

Back inside, they got their hands on computer software to manipulate photographs, distorting and enhancing their own photos for a dramatic and sometimes humorous effect. The students experimented with printing on unusual surfaces and combining photos of themselves with works of art for mixed-media projects.

They drew inspiration from Anthony Goicolea’s Sea Wall, a sculptural installation of photos, glass bottles, and glass blocks, to print photographs of each other on acetate for a group installation, which they then photographed. They looked at vanitas paintings in the Dutch collection—still lifes that symbolize the emptiness and transience of earthly things—and then created another three-dimensional installation using still-life objects. Their work graced the Blue Ridge patio for just a short time, but the images live on in students’ photographs.

We invite you to peer behind the lens for a new perspective of the Museum.