Three months...

The Hot Shops show is just a little more than three months from now. Everything is coming together nicely thanks to the help of William Hess. I am not sure if I'm more excited for everyone to see the work or to see how it's going to look on display.

I will be offering a print sale in the next few weeks to help pay for the exhibition. The prints will be available at a lower price for a limited time. I'll have more details soon.

Don't forget to become a fan on Facebook. And put Friday night, April 30th on your calendars.

January

Omaha is (was?) starting to thaw out after a rough month or so of consecutive blizzards. There were two snowfalls of over a foot along with numerous smaller storms along with temperatures that bottomed out around fifteen below zero. My day job finds me in the business of selling snow throwers. After five weeks of nonstop phone calls and emergency shipments of product, everything is finally settling down and things are getting back to normal. All in all, they say it may be the worst winter in 60 years. And, unfortunately, it's not over yet.

Above is a photograph of the ten plus foot snow pile that has become a (semi-)permanent resident of our cul-de-sac.

This is a biography...

I (Joseph Vavak) am a photographer from Omaha, Nebraska that has a somewhat puzzling obsession with the mundane and the everyday. My photography is the result of what happens when someone cursed with a photographic memory and the mind of an engineer becomes wrapped up in the freedom of creating something unique to his existence.

2010 marks the completion and unveiling of ninety-three, a photographic record of the state of Nebraska. ninety-three features one photograph for every one of Nebraska's counties, the result of countless miles spent wandering my home state. It is a random collection of memories and places unlike most any portrait of Nebraska that you might have seen. ninety-three is about getting to know exactly where it is I come from and recording everything that I encountered along the way.

ninety-three will be on display at the Hot Shops Art Center in Omaha, Nebraska in May of 2010. The show will be opening during the Hot Shops' spring open house weekend.



Exhibitions
May 2006
Corning Center For The Fine Arts in Corning, Iowa
Miniseries

October 2006
W. Dale Clark Library in Omaha, Nebraska
One MWPSE Student Exhibition

November 2006
Hillmer Art Gallery in Omaha, Nebraska
Artist and Mentor Show

April 2007
The Art Of Music in Nebraska City, Nebraska
inexterior

January 2008
Hot Shops Art Center in Omaha, Nebraska
Miniseries 2.0

May 2010
Hot Shops Art Center in Omaha, Nebraska
selections from ninety-three

May 2012
Hot Shops Art Center in Omaha, Nebraska
selections from The Magic City


For references, inquiries or any other questions that you might have, please contact me at josephvavak at gmail.com.

The Oxford Project

One idea I have been saving for a rainy day, perhaps for a thesis project, is to photograph every person in a small town. And, as seems to happen with many ideas, someone has already beat me to it.

Peter Feldstein's The Oxford Project features photographs of most everyone in the small town of Oxford, Iowa. Oxford is just northwest of Iowa City and currently has around 700 residents. I've got a handful of family members buried in the town cemetery, none of which appear in this book.

Feldstein takes the idea one step further, photographing the town residents twice, once in 1984 and again in 2006. Along with the pairs of photographs, the residents were asked to describe how their life had changed in the twenty-two years since they were originally photographed.

The result is a fascinating book about the identity and growth of a small town. We see some of what has changed and what has stayed the same. Some residents talk proudly about the smallest details of their lives. Others confess to how the small town atmosphere has been suffocating. But most all seem proud to be Oxford residents, for better or worse. It's especially interesting to see how people have changed over the course of two decades and how many of the children have chosen to stay and make the town their home as adults.

A small sampling of The Oxford Project is available online at this website. The book is currently available from Welcome Books.