|  |  | Welcome to the Rorshak Radar! This occasional journal is designed to keep you entertained with new images, informed about the Rorshak portfolio, and slightly perplexed with its creative approach. If you would like to keep abreast of the image-making scene in Nashville, put someone else on the radar, or escape from the radar completely, you may express yourself by completing a 2 question survey here.
For this month, the challenge was to make a rendering of surrealist artist Donny Smutz in the fashion of his own art, which you can view here at his webpage. Donny and I have shot together before in 2007, as shown below, where I took liberties with a wide angle tilt shift lens to produce heavy distortions with his face. Part of the fun of shooting Donny is that he doesn't have to appear flattering and that strangeness is a strength.
 With the license to do as I pleased, I drew from the inspiration of Pai Mai, who instructed Uma Thurman on the art of the 5-point exploding heart maneuver as well as how to escape being buried alive. If you haven't seen Kill Bill, please never mind the randomness of the reference, even though it plays heavily in this month's adventure (read on). I have saved you the trouble of doing the research: the image below connects to an informative youtube clip that anyone who feels trapped in small spaces should view.
Here are the two winning images from this month's shoot which concern this newsletter:
The image on the left involved a process of shooting a headshot of Donny, printing it out actual size with a large format printer, hanging the image from a bar with clips, and then repositioning Donny behind the print after removing parts of the image using fire and tearing. The progression of the destruction of Donny's mug is below (left to right: the original image, the picture of the printed image, the burnt image, and the hanging image). A complete gallery of this shoot's images is located here.
 After having tarnished a perfectly good printout of Donny's face, it only made sense that I should subsequently bury him alive. Poor Donny had to stick his head through a huge cardboard box and breathe under a towel while I poured black mulch all over his head. What a trooper! After clearing just enough mulch away to reveal his face, shards of the tarnished portrait were laid over the mulch to piece his image back together. My favorite part of the resulting image (far right) is that the 'actual' Donny has a slightly cold, bluish skin tone-especially noticeable on his hand, adding a chilling, surrealist effect.
Thank you for reading this far into the first RORSHAK RADAR newsletter- an extension of a newsletter/blog that I've been producing for a few years. Previous newsletters can be read here. Have a wonderful spring! Rory | | | | |  | | |
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