The Good News
"Star (Mickey Gilley)" part of my solo show @ The Los Angeles Center for Digital Art
July 12th - August 4th 2018 | Artist Reception: July 14th 6-9 @ LACDA
"Hollywood" a solo exhibition by Jared Fortunato @ the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art
Exhibition Dates: July 12th - August 4th 2018
Artist Reception: July 14th, 6-9 pm
Los Angeles Center for Digital Art | 104 East 4th Street, LA | CA
I have news to share— great news. One month shy of my graduation and thesis show, I’ve got two more events on the horizon. Big ones.
First, my Hollywood project will be showing in a solo exhibition at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, opening reception July 14th. The show runs until August 4th, and if you weren’t able to make it up to San Francisco to see it there, now’s your chance. All 8 pieces will be included as well as two new large scale prints from the project that haven’t been exhibited publicly before. I’m humbled and excited.
Second: One of my prints was selected into the Los Angeles Center for Photography’s member show. That’s a big deal to me: they had over 1,200 submissions, and one of my images made the top 40 cut. Again, humbled, thrilled, and excited. *more on that in another post.
And yet.
Part of me, honestly, feels a little strange promoting my work on social media, to friends, on my website. I can’t see past the horrifying events in the news: the detentions, the separations, the utter collapse of compassion at the highest levels.
Who am I to talk about my art?
I thought about this question a lot. And I realized very quickly that I don’t have the luxury of sitting back and feeling scared. My art is my service. I wrote in my thesis that my goal as a photographer was to bring light into dark places, to record the beauty of the mundane, to document the magic of the everyday.
I’d let the tragedy of our current political moment distract me from my purpose. That’s the most frightening thing I realized as I sat to construct this little post: how effectively I’d been rendered hopeless. Helpless. Immobilized by the forces that would have me believe that nothing I could do could help.
Forget that.
I’m an artist. I use my craft to understand the world a little better, and hope that you, by viewing it, will be inspired to use your gift to bring more light into the world.
Come out if you can- to either event. And no worries if you can’t. All I ask is that you look for your gift, your light, and shine it bright.