MosaicGlobe - Your free artist portfolio website, blog and art directory

Why do you do what you do?
This is an easy question: I am simply compelled to do it. Not a day goes by when I don't think about photography - either about making a new image or remembering an event or person from the past, getting an idea and running with it.

How long have you been at it?
Although I had a Brownie Starmite camera when I was just a kid, my Dad bought me my first "real" 35mm camera when I was in high school and photography has been part of my life ever since. Although I always thought I would end up becoming a documentary photographer, my path took a different turn. Out of college I started working for ILFORD - I worked there for 25 years, all the while continuing to make photographs, teach workshops in photography across the country, edit a newsletter for photography teachers. A few years ago while working full time, I completed my Master of Fine Arts Degree in Studio Art, concentrating on digital imaging and photography. When I left corporate life last year, I decided to start my own business and WAZOBIRD STUDIO was born.

Can you tell us more about your work?
My commercial work at WAZOBIRD STUDIO (http://www.wazobirdstudio.com/) is all about making art for interior decor. My clients, for the most part, are interior designers and retail design, garden and antique shops. I create original photographs of various botanicals, flowers, herbs, vegetables and leaves, and specialize in custom work. For example, I can work with a specific flower or type of textile to help a designer 'complete' a room. I print my photographs on fine art papers and canvas as well as textiles that a designer can use for pillows or curtains. My work has a very distinctive look.

My recent personal work (http://www.wendyerickson.com/) is about the things around us that we may not notice - two portfolios "Adjacent Suburbia" and "Evolution" provide a glimpse into a world that some people might miss on their everyday journeys. The images are sometimes dark and moody, other times amusing or shocking, but they all make the viewer take another look and think about what they are seeing. I had a great experience a few years ago while hanging a show of this work in a hospital gallery. One of the women working there came up to a photograph and said "Oh That's Manderlay - from the Alfred Hitchcock movie Rebecca - it looks exactly how I remember it."  I took it as a compliment - that someone saw something from a 1940's film that was nominated for 11 Academy Awards (well before I was born!) in one of my photographs. It was a shot taken not 5 miles from the hospital of course but I love how photographs bring people back to another time.

These personal images are shot on black and white film, and printed digitally using quad black Piezotone inks. However, none of them are digitally manipulated, they show exactly what I saw when I pushed the shutter button.

What work are you most proud of?
This is a difficult question. Two things come to mind: One was completing my MFA Degree - I always wanted to go back and do it, but was too busy working and traveling and working some more. It was so much work and I learned a lot about why I make photographs. The other thing is my project called "The Calling Ground -American Camp Meeting" - It's a documentary project that took 5 years to shoot, involved an amazing amount of research, and a great deal of travel across the US and Canada. I put this project aside when I went to Grad school, and I hope to pull it all together soon.

What advice would you give to an artist just starting out?
I think an artist has to be "out there" and must experience the little things in daily life: travel is very important, and I don't mean family vacations. I mean getting in a car and driving somewhere by yourself, or getting on a plane and going on a great journey: meeting people, seeing new places, looking at all kinds of art. Be sure to take notes or keep a journal - you might want to read it thirty or forty years from now!

Paying attention to events in your own life are very important. You probably don't realize it now, but you will find that your art ultimately revolves around the things that are most important and dear to you. And 'growing up' as a person and an artist is something that takes time. That's what makes it such a great adventure. Enjoy every minute of the journey.

How are you using MosaicGlobe?
I had both sites registered for quite some time. One only had a holding page (it was terrible.) My business site was live, and had been designed for me by a web designer - I was frustrated by not being able to tweak the site myself, or make updates in a timely manner, so I came across MosaicGlobe. I created two MosaicGlobe accounts and "pointed" my web pages to them. I need two separate sites so I don't give my one set of clients a "mixed message."

I am a photographer, writer, and small business owner...I am not a web designer. I don't have time to teach myself Dreamweaver, but I do have a very clear idea of what I want my websites to look like, and I need professional looking, easy to navigate sites. MosaicGlobe gives me just that. I'm able to create pages, add galleries, upload photographs "on the fly," and best of all,I can get my monthly news and journals updated instantly!

The other great thing about MosaicGlobe is that it works flawlessly with my Macs. A lot of other "Do it yourself" web creation programs with only work with a PC, or work poorly with a Mac. The feature of uploading photographs for the galleries is very simple and straight forward.

I have a link to Mosaic Globe on my sites so everyone else can make their own web page too!. I can't tell you how many people I have already referred to you: artists, painters, photographers, musicians. What more could any artist want, a web site that is within their skill set to create, with total control over how their galleries, words, even sounds will appear. I'm totally sold on it!

With new updates I can now monitor traffic on my pages too! FAB!

http://www.wazobirdstudio.com/
(http://wazobirdstudio.mosaicglobe.com)

http://www.wendyerickson.com/
(http://birdbird.mosaicglobe.com/)

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