Tuesday, June 30, 2009

June 30 2009 Update

Hey guys! How are you all doing? I hope that you are all as well as I am. I count myself as being greatly blessed and quite fortunate to find myself again at the start of a third winter down here in New Zealand at the start of another Snowboarder’s DTS with YWAM. I did an airport run today to pick up some of the students, which was fun but quite a slap to the face as well, a strong reminder that this school is actually happening. The past several weeks we’ve been in staff training preparing for it, but now prep time is over and ready or not, here it is. I’m feeling ready enough for the school, a bit behind where I wanted to be with my own personal projects i.e. photo stuff and updates, but it’s all good.

I wanted to, as briefly as I can, get you up to date with how I am doing/have been and what I’ve been doing and what I will be doing.

I wanted to start out by sharing how my artistic/photography endeavors have progressed. A few of you may recall hearing about my being accepted as a finalist into a pretty well established New Zealand art competition, which I was pretty excited about, so I thought I should share how that ended. Basically, I didn’t win it, which I was a bit gutted about as I was really hoping, almost expecting that I would. I had it all planned out, how I was going to use the winnings (ten grand NZD) to pay off my schools and buy a camera, but as Robert Burns says “The best-laid plans of mice and men, Go oft awry”. So yeah, that plan has had to change a wee bit, which is a bit of a bummer because it seemed like such a good one. So anyway yeah, it was a bit of a disappointing finish to what was such a strong and encouraging start where I received two giant 20”x30” prints for the price of one, which even that one was paid for by an absolute stranger. However, disappointing finish aside, it was an awesome experience, which I know I was quite fortunate to be a part of – out of almost 400 entries, my piece was one of the few chosen to be shown. You can check out the website for the gallery where my piece was displayed and for the contest results at: http://coca.org.nz/exhibitions/120/

This whole art contest thing occurred during the BCC (Bible Core Course), which I attended and will speak more on latter, so on the opening night of the exhibition I grabbed a few friends and headed into town for the festivities. We had a good time attending the opening night. After finding my piece and being disappointed that it didn’t win we decided to have a look at the competition, or, uh, the other pieces on display. There was a little bit of everything there. A good mix of different medias (painting, sculpture, photography, etc.) were represented as well as the different styles within each (modern or contemporary, abstract, etc.). We found the piece that won and the three pieces that received the highly commended award and provided our obligatory commentary for each, we weren’t too impressed to say the least - blasted contemporary art! As we were preparing to leave, we found ourselves once more in front of one of the pieces awarded highly commended when one of my friend’s brothers who had come out for a brief visit all the way from Canada decided that the piece was wrongly awarded and took it upon himself to correct this dreadful mistake and award mine as being the rightful recipient of the highly commended award. The awards were simply an engraved plastic strip stuck to the wall with double sided tape so with the skills of a ninja he walked up and removed it and walked across almost the entire gallery to put it up under mine and then promptly exited. It was pretty funny. I went back a couple of days later and it seems they didn’t think too highly of our correction as they had returned it to its original location. Oh well, we tried.

So yeah, I think I’ve entered a total of five contests so far, and nothing has come out of any of them, but whatever. Almost four months ago, at the start of the BCC, I got some prints framed and put into a local gallery hoping to sell those, but those haven’t sold yet so I’m reconsidering my options there. However, the gallery has just moved to a slightly bigger town a little ways down the road so we’ll see if anything happens now with a bigger, fresher audience. I have also looked into trying to do a joint photo show with a friend at a couple of churches out here but that as well has been turned down. I’m looking at my options stateside. I’m looking into a couple of cafés but nothing’s certain yet. You can be sure though that if something does come through I’ll let you know. You can also be looking forward to a Jon Farmer photography website, which I am working on putting together, well not me but my friend Ryan Carter, but until that gets up you should check out http://jonfarmerphotography.com/, it’s not my website but I think the Jon Farmer who it belongs to bears a striking resemblance to me (you’ve got to check it out to see what I mean – it’s a good laugh).

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now, take care guys.

peaceandlove,

jon farmer


My piece with its freshly awarded Highly Commended tag on display in the gallery


A close up


‘…in the eye of the beholder’ by Jon Farmer


The contest-winning piece - 'Place Getters in a Long Distance Race' by Hannah Joynt


The “mistakenly labeled” Highly Commended piece - 'Hold (Grey)' by Marie Le Lievre


Me and the friends that came with me to the exhibition opening night in front of the Christchurch Art Museum


Matt, Dan, Hailey, Christie, Kieran, Me, Sven

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