jcastrortsac

[jcastrortsac]

Finally got to flick my chair inside my room. This is where I sit to read western novels and listen to trap. Made from materials found in construction sites. There’s steel from a construction barricade 🚧, emt conduit pipes, sheet metal from found notice for development signage, plywood, and rivets because I don’t have a welder. Upholstered with a yard of @marimekko Kaivo pattern. Inspo: Rodney Mullen and @piet_hein_eek

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The Wire (London, UK)

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[jcastrortsac]

Former MGM cinema (1956) in Berlin, Germany, by Gerhard Fritsche. Demolished in 1977.

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[jcastrortsac]

@SoudaBrooklyn / @architecturenow: Posted by Souda Recent releases from Souda: Pi Mirror, Signal Floor Light, Profile Chair, Signal Sconce, More

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Richard Tuttle Dallas (9 pencil lines), 1970 Watercolor and graphite

[jcastrortsac]

Project IV

The Book 

On each critique somebody would ask, Where do you see your photographs being displayed? Since this series had to be in the form of a book I drove my concept to make a mock autobiography told in photographs. I thought about what Julius Shulman said in a documentary, “ If you can’t be it, Shoot it.” In my lifetime I have wanted to be an architect, artist, poet and designer. This series of twenty photographs dedicates 5 photographs to each of the professions mentioned. The objects featured are my work and relics relating to each of those professions. 

Architect 

Artist 

Poet 

Designer

[jcastrortsac]

Project III

“The Self”

For this project I took self portraits with objects that hold a significant meaning and have influenced me enough to be the person i am today. 

The Encyclopedia. That was a gift from a family friend to  who thought I was smart. It was in those 24 volumes where at the age of twelve I looked up my interest of art and architecture. There I found a plate photograph of Falling Water which left a big impression on me. I also got to learn how to draw n perspective by looking it up in that set. 

The Hammer. That is an ambiguous picture that deals with the relationship between my father and I. He has taught me to work. His absence in the frame  represents the lack of communication there is but my stretched out hand and the hammer represents that there is a transmission between us, it just may not be conventional. 

Frames 

This portrait was taken with two of my most ambitious and creatively challenging works. The series of frames is one of the fist abstract ideas I was able to visually represent. Each frame is a word that was written out while spinning at 33 ½ rpm on a record player to construct a sentence of a paraphrased quotation from the singer song writer Townes Van Zandt where the premise and conclusion read; “ I don’t envision a very long life / I’ve designed it that way.” I fabricated the frames and the table, all skills learned in woodworking where I developed better craftsmanship. 

Trucker Jacket

An icon of a laborer

Ramones Shirt 

First band important to me, introduced by Mr. Griffiths my fifth grade teacher on a field trip to Monterey. 

[jcastrortsac]

Project II

“The Night”

A struggle with shut eye and paralysis. 

[jcastrortsac]

Project I, “Our World” 

At the end of the avenue there was a house more modest than the rest. From the sidewalk I could look though a window with no curtain that framed a living room where an elderly woman sat at a sofa, with elbows angled at her knees as her hands supported her bowing head illuminated by the television glow in front of her. It was the only thing worth shooting I had seen all day, but I just stood at the sidewalk with my toes at the edge of the lawn and I didn't even raise my camera from the side of my hip. It would of been such a powerful photograph. I went home and for a week I was so bothered i decided to return and hope to find her again. Just seven days after February 14th I returned to the lady’s house to find a “For Sale” sign staked on the lawn. the windows lacked the same privacy and i could see that absolutely everything was gone. I contemplated for another week and the Sunday before critique I returned to the house and shot it empty to make a lesson out of it and encapsulate this experience of a lost opportunity and what my insecurities and indecisiveness made me miss. Fortunately there was one light left on in the bathroom that allowed me to take these photographs