The Artistic Process | Virtually Gina

A Moment Worth Recording

September 4, 2022 by Gina Marie

“Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation. A photograph is a result of the photographer’s decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object has been seen. If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless. A photograph celebrates neither the event itself nor the faculty of sight in itself. A photograph is already a message about the event it records. The urgency of this […]

Categories: America, Brooklyn, Journal, New York City, NYC, Photo Essay, Photo Journal, Photography, The Artistic Process, Urban • Tags: Brooklyn, New York City, Photography, Urban

The Fruits of My Labors

September 21, 2016 by Gina Marie

While undergoing an intensive yoga training in Minneapolis over the summer, I learned the Sanskrit term svadyaya, or “self-study.” Much to my surprise, I discovered that reading Tarot cards or other types of divination decks (something I’ve been doing since high school) falls under the svadyaya category. Rather than seeing this activity as “occult,” one can simply see it as a method of getting acquainted with oneself in a deep and meaningful manner. During the training, we would often be invited […]

Categories: Divination, Minneapolis, Photography, The Artistic Process, Yoga • Tags: Divination, Minneapolis, The Artistic Process, Yoga

Buried Treasure

January 24, 2016 by Gina Marie

The new year brings with it an opportunity to declutter one’s life and see things with brand new eyes. Beneath all the clutter, I sometimes find buried treasure — old artwork, journal entries, poetry, and photos that meant a lot to me on this journey to adulthood. The work featured below is a mixed media piece called “Two Men Walking Towards the Light.” In order to create symmetry in this piece, I digitally mirrored an original photo of a man walking through an archway beneath Philadelphia’s City Hall. […]

Categories: Art, Collage, Life, Mixed Media, Personal, Philadelphia, Photography, The Artistic Process, Urban • Tags: Art, Collage, Journey, Mixed Media, Philadelphia, Photography, The Artistic Process, Urban

Prospero Año y Felicidad

December 29, 2015 by Gina Marie

On Christmas Eve Day, I took my dog for a stroll along the beach. The weather was unseasonably warm — almost 70 degrees. After a mile or so, we came upon this message in the sand, and I snapped a pic using my camera phone. Using the BeFunky app on my phone, I combined the image above with a photo of the full moon taken last summer. The final result, displayed below, made for a muy feliz navidad. In the words of Jose Feliciano: […]

Categories: Beaches, Christmas, Collage, Holidays, Moon, New Jersey, Photo Journal, Photography, The Artistic Process • Tags: Feliz Navidad, New Year

Philadelphia Dreaming

October 22, 2013 by Gina Marie

Philadelphia Dreaming is a simple digital collage created by blending two jpeg images. The image below left was found via Google image search using the search term “Philadelphia skyline view.” The image below right is a photo collage based on the painting, “Flaming June,” by Sir Frederic Leighton. Each image was scaled to match the other. I blended the two and adjusted the transparency using lunapic.com, a free online photo editing tool. Pleased with the results, I couldn’t help but […]

Categories: Art, Collage, Painting, Philadelphia, The Artistic Process, Urban • Tags: Art, Collage, Painting, Philadelphia, The Artistic Process, Urban

Breathing New Life into a Work of Art

July 9, 2013 by Gina Marie

For a visual artist, appearances are everything. Careful care and consideration must be taken in order to create a work that is both visually stimulating and capable of producing a visceral response. Whether the finished product is two-dimensional (e.g., a photograph, painting or collage) or three-dimensional (e.g., a sculpture or piece of jewelry), an artist living nowadays will likely find it necessary to encapsulate his/her work in a JPEG file, which can then be posted online or submitted to various […]

Categories: Art, Inspiration, Philadelphia, Photography, Sculpture, The Artistic Process • Tags: Art, Inspiration, Philadelphia, Photography, Sculpture, The Artistic Process

The Evolution of an Image

April 8, 2013 by Gina Marie

“The creative process does not end with an idea–it only starts with an idea.” –John Arnold (1913-1963) I was walking home one night at dusk, when I saw this bike parked in my neighborhood. The nearby streetlamps cast eerie shadows on the sidewalk in front of me. I snapped a picture of it for posterity’s sake. Upon arriving home, I uploaded the image to my computer and adjusted the color saturation, etc., resulting in the following image. At some point, […]

Categories: Acrylic, Art, Bicycles, Mixed Media, Photography, The Artistic Process • Tags: Acrylic, Art, Bicycles, Mixed Media, Photography, The Artistic Process