Annalise DeVries

life in the making

Trained as a historian, my mind constantly asks, where did this come from, how did it get this way, and why? I find myself applying those questions to all of the places I go and things I do. Whether it's a trip to a new place or a walk around the corner, an interview for a magazine story or preparing for a lecture, the ingredients in a recipe or a new arts and crafts project, my work is about the ongoing discovery of how the various facets of life are made. My curiosities lie with the processes that constitute our experiences. Here I have included my varied explorations into the how and why of my surroundings.

Graphic Arts: Tazewell Morton, fresh style magazine, Nov/Dec 2014

November 01, 2014 by Annalise DeVries in Editorial writing

BLACK SILHOUETTES ON a brightly colored background, faces stylistically painted in overlapping profiles, musicians on wheels, a crab playing cards—such is the multifaceted portfolio of Tazewell Morton. After more than 60 years as a professional artist, he does not describe his career as a particular kind of progression. “I’ve worked in so many different directions,” he says instead. “I just enjoy doing whatever it is I’m doing.”

Tazewell can point to the consistent influence of modernist artists like Picasso, and the graphic quality gleaned from years in advertising. His achievements include a stint at Auburn University’s art department, his alma mater, where he designed a university flag that traveled to the moon aboard Apollo 16 with fellow alumnus and astronaut Ken Mattingly. Tazewell also spent nearly 30 years working with advertising firms in New Orleans, Birmingham, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Chicago, and Boston.

Caught on Film: Lara Porzak, fresh style magazine, Sept/Oct 2014

September 01, 2014 by Annalise DeVries in Editorial writing

LARA PORZAK HAS JUST RETURNED from 10 days in the woods. The fine art photographer traveled from her home near Venice Beach to New Mexico, then to Colorado and, finally, all the way to New Hampshire making tintypes. “I’ll follow anybody anywhere if they’re doing tintypes,” she says, referring to a 19th-century photography style where chemicals produce an image on metal. Says Laura, “It’s one of the messiest things you can do.”

No matter the physical labor or volatile chemicals involved, Lara commits herself to the particular photographic aesthetic you cannot preview on the back of a digital camera. Using old techniques—from the Leonardo pinhole camera to the century-old daguerreotype to the 1960s Diana—she captures raw emotions, even spiritual sensibilities in grainy shades of gray.