Thomas grew up in Northern California where he fell in love with music and photography while going to punk shows and shooting skate photos. He photography in college, which may or may not qualify him to host an art podcast. When he's not working on Art Uncovered, Thomas works as photographer, retoucher, and audio editor and also plays guitar in the band Sleepies. He lives in Queens, New York, for now.
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Janaye Brown
Still from Cocktail Party Video artist Janaye Brown makes single-shot videos based around the surreal and mundane moments of everyday life. In a four minute piece called Cocktail Hour, a room filled with fog slowly clears to reveal two figures sitting awkwardly in a living room as a clock is heard ticking off screen. In another video, called Late Spring, we watch for two minutes as insects swarm around a brightly lit bell tower. The Lynchian piece Rocks, With Salt frames a blank patch of sand on the beach that appears to be breathing. Janaye's style of long static shots, paired with beautiful cinematography, and minimal narrative grew out of a fascination with experimental filmmakers like Chantelle Ackerman and Yasujiro Ozu as well as pioneers of "slow cinema" like Michelangelo Antonioni. A few week ago I meet up with Janaye Brown in Brooklyn to find out more about her work. We talked about some of her videos, slow cinema, and the difference between showing her work at a film festivals versus an art gallery. Still from Rocks With Salt Still from Late Spring Still from Swan Song Cocktail Hour installation view Playlist 00:00 - Intro 02:29 - Influences 03:38 - Grad School Experiments 05:00 - Slow Cinema 06:39 - Red Desert 07:57 - Process 10:19 - Finding Narrative 12:20 - Cocktail Hour 15:18 - People 17:06 - Roy Andersson 20:55 - Photography 23:05 - Rocks With Salt 25:37 - Last Night 27:52 - Relative Slowness 31:31 - Gravity 33:37 - Film Festivals and Art Galleries 37:15 - Knausgaard 41:21 - Finish