Chicago Artist Coalition: I'm the Artist to Watch

The Chicago Artist Coalition, is this wonderful artist organization that I have been a member of for maybe like 1 or 2 years now. CAC is very much about educating artists about different professional practices, as well as educating the general public about the importance of visual arts to society. To sum it up the CAC is really dope for artists. I've really learned from them, how to step up and just put myself out there in this art world
I received an email from Olga, the executive director of CAC, about being nominated for the Chicago Artist to Watch program. Whoa!!! This is purely God. I mean, I dont really consider myself to be such an artist that would be chosen for such a honor. I mean, I am not really the type of deep photographer with super deep focuses on huge ideals, but maybe its exciting that people see my work for more than just a hot chick standing on a corner or something. I feel that my work is pretty literal and it comes from me and my surroundings. I must say that I am pretty excited about this, until I learned that I have to give a lecture about my work. OH MY GOSH!, please someone shoot me now. I haven't given a speech since my basic public speaking class during my sophomore year in college. Perhaps this is the type of discipline I need for the year. All of this work with the CAC has really made me focus on my photography especially the ,
documentary projects that I want to begin. Sometimes I just need a little push, and CAC has given me that.

I guess I never really explained who I was

I guess it would be good if I just say a little bit about myself. I mean, I am not sure if anyone is even reading this but I guess still, its nice to have a little intro about myself. Well my name is Stephanie Graham. I am a visual artist, Wow! I have never really called myself that before, but in a nut shell that is what I am. I'm a filmmaker and a photographer. I want to start getting into doing small installation videos, so look out for those too. I am not a writer by any means, but films are also time consuming so for the time being I am going to write on this blog. With both my photography and my films, I am interested in youth culture, subcultures, like black suburbia, and rich people, especially rich people, poor people. That's sort of the world I grew up in but my family is not millionaires, at any freakin-rate. So yeah thats me, just a fly chocolate girl out there documenting the familiar