My name is Mark Crummett. Right now (11/07) I am a photo lab tech in a one-hour photo lab. I have been involved in photography and photojournalism in one form for another for most of my life. I've been a U.S. Army photographer (like my dad), a journalism student, a newspaper photographer, a photo editor, a telephone tech support person (yucko!), a university photographer (briefly), a warehouseman (double yucko!) and now back to photography again.
I've been creating these objet d'art for the past couple of years. I've been heavily influenced by my late father, Clovis Crummett. I grew up surrounded by his collages, constructions and assemblages of found materials. He, in turn, was a great fan of Joseph Cornell and his shadow boxes.
To this day I look at my father's work and am dumbstruck by the simplicity and feeling of the work. How can some torn paper, playing cards and bits of wood evoke such feelings? I've been surrounded by his work for as long as I can remember. It was such a part of my childhood that it never occurred to me to ask him "why?" It just "was." I'll always regret not taking the time to sit down and talk with him about his art. I know he would have been happy and proud that I was pursuing similar work.
Favorite books/authors
Neal
Stephenson
The Big U
Zodiac
Snow Crash
Diamond Age
Cryptonomicon
Quicksilver
The Sprawl series
Nueromancer
Count Zero
Mona Lisa OverdriveBurning Chrome
The Difference Engine
The Bridge series
Virtual Light
Idoru
All Tomorrows Parties
One of my biggest literary disappointments, though, involves WG and another favorite author, Bruce Sterling. "The Difference Engine" has an intriguing idea- Charles Babbage's mechanical computer was actually built--and caught on--in mid-18th century England, and changed society. The McGuffin of the story is a box of ivory punch cards, a program by Ida Lovelace, that everyone is looking for. <SPOILER COMING!> I was hoping it would be some earth-shattering new technology, discovered a century before its time, but no. It's just a way to predict the spin of a roulette wheel. No small feat in the 1860s, but something of a letdown nonetheless.
Favorite movies
Hunt for Red October
Real
Genius
The
Thin Man series
The Music Man
Death
on the Nile
Casablanca
- "La Marseilles"
always makes me cry.
Shrek -Iworked
at Sears for a while. When this DVD came out, they played it
constantly in the electronics dept. Everytime I walked
through, I had to stop and watch for a while. I usually ended
up watching it again within a day or two!
The Incredibles-
All time favorite film. Most movies have some kind of heart-tugging
moment, scripted and manipulated to choke you up. This movie has three moments, moments that are organic and integral to the story, that make me cry, every time.
Any and all of the Lord of the Rings trilogy
Favorite visual artists
Favorite TV shows
We don't watch very much broadcast TV- it's boring and embarrasingly
inane. But when I do get into a show, I really get into
it, almost to the point of obsession. My wife, Lisa the Video
Queen, has over 500 video tapes and more than 300 DVDs, so we
mostly watch movies, especially mysteries and old musicals.
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (The Las Vegas version)
The X-Files
Daria
Mystery Science Theater 3000
Favorite Computer
The only computer that really matters- the Apple
Macintosh.