Baby Steps...September 9-11

Use of photography…we can’t remember everything.  We can only really remember very few things - so many of our experiences become a distant memory – fuzzy in our mind’s eye, my art is about a particular moment in time, an interaction with a specific space or time – a struggle/growth – a moment that I want to remember…how do I make these images not arbitrary?  Why would someone else be interested?

Idea: A series of crowds highlighting different people in the mass – see how that changes the content and composition.

These artworks need to make the transition from being specific portraits, to a collective experience – (idea: use collage to incorporate a specific time or place, i.e. today’s newspaper or the brochure to a specific art opening or concert…)

Do I want to capture the specific culture of boarding schools?  Yes, but the contract and consent forms make me crazy.  Chapel, convocation, dining hall (seated meals or buffet), art openings, classes, games.  Then what?  Find the figures who seem out of place, awkward…

WAIT!  I am McKenzie’s parent.  I ought to use her.  I certainly don’t want to loose these memories.  It is so true; I am absolutely scared of forgetting.  Interesting...  I could even have them take photographs of her at daycare.  I want to “remember” these moments too – even though I am not there.  I hate that I am not there – I can just change my memories, make memories of being there.  If we know anything it is that we can create our own memories through making up stories to go with the photographs of our childhood.  What is that called?  Unreliable – creating a memory to fill a void with pictures and stories, fabrication, fuzzy…  Hummm, interesting.  I am trying to do what it seems like everyone in the world is telling me, “enjoy these times while you can…” 

SAVE MOMENTS

I can use photos I already have of our wedding, birthdays, McKenzie’s growth: pregnancy, labor, hospital, birth, rock to sleep, bottle, sleeping, rolling over, crawl, stand, reach, stroll, play, grab, observe, interact.  Using McKenzie is a good idea – she is small and strangely shaped (which interestingly enough are the ones in my series that are formally working).  Have the figure holding McKenzie be the negative space; this way her figure will start interacting with the background.  Hummm, archive, journal pages, newspaper, assignment sheet, to do list…because there is always a meanwhile…

I resonate with the idea of my figure becoming the background because I do – I am now insignificant, all except my trace.  I am trying to make these moments of McKenzie permanent/archival.

As I get excited about my kids at Asheville School, I get really excited about my own child.  Surely others will be affected, touched.  The silhouette strips away any specific identity, so I can begin to use Asheville School faculty families.  I can even start to use pregnant women on the streets, or strollers, or anybody that is “younger” than us because I am chronologically recording.  Otherwise, it starts to get sloppy – “remembering” events that have not even happened yet - almost like I am trying to create the future. 

There is an irony in all of this that cannot be ignored and that is by existing behind the camera – I am, by the nature of photography, not being here now.  There is not only literally something in between me and my baby (the camera), but also a strange mindset of being in the future.  Before the capture button is pushed – “I hope this is a good one that I can use later” or “Oh shit, I missed that moment”.  There is a perpetual then or later – too soon or too late – passing or going.

… Exploring – The Answers… (September 1st)

Formal and Technical Aspects: 

I have been working back into my images – sanding out information, the sharp shape begins to disappear into the background.  In comparing the older and newer images, it is clear to me the sanded ones are beginning to do something more – they are reacting to the space around them.  The figures with the hula hoops give us something to push against, a frame of reference.  I want to try tracing paper, different shapes of birch panels (same general size), multiple figures to add a little more dialogue, not treating the panel in a uniform way.  I do not want to be arbitrary in my process, in selecting color, figure, scale, how I interact with the panel (rounded edges)…

Conceptual Exploration:

Take formal out:  How does this fulfill a conceptual goal? What am I doing?  Once I can figure that out then I can focus on why I do each specific step in the process.  Right now, I am making lots and lots of images and every now and then there is one or two that work.  If I can problem solve this then there will be a specific process and then maybe there will be one or two every now and then that don’t work. DON’T MAKE YOUR VIEWER FEEL STUPID. Make it easy for the viewer to have a dialogue with the images. Here we go…

There is still a disconnect in what I am thinking, saying, and writing.  I hear myself saying that movement and change are important, but these images don’t display that.  Process is important, sure. What attracts me to these people?  They all seem to have specific age and gender.  What makes us notice people in a crowd? What, other than formal issues, makes me settle on a figure?  Is there an attachment – no, well, maybe.  There is something about memory that is BIG but I am having trouble forming the words.  It could be I am excited or worried about losing the memory.  If so, if memory is so important, then let’s go there.  Memory.  Photo album.  Why would someone else want to look at my photo album to be a participant in my memories?  How can I make them more applicable to everyone?  Memories. What do people want to remember: birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, events, growing up (or rather when they were younger)?  What happens when your perception changes?  This happens to everyone as thy grow and learn.  How does that change then change your memory?  Lots of traces and then one silhouette (silhouette is good because it makes it not specific to my memories).  

Thinking and Exploring: Process, Formal, Conceptual, and Influences.

More Thinking – Why (August 14th)

Because we cannot help but look, it is like sitting on a street corner…I cannot help but look at the people who pass.  It could be that I know them or want to pass judgment or want to make a story or am simply assessing the situation.  Without signifiers the forms act as a blank slate – tableau rasa.  The shapes, likes are interesting to me – I want to make sense of the contours, the baggage – when someone is carrying a bag, a broom and dust pan, a hula hoop, a baby – we start making a story, putting them in a box, casting judgment (why does that work keep coming up?) – Rewind – the figure and their accessories become fused, one, united, part of the same shape…

Brainstorming – The Questions (August 6th):

What…the figure?  Why?  What is it about the human form that does it for you?  Attracts you – that wants to make more?  Why the silhouette, trace, archive? A moment preservation of humanity, why these particular people?  What is it about that person?  Why that pose?  Ephemeral, ethereal, ineffable?  What are you trying to say about this person?  Why wood panel?  Why is it important to have the paint sit on top of the wood?  Try burning it into the wood (retina) – memory, mind…  Why are you stripping away the inner indicators – contour lines?  Why such sharp edges?  What parts of your process are absolutely necessary to your larger concept?  You need another layer.  Try using collage – or just the traces on the tracing paper.  Insignificance, solitude, sublimity, oneness, aloneness, singularity?  How do you plan on exhibiting these images?  Why?  All in a row, like flashes, a time line, a story, or individually with lots of space in between, or randomly?  Take these words you have chosen and really think about why – what ones are significant – which ones are just fillers?  What would happen if you used your students – coworkers – their kids?  What do I then want to say about this particular community, these people – why?  What if you chose people you didn’t know – how would the ‘contract’ then play out?

Processing and Reflecting (August 3rd):

There is disconnect between the writing and the artwork.  There is not a trace, shadow, etc.  There is not quite an essence, entropy, and it is not yet ethereal.  There is not the illusion of insignificance, tininess, aloneness. They are too big in their frame and too hard edged, like a stamp.  “Fool me,” my mentor says, “make me say, hey, what is going on there; how did the artist create that?”  If you are going to use wood – search for the grain that works.  For example, think of how powerful this piece would be if you put a knot in the wood grain right in her crotch.  That would take it to the next level  If you are trying to describe the ephemeral then why not use the actual tracing paper?  Think about collage.  Figure out why you are using the figure.  What is it about the figure?  You aren’t going to write a story that is generic – your visual language – you better say something, otherwise, the viewer is going to walk away feeling stupid.