Second Skin
Film Photograph, 2019.
Behind The Art
Unbeknown to us, a journal entry my dear friend Jules (pictured above) wrote recently was synonymous to a fleeting portrait I took of her more than half-year earlier. While deep in discussion I gasped at the similarities of the (than) embryo stage of my photo project Metamorphosis to the matured and thoughtful writing of the muse. Jules has graced me with permission to publish her journal-entry below.
“…In the chaotic throes of this quarantine, I’ve washed in and out of behavioral tides, moving between a gradient of action - reaching out, bringing back, processing, going within - inaction. Then the process reverses again and again, like the breaths of accordion bellows in song. Creating has been a welcomed guide through these tempestuous weeks. My body has been shedding a skin in isolation, which is a deeply uncomfortable process after living daily among a vast network of people in Seattle; they sort of just pulled it off for me as they rushed around me without me having to worry about it so much. I will never take that sense of community for granted again, I’ve vowed, because I didn’t realize they were doing that for me as much as they were. Those waves were happening, but they were so intense and productive…”
The Poets Memory 2
Blue Ink on Cyanotype, 2020.
Behind The Art
Sparked by a commission, I created a third cyanotype piece similar to a work named “The Poets Memory” seen in my sisters home on the Art Inside Homes page of this website. Cyanotypes are prints, ghosts of an original object. They possess a fading blue quality that can only be fulfilled with full sunlight.
The end of summer surprised me, the sun was dim blocked by clouds. With paper and lavender laid out outside I could only get a faint white shadow of the lavender I had admired from a lawn of an empty home next door to my own. Yet, I had a commission to fulfill.I had to do something different than a simple cyanotype. I than thought ‘why don’t I draw on top of the shadow?’ I quickly grabbed a blue ink pen and started a still life drawing. The image came out beautifully and even more poetic than I had anticipated. A drawing of a ghost of an object. I am grateful for the need of innovation, otherwise I would not have set ink onto paper.
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The name of both pieces is inspired by a quote from the film, “The Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” In the film, “Marianne reads the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice aloud to Héloïse and Sophie, and the three trouble over Orpheus’ reasons for looking back in the final moments of his wife’s rescue, thereby dooming her to Hades for eternity. Maybe, Héloïse suggests, ‘Orpheus made the poet’s choice, rather than the lover’s; perhaps memory has the power to preserve love and beauty beyond the boundary of life and death.’ The myth works in the film on several levels, lending its metaphors to offer Portrait a notable tightness of narrative closure and fulfillment, refusing an easy ending while flawlessly avoiding cliché.” - MsMagazine.com
In both hues of green
are seen
Acrylic, Asian paper, dye, graphite ,and thread on wood panel, 2020.
Behind The Art
I was commissioned to paint a piece for the father of a friend of mine. His father is a violinist and each time he plays a specific note he can see hues of green. I was awed by the fact of someone being able to explore music and color simultaneously and wanted to experiment with the idea of watching notes move in the air like a tangible object. I cannot see music like synesthesia people do, but I imagine it to be similar to watching leaves sway in a breeze. Just as a lyric or note can be heard one moment, in the next it dissipates. I tend to watch leaves fly in the air, in a glimpse they’ve gone from buoyant adventurers swaying in the breeze to still observers laying on the ground.
The text on the panel says, “Something sways in a breeze - you compose music from string - in both, hues of green are seen.”
“I do Really like you”, I had forgotten what feeling damned was like.
Asian paper, wild carrot, thread, tape and sourced milkweed dye on paper, 2019
Behind The Art.
This piece was made out of a need to express my frustration with relationships. The flower so delicately pressed to paper reminded me of the feelings of “wanting”, to keep something that seems precious alive for as long as possible when in fact it may have been better left to grow alone in the grass.
Wading through I see and Ponder
Dye, graphite, charcoal, conte, paper, fabric, handmade paper, and pins on 13' by 16' wall, found objects, and dyed paper in frames. 2018
Behind The Art
For one of my exit solo exhibitions at Illinois State University I tirelessly constructed paper and fabric onto a 16 foot wall. Each fragment was held up by pins and intuitively pieced together on sight. At the time I was interested in creating a space for silence, contemplation, search and play. I was determined to experience a large scale version of microscopic, fluid like, and dirty particles and bits ripped and piled together. Adjacent to the paper mass was a wall painted yellow which floated a painting with an imprint of an envelope on it reading “I’m Home”. Viewers were permitted to sit on the stool and walk around the space with ease.