Letting go

God, I used to love to swing. Sitting on the edge of that hot plastic seat and feeling the clunky metal chains always gave me butterflies. I'd pump my little legs and lean back into the wind and feel it sweep of my face. Filled to the brim with excitement, loving the feeling of blood rushing, wind whistling and the top bar creaking when I swung a little too high. My friends and I always used to dare each other to jump, to see who could land the farthest. And I'd be nervous, tingling with the fear of letting go. Then I'd gather some courage and jump, sometimes landing on my butt in the sand.

I know some kids who know some kids who have sprained or broken their wrists this way but for me it was always worth the risk. I still love to swing but don't make it to the playground very often these days. I got older. I'm continuing to get older. :) And I have developed a fear of falling. I get nightmares sometimes about walking up stairs, tripping and slamming my jaw into the concrete. I got pretty queasy the first few drives over the new bridge to Clearwater beach, after the pilings fell in twice during construction. I'm becoming more cautious. We don't jump back into action like we did when we were 5 or 6. Don't heal as quickly and (at least) my brain can't seem to adapt to absorbing new pain and letting it go.

This applies to a lot of areas in my life right now, especially as I continue working on "The Catharsis Project." Every time I feel I've conquered a mountain I get emotionally drained, sit a moment, then brush off my knees with elation. "I know I'm tired but I finished a piece!" However, when my eyes raise off the ground to see the path ahead of me all I can see is that I'm still a long ways off from my destination. The horizon is still littered with hills, peaks and valleys. I understand that each obstacle is going to teach a lesson and help me grow as a person and as an artist, but I still have trouble convincing myself it's worth the sweat and pain I put into it.

I see little kids skim boarding at the beach all summer. Maybe it's because they don't have as far to fall before they hit the ground but they are resilient little buggers. They'll hit a rogue wave then get up immediately to do it again. Today I'm focusing on channeling that little, fearless me. And part of that entails letting go of frustrations. I have scoured my apartment, done my meds, met with a very inspirational friend for lunch, and completely re-done my website slide shows. (Please check them out, I'm terribly excited!) :)

Today I'd like to remind myself (and you) that eventually we can get to where we want to be. Whatever you're struggling with today, I'd like to encourage you to take a deep breath. When you exhale let go of the frustration and give thanks for something positive happening in your life. It could be as small as your breath, or the extent of emotion that allows us to feel good and bad, a smile from a stranger, a determination to keep moving, friends, family, health, AMEN!

Breathing Room

Weather Patterns

So. A year ago, if you had asked me what I do, I would have said that I was a photographer. If you asked me today, I would say that I am primarily a photographer.

A camera is a machine. I look. I see. I frame. I capture. Paintings use the whole body. More than my eyes and my brain and one finger. You use your whole arm, you can be aggressive or gentle, you can express a mood with a single brush stroke or by varying your impasto. You can eliminate and add content at whim. You can layer, and layer and layer until you are pleased; simplify down to basic shapes, or work in elaborate detail. Paintings require more work, more consideration, more awareness of color and feeling. When I paint, I feel alive.

When I work with a camera I can make things look perfect, every blade of grass is represented exactly how it was when I pressed the shutter. There has been a long and brutal competition between photo and painting. The idea that an academic painting was praised for being like "looking out a window," and that photography was in fact, a window was a part of many reasons why stylistic movements started shying away from photo-realism.

And after so long of making exact renderings with my camera I was very hesitant to draw and paint because I felt whatever I made wouldn't be "good" enough. Wouldn't be exact enough, and that would be frustrating. This year I realized that I should embrace the paint for what it is, a form of free expression. It's opened up a ton of doors for me and not only have I improved my basic drawing skills but I have begun exploring many loose styles of painting to see what I like most. It's a nice break from photo but also informs my art in all other areas, from drawing to sculpture. I learn by seeing, by creating, by doing.


Detail of the wing.

Propped on an easel in studio. Please note that there are two separate panels that ideally will be hung an inch apart, creating a crop in the midsection area. It's kind of bowed in the picture because they are resting on top of one another.

Detail of the end of wing and tail.

Detail of eye and head.

This bird is for my Exploring the Series class that I'm taking under Ron Janowich. It's part of a series called Weather Patterns I'm making that I'll post the artist statement to in a later post. For now, just know I'm interested in repetition of mark, the iconography of nests, and the migratory patterns of birds. Feedback is much appreciated!

Filth

Filth... oooh, don't you feel kinda grimy reading the title? I hope you do or my whole concept for large format is KAPUT!

First let me say that large format is the most challenging line of photo work I've ever done. The camera is beastly heavy. It's a pain in the butt to set up because I can only use a 210mm lens on it (that means I have to pick up the trip-pod and move the whole camera to get the frame work I want.) You compose your image upside down, get everything in focus under a dark cloth, tighten down your tripod and then pray that nothing moves so your focus stays. I shoot 4 negatives at a time and usually only 3/4 come out in a usable condition. That's two hours of work before developing the negatives, and then developing the prints! FOR THREE IMAGES.

Quick rundown on film development. Mix your highly toxic chemistry, make sure it stays at a constant 68 degrees throughout your process, take all the trays into a pitch black room. Take your film out without seeing a thing, try not to scratch it with your nails, slip on a glove, dip at various times through all your chemicals. I use Diafine because it is fastest and gives a little extra clarity to the 4x5's. For that it's 3 minutes in Diafine A, 3 minutes in Diafine B, 30 second water wash, 5 minutes in fixer (which stops the silver halide from devloping and hardens the negative) and a 5 minute water wash. Fixer is the stuff that we NEVER put down the drain because it causes mutant animals. It goes into a big silver recollection tank that sounds like a train. Chuggin along, just like me.

I've been working my hiney off to get solid work! And I am! It may be that I have the most patient, gorgeous friends in the world, or the god's are smiling because I'm trying so hard; but these have been the most successful art making months of my life. Picking up my paintings today and I'll post some of them later in the week.

For now, just a few of the images I've been working on. To see them all you'll have to come out to see my show or get a copy of the handcrafted book I'll be making these into! ;)


Intentional finger print at the top, btw.

Weird refraction at the bottom of this image, there was no camera shake and she didn't move. Of course this was at a scary abandoned trailer park that had burned buildings and spiders so maybe it was a ghost!



Fin- for now.

Filthy things that have happened to me lately: some very funny person in my apartment complex rubbed their pork fried rice, lo mein and some brown poop like meat into the windows of my car! :)

Filthy things that have happened to me not so recently: while blissfully enjoying the salt water and mid-sentence to my lion a tiny baby fish jumped up and slapped me in the eye.

High-five,
Shannon

Adopt-a-Street

Oh Engineers Without Borders, you are so close to my heart. We had a clean up this morning for the street we adopted. About 6 times a year volunteers head out early in the morning to pick up the variety of scum left behind on our road, NE 9th Street.

Among the cigarette butts, empty dime bags and rice krispy treat wrappers we found a few treasures: a rhinestone baby sandal, spray paint, a pocket knife and some barely used underwear. ;)

Walking along our street on this gorgeous day we started talking about sustainable energy. Calli and Nick are both interested in working with solar and nuclear energy when they graduate. As the only non-engineer present I always have a ton of questions...

For example...

Me: Fusion, fission, that's like what Doc Oc was working on in Spiderman II right?

Nick explains that fusion would be like building a sun (Exactly like Doc. Oc, btw! WIN!) and that by fusing atoms, in theory, there would be an unlimited power supply at our fingertips.

My next question of course was why build a sun when we already have one?
Why not put all of our resources into utilizing solar energy?

I recently attended a talk by Ray Kurzweil, who said we're not so far off. He explained a lot about the exponentially increasing advancements in technology. In the same way the first computer was guarded by the government and filled an entire room, and gradually expanded out toward the public (MIT had ONE in 1951), they have become so small and economical that every man, woman and teenybobber/adolencent/baby has one on their cell phone.

Ray theorizes that solar energy is going to explode in the same way... exponentially increasing so that in the next 20 or 30 years we will have solar panels so small and efficient we could fuel the worlds growing energy needs with a small floating island of plates in the ocean. Engineers. Are. So. COOL!

In the chance that we're farther away from solar energy than planned I did learn that nuclear power sources aren't so bad for the environment as I had once thought. I always imagined Chernobel type damage to the landscape after the power plant had been used up. Salted earth. Radio-active, glowing squirrels. No nuts. :(

Turns out most nuclear plants are fortified with lead and it's workers have less health risks than those who mine fossil fuels. France uses nuclear for almost all their energy needs; AND they've found a way to recycle the uranium a number of times so it's getting closer to being a sustainable source. That process is still illegal in America, but a girl can dream.
Anyways, had a great morning with Ashley, Christine, Calli and Nick in our sexy orange vests! Rock on EWB, rock on!

Linhof

Well hello! Would you just take a look at the gorgeous camera? I was stoked out of my mind to take it for a spin. The Linhof Technika 4x5... le sigh. According to my professor these were originally old press cameras, although after my experience with it today I have a hard time believing anyone could take photo-journalistic (by-the-seat-of-your-pants-quick) snaps. My assignment this weekend was to use a tilt-shift to compensate and fix the converging lines in architecture. I was halfway to a beard when I finished.

For all you non-photo types, converging lines happen when you take a snap of something and have to look up, this causes an "A" shape to form at the top of your...whatever, in my case "building". As such, it's necessary to use large format camera's or tilt-shift lenses when photographing any kind of architecture or advertising work because it will correct any distortion. The photograph above was taken with my digital camera and you can kind of see the A shape on the building to the right.

St. Pete was super fickle today. I left to shoot around noon when the sun was out. As soon as I had the Linhof set and ready to go, the wind picked up, the temperature dropped drastically and I had cloud cover for two hours straight. Discouraged I took a lunch break to thaw out my fingers. After chompin down on some leftovers, and borrowing an extra jacket I was ready to try again. This time I had company! Reuben and my Lion came out to keep my spirits up!!!

Check me out in action with a wind-fro!^

Reuben is so welcoming :)

Linhof in all it's glory^

The natural wind blown look! ^

Feeling pretty lucky I finished today, I'll scan in the film or some prints once I have it developed on Monday. Happy Saturday!