plays nice with others

A friend of mine has been wanting to come over to my studio for a while now and play! So this afternoon my bud, Carrie, came over to make some art for her newly decorated bedroom. It was nice having someone in my space getting creative with me. She would do her thing and I was doing mine. Kind of reminded me of school, but we were at my house, blasting the stereo and sitting on the floor. In early development we call this parallel play, when little children play next to each other, not necessarily with each other.

Listening to music, having some great chats, getting messy, and collaborating with each other. At one point Carrie was feeling stuck. She wanted all this color on the canvas, but was worried that she lacked the skill to make it look good. I suggested a writing technique that I've done on canvases and that most of you saw in my altered book of layering words in different colors. She took the suggestion and made it her own and came out with a beautiful image with words of love that she will be putting in her room, a room she shares with her fiance. I wish I took a pic, but next time. Here's one that I did a few years ago for a good friend of mine.

It's been a beautiful day and it was a blast to share it with someone! Carrie and I are now planning more little artists dates. I can't wait!!!

getting knotty!!!

The night of the "happening" was such an amazing experience that I, like I think many others, had a creative hangover. I've said it before, having such a burst of creative energy go through you at such an extensive period of time really can take it's toll on you. On Sunday I found myself laying in bed for hours not wanting to process, think, move even. I needed to recoup!!!

This of course got in the way of my final crit that was happening on Tuesday. I had an idea in my head, but execution was no where to be found. The idea was to map my lovely little "pain-in-the-ass" blackberry for a week. Recording every email and text message going in and out of that silly contraption was easy. Developing the monotonous entanglement that it represents was something else.

So in my state of procrastinated pressure I realized I wanted a way to express the week in a linear form. Thanks to all the hemp rope I bought a year ago for a previous project and never touched, I decided to use that. I tied knots along the rope to represent each text and email I received in a day so that there was space represented between each knot as there is time between each email/text. Then I took colored hemp and tied it in between the knots to represent my responses throughout each day with the time/space idea included as well.

When I was finished I felt a breathe of fresh air, like after a deep meditation. Something was lit within. My class response was great and has me excited to take it to the next level. The weird thing is that my creative hangover from Saturday only lasted a day or so. This is new for me. It encourages me tremendously. I feel like I am acting as this container that is capable of holding the creativity. Like the alchemical vessel that holds the prima materia to cook, I too am cooking. I'm not afraid that the creativity will evaporate and I'll have to start over again. Rather, it's just sitting there, cooking, waiting to be included in the next concept. The beauty of this is that to keep the prima materia cooking one must keep the fire lit. To keep the fire lit one must become fully engulfed in the fire and just let it burn. In other words, staying present to the "heat of the moment" and staying authentic within that allows us to begin transformation.

Intermedia helped this process a lot with all of our projects that encouraged the exploration of different media. I'm so thankful for the process and the witnesses that have made the experience so much more rich.

Here's to the next!

Tina

beauty

Great fun last night! I'm so happy I got to be a part of it and to witness everyone's visions become realities. Beautiful!!!

From the book Finding Beauty in a Broken World, by Terry Tempest Williams:


"Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.

Mosaics are made by hand.

Shards of glass can cut and wound or magnify a vision. Mosaic celebrates brokenness and the beauty of being brought together.

Our survival, the vitality of the planet depends on mental flexibility and emotional acuity. Hands raised. Hands put to work. We can improvise. We can create without a map. And we don't have to live in isolation. The gift of an attentive life is the ability to recognize patterns and find our way toward a unity built on empathy. Empathy becomes the path that leads us from the margins to the center of concern.

The pattern is the thing.

The beauty made belongs to everyone. We all bow."

plan b

Finally...a few moments to type away.

So I went to school today and played with the slide projector and my shattered mirror. In the few minutes I clicked away at the images on the wall, I began to get this feeling of self doubt. Like it wasn't enough. There needed to be something more, but what?

Upon suggestion, I toyed with the idea of drawing on the wall when the image was projected. Yet, it didn't stick. And/or I wasn't feeling it. The other night in drawing class, Jeremy noted my journaling and how I was using it. For me writing in my journal is a way to release everything onto paper. Lately....as in this whole quarter....I have been loving the altered book. In part, because I can remake something with an established foundation, and the other part is that I can write and write and write and make it into art. I've been overlapping my entries on one page to create a beautiful color scheme, but also because I kind of don't want people reading my shit! This overlapping is something I've been doing for years, ever since I read the Artist's Way. Sometimes stuff just needs to get dumped and it doesn't necessarily need to be seen again or read again, it just becomes something else....a memory, a thought, an acknowledgment.

But back to today and working with the slide projector. I decided that writing on a piece of paper attached to the wall where the image is being projected is very interesting. After experimenting with it, I found that I liked the spontaneity of writing about the image in the moment. Even better is when I left the thought on the wall and went through the following slides (unconsciously arranged, of course) and it all flowed together as well. Awesome!!!

The question for me now is do I stick with one writing and flip through the slides? Do I continue to add writings to each new slide so that the paper on the wall becomes a collage of thought? (I'm leaning towards this one.) Or maybe a combination of both in a period of time?...time being the main purpose of this piece.

Food for thought as always...

ideas

So I've been playing with my 4D concepts and have finally settled down to what it is that I want to do. It's not far off from the original concept, but just tweaked a bit!
I want to stay with the idea of projecting photo negatives onto a broken mirror that displays the image on a wall. I think the photo negatives is what has changed the most. Originally I had these negatives that I found at Urban Ore. They were cool and family oriented, which I liked. I like the idea of taking family portraits, family events, images of family and skewing the perspective. I played with the negatives, painted them, scratched, etc., but felt so detached from them. So I went with the idea of using negatives of personal pictures. I went through my mother's giant bin of photos and found a lot that I wanted to use. What I was choosing was pictures that would convey a shift in perspective, a wake up call, with something hidden underneath when projected off of the shattered mirror.
Then my mother remembered old photos that she had turned into slides. They were pictures of my parents before they were married, right after they got married, and when I was a baby. This is what I want to project on a shattered mirror.
However, I'm not sure if the slide projector is available for Saturday. Arg! The only obstacle in my way at the moment. But I figure that I could find one somewhere.
I'm liking the idea of projecting images of this time onto a shattered mirror. And having the images of the beginnings of my family to be so distorted and broken in a way. I like this idea specifically because my parents divorced a little over two years ago. My image of family and marriage have been altered, shattered. This piece will hopefully convey that in some way.

We'll see.

My Artist

Jerry Uelsmann
Born in Detroit Michigan in 1934. Graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology and Indiana University, he was a professor at the University of Florida for nearly three decades. He now resides in Gainesville, Florida.

Before the birth of photoshop, Uelsmann was making complex montages with multiple negatives and up to sometimes a dozen enlargers at a time to produce his final images. His images are dream-like and leave the viewer responsible for creating their own meaning in the work.

Uelsmann is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, a founding member of the Society for Photographic Education, and a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain. He has had over 100 solo exhibitions and 10 books published. His photographs are in the permanent collections of museums such as, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and London, and the Bibliotheque nationale in Paris.

I have been drawn to Uelsmann's work for years because of the dream-like quality, but also for the archetypal symbols used in his work. Many of his images remind me of dreams I've had as well as periods in my life. The photograph I have attached is titled, Undiscovered Self, 1999. This piece resonates a lot with me. Right now in my life I am working to discover myself as an artist, as a woman, as an adult and find this image to capture that duality I feel constantly in my life. The dark and the light, the masculine and the feminine, the good girl and the bad girl. Maybe it is just the fact that I am a Gemini and am always thinking dually, or maybe it is the true nature of all of us that there is always the other who is present in our selves.

Stumbled Upon

I found this photo the other day on StumbleUpon, a fascinating link that brings you to all of these different web sites. A great way to continue the procrastination stage if you should choose to do so. Unfortunately, I find that I have been spending a lot of time procrastinating. It's crazy! I can be in the zone day after day for hours at a time and then all of a sudden, it just stops. It's kind of like a creative hangover. I just have to withdraw from it and be creative in other ways or not at all. The altered book has been my saving grace, though. It is so quick and effortless to play with those pages. Less pressure and more freedom to do whatever the hell I want to with it. Plus, it adds the aspect of writing. To me, writing what is going on in my life can deliver so much insight. In a way it is like cleaning my studio, but rather I'm cleaning my brain, making room for the creativity to flow.

my 2D work as of late

Wake Up

I've been having a great time working with my chosen words/phrases: shifted perspective and under. I'm coming up with some fascinating ideas and I can really see these themes growing into the 3D and 4D. I like the idea of getting the viewer involved in the piece in some way. I haven't figured it out yet, but my mind is on the right track to getting it done.

On the other hand, working with my third phrase has been difficult. I chose "wake up" because I sent the intention one night that I would let an idea come to me and when I knew it, that would be what I would work with. I woke up the next morning and was looking at an old painting of mine on the wall of my bedroom. At the bottom of the painting is the phrase "wake up." Immediately, the song, Razor by the Foo Fighters started playing in my head.

"Wake up it's time
We need to find a better place to hide
Make up your mind
I need to know I need to know tonight"
It was my little wake up call, so I'm sticking with it.

The only problem is is that I'm having a hard time coming up with an idea. When Robbyn mentioned that the piece could be about what would wake up the viewer, I got to thinking. What wakes me up? Lots of things wake me up. Coffee, scary movies, stress, genocide, super cold east coast mornings. But what woke me up just recently, was an article I came across on the BBC website about a 13 year old father. The picture alone is a wake up call, but the reality of sexually active kids having kids has brought it to a whole other level. I'm not sure where I can take this, but I know that it is something I want to work with. I have been working with children (school, summer programs, disabled programs, etc.) for 10 years. I think it's time I said something about it.

Outcry over teenage father case

the spark is back

For the past few weeks I have had this major creative block going on. It's been frustrating especially with having to produce art in class. My motivation and inspiration have been m.i.a. and the pressure to make, create and have it "look good" has been eating me up a little. I was finding myself avoiding my studio, my altered book, my journal, even people in my life. I was hiding. For me it's hard to make art when you are initially hiding from yourself. As an artist, I feel that I am wanting to express myself through my art. But what happens when you don't want to express anything? Art just isn't enough sometimes.

When I put my pieces up last night I started to get a glimpse of what I could start working with a little more. The tangible. Drawing and painting have been my main focus of interest since I was a kid, but since coming to JFKU I find that working with objects, layers of materials, and a glue gun (ha!) are enabling me to express on a larger playing field. When I started the 2D project I felt lost and overwhelmed by the task. As soon as I moved about from my own rigidity of having to draw or paint, things started to flow. It's amazing what can be produced when I use my hands differently. Instead of holding the brush, I'm holding the scissors and glue and glass. I'm loving the idea of breaking stuff and putting it back together. I think that this could be something to take further, maybe even with music. Taking a song and breaking it into segments and then putting it back together out of order.

Hmm...something to play with.