INTO THE STUDIO
Journal of a Mixed Media Photographer
Flight
Recently I received a wonderful box in the mail from Healing Environments full of postcards featuring a detail of my collage, Flight (pictured here). This card was part of a postcard gift packet distributed to their audience. In addition, work from my series Mapping the Body is going to be in their next publication. I am truly honored to have my work included. Healing Environments is an extraordinary organization whose tag line is “together we will comfort the suffering,” and you could learn more about them by clicking here to read an interview with co-directors Traci and Kate on artheals.org. They create both healing spaces with interior design and elegant books and publications, which they give away free of charge to their audience as tools for healing and inspiration. It is such a beautiful model of generosity. In response, I want to offer something back as well. I invite you to leave a comment here on this blog post before March 26. Then I will randomly select three people to receive a set of 5 of these postcards.
PS – I have gotten some feedback that people are unsure how to leave a comment. Be sure you are reading the post on my blog page and then click on the text below (1st line, right side) that says Comments. Then you can fill out the form and submit your comment online. Thanks!
Overgrown
I am so grateful for this view from my studio. To some, this may look terribly overgrown. But if you had seen it when we first moved here, you’d realise that this is actually quite tame. The fact that you are free to wonder around the garden is an improvement in itself on what it used to be. You would have had to have fought your way through thick bushes, overgrown trees and weeds to reach the back fence. Clearing it was a difficult task – we started by hand, but soon realised that we were going to require a mini-excavator brush cutter to cut down the excessive growth and make the rest of the garden accessible. It took a lot of time and effort, but it was well worth it.
Nevertheless, I admit that at this time of year, it might not look like much – overgrown, dormant, chaotic. There are weeds and gopher mounds and plants that have gone wild. Yet amidst this disorder are fruit trees about to blossom, butterfly bushes that will burst into flower in a few months, dahlia bulbs hidden in the soil that will send up bright spots of red and yellow, strawberries waiting for summer to bear fruit, and artichokes thick with leaves promising edible flowers. This view sustains me – it mirrors my own creative life – overgrown, chipped away at by details, projects gone dormant. But spring is coming and there are roots, seeds, and bulbs – ideas – just waiting for a little care and the right timing to flower. There is a season for everything.
Art in a Stormy World
It’s a stormy Sunday here in the Bay Area. I count my blessings with every rain drop that is falling – placating fears of drought. A nice reminder that when dark clouds gather, it is not all gloom and doom. Each rain burst yields the vital resource of water – cleansing and nourishing the world around me.
Today’s New York Times offered an unexpected reminder of the upside of a stormy economy for the artworld. Holland Cotter in his article, “The Boom Is Over. Long Live the Art!,” offers the optimistic view that in these down economic times, the commercial art world may suffer, yet the art itself may flourish. He looks backward at the innovation that came from artists in earlier financially challenged times, and also looks forward, offering prescient questions about what art making and art education could become. His article left me with a feeling of deep curiousity about the future of art in America, and many good questions about what role I as an artist can play in today’s changing world. Below is an excerpt – you could read the whole article on the New York Times web site.
“At the same time, if the example of past crises holds true, artists can also take over the factory, make the art industry their own. Collectively and individually they can customize the machinery, alter the modes of distribution, adjust the rate of production to allow for organic growth, for shifts in purpose and direction. They can daydream and concentrate. They can make nothing for a while, or make something and make it wrong, and fail in peace, and start again.
Art schools can change too. The present goal of studio programs (and of ever more specialized art history programs) seems to be to narrow talent to a sharp point that can push its way aggressively into the competitive arena. But with markets uncertain, possibly nonexistent, why not relax this mode, open up education? Why not make studio training an interdisciplinary experience, crossing over into sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, poetry and theology? Why not build into your graduate program a work-study semester that takes students out of the art world entirely and places them in hospitals, schools and prisons, sometimes in-extremis environments, i.e. real life? My guess is that if you did, American art would look very different than it does today….”
Bay Area Portfolio Reviews
Two important parts of the creative process are feedback and community. Portfolio reviews can be a great way to get both. I blogged a while back about my experience at Photo Lucida and why I find such reviews so helpful. Here in the Bay Area two of my favorite arts organizations are hosting portfolio reviews, each with its own distinct flavor.
The first is PhotoAlliance’s Our World: National Juried Portfolio Review for Photographers in San Francisco March 13-15. This three-day event will bring together top photography editors, publishers, curators, gallerists, and educators from around the U.S. to meet with engaged photographers to review their portfolios and encourage their careers. This event is juried, which means photographers who want to be part of this event must submit an application by February 13 (this Friday). Each photographer accepted will have 10 twenty minute one-on-one consultations with a photography professional who can help you get your work out in the world and also give you feedback and encouragement in the creative process. For more information, visit www.photoalliance.org.
The second event is at JFK University’s Arts and Consciousness Department in Berkeley, CA. They will be having an Open House on the afternoon of Saturday, March 7. This event begins with two hours of free portfolio reviews with arts faculty at JFK. The emphasis in these reviews is to learn about the arts program at JFK and to see if your work and this program are a fit. In addition, you receive the undivided attention of some of the talented artists who teach there and who can offer you insight about your work, the creative process, and your next step in your artistic journey. JFK’s program has a unique emphasis on art as an vehicle for transformation, healing and social change – an approach that more than ever is needed during these troubled times. The Open House also includes presentations about the school, an alumni panel, and gallery talk by faculty, and concludes with a reception. For more information, please email [email protected], call 510-649-0499, or click here (see the right hand column).
Creative Generosity
I just posted a new issue of AHN NEWS on the Arts and Healing Network. I am particularly inspired by the topic this time – CREATIVE GENEROSITY. These times we find ourselves in our full of change and challenge, especially economically. It’s easy to give way to fear and feelings of scarcity. One of the best antidotes I know is generosity. The act of giving takes me outside myself – beyond the place of preserving and tightening around what I have – to opening up and connecting with others and being of service. I really do believe it is this kind of generosity of spirit that will make all the difference right now as we go through so much intense transformation in our country.
I was really delighted to feature a Britt Bravo’s interview with Cami Walker, founder of the 29-Day Giving Challenge. Last year, Cami gave away 29 gifts in 29 days. She found this experience so healing and transformative, that she invited everyone to join her in this process and created an online community around the practice of giving. Today, the 29-Day Giving Challenge is a global giving movement with an active online community where people have shared over 3500 stories of giving along with artwork and videos. As Cami says. “What I notice is that the people who are taking part in this, what is common amongst us all, is that we all count our blessings. We practice gratitude. We feel like our lives are full no matter what we have.”
Also in this issue of AHN News is a write-up on the Federation of Students and Nominally or Unemployed Artists – a group of 10 artists who took giving into their own hands by raising $100 each, pooling their money ($1000 total), and giving it away as instant art grants of $10-$60 in a public park. All an applicant had to do was tell the story of his/her creative need and then he/she received a grant on the spot, along with an official handshake (see photo here). I love how artists took it into their own hands to support and give back to other artists in a fun, creative way – what a nice model of collaboration and spontaneity.
I hope you will get a chance to read this issue of AHN NEWS by clicking here. May it fill you with a sense of abundance and possibility.
Photography Gathering
Last night, I left cozy Muir Beach to head toward downtown San Francisco for a gathering of photographers at Gallery 291. One of the hardest parts about living in Muir Beach for me is leaving. It is such a beautiful, soothing place to be, and it takes a fifteen minute drive on a windy road to get over Mount Tam to Mill Valley and then onto the city. Most often, once I overcome the inertia, I am truly glad I ventured out. Last night was no exception.
This group gathered for many years at the studio of RJ Muna and has recently shifted to Gallery 291 – a very elegant space on Union Square. I was last there a year ago for a wonderful exhibit of Beth Moon’s work (pictured here) – at the time my belly was like a big moon, swelling with my growing daughter. Now, she sleeps outside me, in her own crib and for many hours in a row at night – which makes it so much easier to break away from home-tending and reengage my creative life.
I have been thinking lately, how the path back to my creative life after giving birth may not be as simple as the flagstone path connecting my home to my studio. Instead, it may look more like driving to San Francisco on a winter’s night to gather with other artists who remind me about why we make work, and how much we all appreciate a fine print, a well-executed image, and the power of beauty. I left the evening full of excitement about the craft of photography – the making of art objects.