"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." Anais Nin

dammit

Posted by: brutallycurious at February 27, 2006 16:47 | link | comments (3)
self-image

shopping for comfort...

A new day dawns with new experiences. On the one hand, I feel creatively alive and growing. On the other, my body is still fighting this cold and today it's losing. I am weak and I have a headache again. On the third hand (?) my relationship is producing more emotional movement and self-awareness. I welcome it and I hate it. It's hard. I have learned enough to not run from the difficult lessons, but I still would like to snap my fingers and find myself on a warm, sun-drenched beach for about 48 hours to give my body and soul a rest.

So, not feeling up to actually shooting today or developing new ideas, I have sought comfort at the store. Not the department store, but the natural foods store. I came home with chips and guacamole, cookies, and two new books.  That and a nap will do nicely for today.  Maybe I will dream of the beach.

Posted by: brutallycurious at February 27, 2006 14:17 | link | comments
emotions, the beach, finding my own rhythm

Emily Dickinson, "I dwell in Possibility"

I dwell in Possibility--
A fairer House than Prose--
More numerous of Windows--
Superior--for Doors--

Of Chambers as the Cedars--
Impregnable of Eye--
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky--

Posted by: brutallycurious at February 26, 2006 21:20 | link | comments (1)
possibilities

I'm so bored, I'm getting obnoxious.

I'm still reading. This time I am re-reading the first thing I could get my hands on about Laurie Simmons when I first heard about her.  Here she talks about why she does not take advantage of the new technology available today in photography....

"I haven’t taken advantage of it. I know myself, and my work, and there’s something about the way I assemble my work that makes it my work. I’ve tried to do some of the same things digitally, and I lose whatever it is that make it mine. But I’m about to put my archives on a database. So in many ways it affects my work every day.

My work is a lot about what I can’t do technically as much as what I can. I’m limited by my training. I understand my limitations: my flat-footed lighting and sense of space, and that’s what I try to hang on to. I’m good at doing my work my way. There’s a lot I do wrong that I think enhances what I do." 

This article was originally created for TheArtBiz.com. It appears on NYFA Interactive courtesy of the Abigail Rebecca Cohen Library.

I love that. I struggle all the time with "what I'm doing wrong".

 

Posted by: brutallycurious at February 25, 2006 17:32 | link | comments
art , laurie simmons

R-A-U-S-C-H-E-N-B-E-R-G

phew. I am in the thick of "thinking" today and I can hardly keep up. i am (or was) in bed sick, but for some reason it isn't keeping me from being creative. On the contrary, the forced relaxation has unleashed so many ideas. I guess this is the "ideal" sick day, if there is one.  I felt a little weird yesterday, and after dinner the room started to spin, i got nauseated, exhausted and so I was in bed by 8:30. Today I still feel crummy, but my head is working.

I have caught up on almost all my New Yorker reading, and now I'm working on documenting all my ideas (hence the previous post). I also am on a quest for Robert Rauschenberg. He has an exhibit right now in New York ("Combines" at the Metropolitan Museum through April 2). Until last year, in my field of vision, he was on the periphery...just a name in contemporary american art. I couldn't tell you what his work looked like. In May, 2005 though, the New Yorker profiled him in advance of this exhibit. I was hooked. I save most of my New Yorkers and I saved this one....and then it disappeared when I was cleaning. I had saved the wrong one. So last week I went on an internet search for the article. The New Yorker website has archived most of that issue, but not that piece. So, to eBay. Sure enough, I found someone selling that issue. (Did I mention it took an hour to pin down which issue it was because it wasn't on the New Yorker website? and did you further know that there are angels-in-disguise who are archiving each issue online because the New Yorker, before last year, has been so remiss as to not do it for us?)

So, for $4.59 ($3.00 plus $1.59 snail-mail postage) I will receive another copy of May 23, 2005 issue.  I am also planning to do some library research about Rauschenberg. Rauschenberg. rauschenberg. I can now spell it without thinking twice. I have no idea where it will take me, but that's the pleasure of the journey.

A few months ago, there was an exhibit at my local museum of Romare Bearden, the collage artist/photographer/painter whose work centered around Harlem and jazz. It was magnificent.  My teenage daughter does collages ...amazing studies in color taken from magazine clippings. She and I went to see the Bearden exhibit, and that's when I remembered Rauschenberg's work. I don't know that I want to get into collages, but I am fascinated by the possibilities of combining media and images, which both of those artists did....and do. Don't want to bury rauschenberg yet! I also want to step carefully into that arena so that I do not intrude on my daughter's work. She has her own eye, her own style, but her confidence and processes are still developing.

Posted by: brutallycurious at February 25, 2006 15:51 | link | comments
art , collage, rauschenberg