restore

Personally it has been a difficult two weeks. During this time my husband had been sick with what we thought was the flu, followed by two days with a fever of 101 along with a chest cold.  The fourth day he woke up and asked me to make him an appointment with our GP. By 11am he was exhausted, lightheaded, and started to have a fast irregular heartbeat. So I started to take him in to the GP but they wouldn't see him early so I took him to the ER instead. When he was admitted he had atrial fibrillation, a fluctuating heartbeat that went between 175 - 205 and his blood pressure was way off. That day we spent with the ER doctors monitoring and trying to stabilize him. 

Later he was admitted to the hospital and doing better, eventually he had stabilized with the IV medication, along with a blood thinner to make sure he didn't have a stroke. They kept him overnight to monitor him. The next day they tested his heart with an ultrasound and then x-rays to see if he had any clotting and to make sure his atrium was not enlarged. Fortunately everything checked out and his heart returned to normal rhythm. He will be on a beta-blocker for at least a month, have follow up appointments with his cardiologist, electro physiologist, and our GP. They say it will make him more vulnerable for this to happen again but at this point there is no reason to believe that it is a chronic problem. 

When we finally checked him out of the hospital at the end of the week. We followed up the next day with our GP because of his continuing chest cough. She took one look in his throat and immediately diagnosed as a bad strep throat infection, he was put on an antibiotic and cough medicine. Why they didn't see this at the hospital I have a hard time understanding. She also looked over his blood work and it seems as though this episode was brought on by the stress that his body was under in fighting the strep along with dehydration. He will now get to follow up with more blood work to make sure that his white blood count is up after his round of antibiotics is up. 

Once he was feeling better I followed up with what was not strep but most likely the flu that has been going around. This one is hanging on for about 5-7 days starting with a scratchy throat, aches, fever, and ending with a cold. I hope to be well by the end of the week . . .    

everyday

I have been working on my project to shoot, shoot, shoot. I have experimented with different cameras to see what i could do to let my imagery flow from my camera. I have moved from my pinhole, experimented with my two and a quarter, and finally started flowing with my digital camera. I spent some time trying to discover which new camera would begin to help me create in a new more immediate way and letting go of the way the pinhole sees the world, hopefully breaking down the distance that some people saw in my work because of the nature of the tools I had used to create my images.

During my second meeting with my mentor I went from experimenting with cameras to focusing on one camera that I could carry with me everywhere. My challenge now is to continue to shoot everything that holds my interest throughout the day, not yet focusing on a single project idea. My goal is to shoot 20-60 images everyday to work through this and see what will present itself in my work when I let go. I am exploring and taking risks to see what will come out of this before honing in on a project. I am also trying to create images without listening to the editor in my head. I need to learn to let go of the little incessant voice inside my head that never stops giving advise. This voice designs, over thinks, analyzes, controls, judges, and throws out tons of things that I am unwilling to risk, make mistakes, play, experiment with, or try to push further into something more that I have ever been able to think into creation.

My everyday project is based on what Byron Wolfe, a photography professor, assigned to himself and just recently published a book of his work. Above is the cover of his book.

I will meet with Betsy my mentor again at the beginning of March to see what is coming out of these images. After that meeting I will be going home to Michigan for spring break. I am excited to create images of my family, their homes and spaces, their stories, and what they value, our family culture. I hope that during this time I will be able to clarify and further define my project for further research and the continuation of the creation of my images.

disquiet

The sky is crying today sometimes with small tears and other times sobbing . . . as the rain pours down.

It has been a good weekend regardless of my observation on the rain. I had a wonderful artist at my home on Thursday and Friday Rene Westbrook who had an opening exhibit at 2See Studio downtown Phoenix. Her Friend Melanie joined us from the Grand Canyon for late Friday night political discussions with the dawn of super Tuesday in our sight. I have some hope that with this election we could make a difference in our communities and our world!

Meanwhile I have been starting to create some images. I wonder how it is for some of you like Jay to slow down while I have been trying to speed up. I have been trying to shoot, shoot, shoot, but my slow process of the past three years is getting in my way. I started with my two and a quarter and I am continuing that along with my digital hoping to speed up my shooting.

My biggest challenge was to shoot everything and see what comes out in my work. I feel like I am floating down the river without an oar to steer with, finding myself in need of some structure. Without family to shoot I am beginning to create images with and of some of my friends. I have also returned to some of my more abstract or close up images of nature, decay, and the survival of life in harsh circumstances. I wish to go to the edge of where the water meets the land. . . and with this rain I may be able to do that in the desert since the rivers and washes are overflowing for the moment.

I will be going home in March to spend time with my family and visit my Grammie who fractured her pelvic bone on New Years Day. Hopefully she will continue to improve and stick to her therapy and be back to her little apartment at Brookhaven by the time I visit her. I plan on creating a number of images while I am there.

Portfolio and papers are coming soon. I have also been trying to work with blogger to get my paper and my portfolio work in the right bar instead of within the blog space on the left. I know it is possible since Liz showed us at the residency and it is how she posts it on her blogspot. My friend Cheryl is a genius at these kinds of things and said she would give me a hand. Hopefully we will get together soon.

finally

I had a difficult weekend trying to finish my paper but it is completed and it will be posted on my blog shortly. It may be more of a narrative than the rest of our research pieces but it is a summary after all, at least I wrote something meaningful to me. It is finally finished . . . on to the critical theory paper .

Last night a few friends, Valerie and Breanne went to the Phoenix Art Museum. I really wanted to go and see the Illuminated Manuscripts. It was interesting to see the modern version of The St Johns Bible and how the artists kept to certain formalities of the historical versions yet through the illustrations, the use of colors, and typography brought it a more contemporary feel. The above image is the Ten Commandments from the exhibit. I loved the use of typography in this illustration.

We also went through the Avedon exhibit and lecture by David Ross. I was pleasantly surprised that he spoke of Avedons personal work along with the commercial work I remember well. I found that I was drawn to some of the personal work he had created in asylums in the south. I feel that by including backgrounds and spaces I feel like I was able infer more about the subject or create my own narrative about the person in the image. David did address the beginning of the use of the white background setting the subject apart from any background forcing you to look at the person and expression for interpretation of character.

bentley projects

Yesterday was a great day. I went with my friend Jodi and visited a salvage yard, mostly she explored the area looking for junk for her art and I took photos. This is the first time that I have used my two and a quarter since at least 2003. It is going to be a difficult transition because this cameras lens sees the world so differently that I do. Perhaps the real question here is if I see the world like a pinhole camera or as the super wide lens does or have I just trained myself to see in this way over the past three years?

We also stopped by the Bentley Projects which is one of my favorite galleries in all of Phoenix. I love the space and the diversity of the work they show there. Two paintings that caught my eye were by Jill Moser. They were abstracts on canvas but the surface was smooth without any of the canvas showing through. Some brush strokes were solid and others were as if water had created a bleed and soften them into a blur. Her image above is Silver Lining, 2007.

While Jodi and I had lunch one of my students Kari ran into us and we found out that she is now working in the gallery. It was great to see her in a great position being able to utilize all of her visual talent and design skills. She added us to her mailing list to keep us informed of all the good shows coming up.

Now to focus on my paper . . .

tilt gallery

OK . . . so I am back and trying to get all my ducks in a row. I feel like I am making progress but wish that I could have finished more of my goals this past weekend.

I met with my new advisor Betsy Schneider at ASU last week and have the paperwork ready to send to Louise this week. We had an excellent talk and I will be meeting with her every 3-4 weeks. We discussed the feedback I received at the residency and she supported me working for the next three weeks in shooting everything and anything. Then we will review to look at what comes from this work. It seems she and Jan are encouraging me to go into the same direction.

Betsy also told me about a show going on at the Tilt Gallery with Tracy Longley-Cooks work. Tracy has the reputation of being a great photographer and educator and I have attempted to hire her a term or two ago to teach Photography at Scottsdale Community College, unfortunately the course times didn't work out. I loved her show Bearing Still. She had a number of images that reminded me of what I try to do with my work, giving a ground for which the viewer can interpret their own story. They were large images, some were encaustic giving a sense of depth without being seen like very thick emulsion. Sometimes the encaustic started to cloud the image and it supported the feeling of memory. A few were presented backlit and floating away from the wall. Her image above is Clearing, Digital pigment print on birch panel with encaustic, 2006.

I have a list of paperwork yet to complete:
• Plan or outline for this terms work
• Summary paper
• Bibliography

And of course now that I have my camera out and have film
Shoot, shoot, shoot!

beginning

As start my new masters program at The Art Institute of Boston it seems like blogging is an important part of the process. It is something that I have ignored in the past but now I will have to dive in head first at the deep end of the pool. It makes me smile and feel a bit old to realize that most of my students are communicating with these new technologies as easy as fish swim in the ocean.