wish you were here | 2016
Fifty two images shared each week with other photographers from all over the world who became friends after participating in one of Deb Schwedhelm's online or in person workshops.
Fifty two images shared each week with other photographers from all over the world who became friends after participating in one of Deb Schwedhelm's online or in person workshops. This is the second year of sharing a weekly virtual postcard which are unplanned and unthemed. None of us know what others will submit yet the images connect as if we had planned them in advance. For my part, while I generally have a strong sense of what scene or moment I'd like to share, one thing I was mindful of was connecting my images to each other while still offering an impression of a moment that I wished I could share with others. In that regard, I made a few changes - swapped an image or two out here and there because my eyes at the end of the year were clearer than they were in the midst. This was my favorite year to date in finding a stride and clear pathway forward ... and sharing this with others is a gift.
impressions of art
When you're working on a film, it's almost like photographing paintings at a museum. ...
When you're working on a film, it's almost like photographing paintings at a museum. You're photographing somebody else's world. I just try and interpret it and make it real, and make it what the actors are about, what the director is about, and what the film is about.
Mary Ellen Mark
dancing pony | fred jones museum of art, norman ok
I wasn't raised with art nor was it an area discussed or taught in school. I actually had the sense that artists were viewed with suspicion; perceived with a condescending sneer or irrelevance; opinions most likely shaped by fear and discomfort with a pinch of underlying envy. There was a pervading (resigned) definition of “work” and art certainly wasn't in that category. It was something that lived on the fringes – something you might see in New York City; something others did, but in our little hive, it just simply wasn’t part of the pervading culture.
All these thoughts flashed through my head in my first Art History class. I remember feeling desperately uncomfortable and out of place. Yet once the lights were turned off and the first slide presented, the conflict that raged inside dissipated. I remember being carried onto a current of insatiable curiosity - enamored and possessed. I was so taken with Egyptian art that I painted hieroglyphs on pretty much everything - clothing, walls, canvas. When I couldn't visually understand the early Christian Cathedrals, I drew the floorplans; carefully mirroring each detail and curve to see the underlying structure. And when we arrived at early Flemish and then Dutch art, I found a peaceful intuitive understanding; like when you meet a person you feel you’ve known your entire life. I spent long days and nights in the Old Stacks sections of the library and in the Art Library on the floor looking at art. Pouring over paintings, etchings, woodcuts, sculpture and photographs. I couldn’t get enough of it and within a few years, I took a deep breath and changed my major to photography and art history.
I mention this all as my coming into art was like the first blossoms of spring which bring a burst of color into a dreary grayness. Art opened my eyes to the long view and while criticism abounds on the housing of art in museums and those who decide what is and isn’t worth showing, the feeling I have in a museum is no different than that first day in art history. I feel transported to another time and place of being and seeing and knowing. The narrowness of the day-to-day slides into a cosmic vastness for art is much more than an object; it is about life and living and stories of a particular place and time; at its core, it is a self-portrait. Over the years I've traveled to and visited museums whenever and wherever. I've been to the large ones and small ones and with each experience, I have felt swept into a time tunnel; a beautiful vortex that leaves me clear and inspired.
Though I didn’t’ feel the pull to photograph my wanderings through art museums until about five years ago, I've been quietly tucking them away enjoying them on my own. Recently, I took an afternoon and looked at them together. I began with words from Mary Ellen Mark in how she approached photographing on a film set because that's how these have surfaced. What I see in the photographs are quiet meditations of an enchanting solace - still, silent impressions of timelessness. I've chosen to share a few from a larger series I hope to present later this year.
a shooting star
The times I've seen a star streaking across the night sky ... were in one breath, a single flash of a moment that held within it a hopeful magnificence; it's shimmering brilliance and the physical sensations that echoed within.
The times I've seen a star streaking across the night sky ... were in one breath, a single flash of a moment that held within it a hopeful magnificence; it's shimmering brilliance and the physical sensations that echoed within. The times when I've experienced this wonderment were ones of simply being tuned into a moment; present, quiet, aware. Unlike those times when I've held a certain kind of expectation - those nights of "ideal conditions" that resulted in nothing more than a dark night sky; I've never seen a shooting star in under these seeming idyllic settings.
My own personal path with photography is quite similar to the experience of a shooting star for a picture is at its essence a flash of frozen light; its shape shines with a similar illumination that settles into my insides as that streak across the sky. And just like I cannot will the heavens to do their magical light display at my disposal, I cannot conjure up "THE" image with insistence. Instead this is really about doing: "inspiration exists, but it has to find us working" (Pablo Picasso) + "chance favors the prepared mind" (Lois Pasteur). These two thoughts work in tandem.
To see a star, I actually have to show up in the night sky....I have to look with sincerity and patience and graciousness - to take in and appreciate the gifts on display. To make mistakes and embrace them. To look with a soft focus, detached and yet intent. Knowing that this night in this direction holds the best promise. Returning over and again for within the rhythm of practice, I cultivate an appreciation for the stars themselves rather than those that loosen and break free.
the boy | ocean park maine, 2015
sandpipers & gulls | lbi, 2015
And so, after some years of showing up and photographing ... with very little idea of where to look or what to look for, peering out among the millions of stars waiting for that one to streak across the sky, I've come to a certain kind of understanding with the zen of the sky - it's not the shooting stars, it's the outline of the whole. Seeing now the shapes that convey a certain kind of elegant longing mixed with nostalgia and a subtle humor ... the simple line I am drawn to time and time again, only now seeing they were there all along. The same image taken over and again in different cities and times of year.
projects & series - 2014
"All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
And so it has been. A year and a time when I felt/feel almost dizzy with the series of work ... some I've been at for some time like American Summer and the Little Witches; others which emerged this past year - Fair & Farms, Portraits and a welcome return to birds and trees (and clouds) ... a different kind of Avalon.
I also continued to work with organizations and causes I support and give to ... Creating Community and Drums for Funds were two from this past year. And then whenever I can ... I photograph in public. Not always successfully or willingly or without trepidation, but the more I do, the more I grow; the easier it is to go.
an immersion in art part ii ~ okc art exhibitions
one of the most inspiring exhibitions i saw was at the gallery artspace at untitled was the 365 exhibition of five photographers who were asked to create a series of work outside of their medium (which three of the five did) and one did so in spades.
while the exhibition details can be viewed on the oklahoma visual arts coalition website, the imaginative work by cathleen faubert appealed to the alchemist within and that part of me that longs to create an experience. here the work was about using "scent" to tell a story of place...how a smell might bring one right into a memory of a warm summer night. it's worth watching the short video on this piece for her expanded thoughts, but what i felt taking in each piece, was seeing how her process organically unfolded. this wasn't something she necessarily started out with, it's where she was led....and i felt that. there wasn't anything forced or premeditated about it.
as the work was site specific in terms of presenting "smells" of oklahoma, there were photographs of different locations where she created scents from along with seven finished scents presented in little glass vials like perfume that you could smell. underneath the title, she listed the various ingredients. i thought i'd taken little iphone snaps of each creation as the ingredients were fascinating, but sadly i forgot. i'll just leave you with a photograph that to me, summarizes my impression of it all.
an immersion in art part i ~ okc art exhibitions
once a year i try to return to oklahoma city (okc) where i spent seven years of my life immersed in creating and learning about art at the university of oklahoma. while okc may not roll off your tongue if asked to name a place you go to for art, i can tell you it's cracking wide open save bursting out with creativity. each year there's a little more...and i think at present, there's something like over a hundred gallery openings a night. a combination of low cost of living and a leftover from the 1960s counter culture paired with wealth (and there is a lot of money in the city) and there you have it. had seattle not lured me away, i'd still live there as even then, there was something about it.
chuck webster @ ok contemporary, 2014 (partial view)
anyway -
this year was no different. and we actually went right from the airport oklahoma contemporary to see an exhibit of chuck webster. while the work wasn't all that well received, i was captivated with the presentation: hundreds of pictures literally adhered to the wall with a push pin. the photo quality here is so/so as they were taken with a phone but as i use the phone for snapping sketches, i thought i'd begin here.
Wells Blog
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