Photography Without A Lens

2011-11-25T11:52:00.004-05:00

Autumnal Light • 8x8 Pigment Print

This piece is one of several new images showing at the Catskill Artist Gallery's Holiday Show. The opening is Saturday, November 25 from 4 to 8 pm.

Catskill Winter Skies

2011-10-30T11:49:00.005-05:00

Catskill Winter Sky 3 • 8x8 Pigment Print • ©Margaret Helthaler 2011

Catskill Winter Sky 2 • 8x8 Pigment Print • ©Margaret Helthaler 2011

Catskill Winter Sky 1 • 8x8 Pigment Print • ©Margaret Helthaler 2011

My recent focus on the Jersey Shore skyline combined with an unexpected late October snowstorm inspired me to explore the wintery Catskill Mountain skyline. In this series of images I have added a soft focus and a hint of texture to create an evocative sense of place.

A Little Tone and Texture Adds Vintage Charm

2011-10-17T07:47:00.004-05:00

Cape May Lighthouse • 8x8 pigment print • ©Margaret Helthaler

My recent trip to the Jersey Shore has inspired a new body of work. Here the Cape May Lighthouse stands tall with just a hint of canvas texture and tone for vintage charm. Thanks to Brenda Clarke for the wonderful textures she shares on Flickr.com

Storm Clouds Gather over Morey's Pier in Wildwood, NJ

2011-10-12T11:45:00.002-05:00

Approaching Storm • 12x18 pigment print • ©Margaret Helthaler

Just spent a lovely weekend in Wildwood New Jersey and found the landscape - so different from the Catskills - inspirational as always. I love the deep beach in Wildwood and the perspective it added to the lumbering October clouds...

Looking For Spring In The Catskills

2011-04-23T13:06:00.004-05:00

Our crocuses have come and gone, but the chilly weather remains. I awoke to heavy rain and remnants of snow here in the Catskills... I dream of warm sunshine and green subjects to photograph...

Morning Light

2011-02-08T09:12:00.004-05:00

Winter Morning

Nostalgia plays a large role in my visual work. I suspect it comes from growing up in a multi-generation home, which imbued me with a strong awareness of a history before my own lifetime. Considering my penchant for romanticizing the past, it may come as a surprise to learn that morning is my favorite time to take photographs.

I woke this morning to a fresh blanket of snow bathed in the cool light of the clearing sky. Morning light holds such promise – it creeps, it soothes, it shimmers – it changes by the minute – offering so many possibilities...

Questioning the Permanency of New Media and Social Networking

2011-02-01T09:50:00.003-05:00

Pages from my great-grandmother's autograph book, 1881

As I made a post to Facebook this morning – commenting on the weather and joking with a friend – I thought about the changes we have seen in the last decade. When I was twelve years old I bought a small cloth bound journal for my friends to write in. Coincidentally, we soon moved thirty miles away, to live with my grandmother, so the book became a means for my friends to pen their goodbyes. It is a true keepsake.

A few years ago, I was delighted to discover my great-grandmother had kept a similar little book. It was given to her as a Christmas gift in 1881 – she was 14 years old. I have shared a few pages from the book above. Not only does the text in this book give me a glimpse of the young girl she once was, it also shows me she shared my fondness for pansies. I have warm memories of working with my grandmother (her daughter) to plant these little flowers in the old cement pig troughs in the back corner of our yard. Years later, when I married my husband in the nearby garden, we placed pots of pansies on the tables. I felt my grandmother’s presence in their deep, velvety faces. And here, in my great-grandmother’s little book, she offers a small sketch of the flowers above the word “Autographs.”

But I digress... What I’m really wondering is will my daughter have a similar keepsake to share with future generations? In this age of texting and social networking, young people are sharing even the most mundane aspects of their lives on a daily basis. Moving thirty miles no longer means a loss of contact with old friends – they are as close as a touch of a button. But how permanent is this new means of communication? Will these digital archives become the treasures of the future? Or will the ease of their creation and lack of tangibility decrease their sense of value? Will they simply disappear?

Photography and Memory

2011-01-24T09:36:00.005-05:00

My Grandmother's Siblings circa 1903
Clark, George, and Alice Sheley

They say you can’t go home again, and for the most part, this is true. When I visit our family property I no longer feel the same connection with the place I once did. But there is one tangible way we can revisit the past: through pictures. When I look at pictures of our family home I am immediately carried back to the time and place when the image was captured. Photographs are deeply entwined with our memories.

Perhaps even more interesting is a photograph’s ability to carry us to a time and place we have never witnessed first hand. The pictures I have shared above are two of my favorites out of all of our old family photographs. The story, as I remember my grandmother telling it, is that a photographer was traveling through the area. He wanted to take a picture of my grandmother’s siblings in the doorway of their home “on top of the hill.” (The family would later move down the mountain to live with my grandmother’s grandparents in the house pictured below.) My grandmother was either a baby, or not born yet, so she is not in the picture. But she would talk about the pictures as if she were there when they were taken. Helen (my great-grandmother) was concerned that her daughter’s hair wasn’t combed. You can see she appears to be fretting in the first picture – with a comb clasp in her left hand and her right hand pressed to her cheek in dismay. Of course we can’t actually see Helen’s face, but after hearing my grandmother tell the story, I can picture it. The children are oblivious to their mother’s concern and are enraptured with the novelty of having their picture taken. In the second picture, Helen has her way and combs her daughter’s hair.

I don’t really know which photograph was taken first. But we tend to add our own narrative to everything we see, and these images are so evocative...

2011 Resolutions

2011-01-20T15:59:00.003-05:00

Our Family Home circa the 1920s?

My resolution for 2011 is to carve out more time for personal projects... As you can see by this tardy blog post - I'm off to a great start. ;-) But I am going to make more of an effort to share what I am working on. My current project is a book about our ancestral home - which was built in the early 1900s and sheltered 6 generations of our family until it was recently sold...

The Appeal of the Square Format...

2009-12-09T10:49:00.001-05:00

I see things first and foremost through the eyes of a designer. If I were to paint, I would be an abstract painter – reducing the natural world around me to the most basic elements of shape, color, texture, and composition. I suspect this is also why I am attracted to the square format in my photography work. The unity and cohesiveness of the equal sides suggests the image is but a unit of a larger whole. We experience our environment through a series of basic sensory interactions, which our mind then combines to create an overall feeling. However, we are only able to consciously focus on one interaction at a time. Thus, the square format is a good way to show a glimpse of awareness – as demonstrated in this image of a barn window. The blackness of the window panes, the one long bleached board, the dried winter weeds and the knotty texture of the wood are but small details of the barn itself (see the full barn image posted below.) Yet the basic elements of shape, color, texture and composition are so rich...

Preliminary Stages of a New Body of Work

2009-12-07T14:57:00.003-05:00

Embracing the lens and the digital dark room - I intend to focus on wintery Catskill landscapes over the coming months...

Group Show at Catskill Artist Gallery, Liberty, NY

2009-10-22T12:18:00.002-05:00

Some of my work is currently in a group show at the Catskill Artists Gallery, 38 Main Street, Liberty, NY. The show will be up until November 29.

The Importance of Physcial Processes In Making Art

2009-10-22T12:12:00.002-05:00

Here's a link to a video of my lecture at SUNY College at New Paltz for anyone who is interested in watching:
http://imsnp.mediasite.com/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=cda0329a26894e13903e66a8a7da8a69

Lecture At SUNY College at New Paltz

2009-10-19T15:33:00.003-05:00

I have been invited to present a lecture on my work at SUNY College at New Paltz on 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday evening, October 21. Check out this link for more info...

Deja Vu Series

2009-09-08T13:33:00.006-05:00

Deja Vu #5 and Deja Vu #4 • Pinhole Photographs with digital TTV effect

I feel the pull of distance everyday. My daily life is separate from the land. I am too busy to stop and notice. I am too busy to connect. In her book The Lure of the Local, Lucy Lippard claims, “Virtually all ancient spiritual models in every culture emerge from or exist in intimate relation to land or place.” Therefore, doesn’t our growing distance from the land ultimately represent a weakening of our spirituality? My desire to close the gap motivates my work. I want to stop and notice. I want to connect. Perhaps it is more accurate to say, “I want to feel,” since spirituality and place are sensual.

How can I depict these feelings with/in my work? I appreciated Lippard’s quote of Richards Misrach’s comment, “…beauty can be a very powerful conveyor of difficult ideas. It engages people when they might look away.” But I also agree with Lippard’s observation, “Conventional landscape photography tends to overwhelm place with image.”

I am trying to visually capture the essence of an idea. I am trying to show a feeling. I am trying to portray a hidden world. A world we don’t take the time to connect with. This world may only exist in the past. How do I show that?

A Sense of Yearning

2009-03-01T16:20:00.003-05:00

As the ongoing winter months cause the walls of my studio to close in on me, I find it appropriate to revisit some earlier writing. Here are some thoughts I penned a few years ago:

A Sense of Yearning

Since I was a child I can remember experiencing bouts of melancholy that are perhaps more accurately described as a sense of yearning. These moments seem to come to me more often in the fall, which has always been a reflective time for me. I keep a journal – have for years – but only write in it periodically. When I thumb through the pages the most common entry dates are between September and November.

I recently read a book that offers a possible explanation for my seasonal ruminations. Gretel Ehrlich sums up my thoughts most accurately in The Solace of Open Spaces. She writes:

All through autumn we hear a double voice: one says everything is ripe; the other says everything is dying. The paradox is exquisite. We feel what the Japanese call “aware” – an almost untranslatable word meaning something like “beauty tinged with sadness.”(Ehrlich p. 127)

Perhaps I become reflective in the fall because it is the time of year when the passage of time is most apparent. As each new day blooms, I am aware that another day has passed. My yearning stems from a desire to capture the passing days – or rather, to return to an earlier time.

In Black Sun, Julia Kristeva discusses the idea of a lost thing as the reason behind melancholia. She tells us, “My depression points to my not knowing how to lose – I have perhaps been unable to find a valid compensation for the loss?” (Kisteva p. 5) Kristeva’s thing defies an absolute definition, but I see a connection with my sense of yearning in a section where she notes, “Kant asserted that nostalgic persons did not desire the place of their youth but their youth itself; their desire is a search for the time and not for the thing to be recovered.” (Kristeva p. 60)

I find this concept interesting because the focus of my recent work and writings has centered on the idea of place and our physical connection with place. Until now, I believed my interest stemmed from my attraction to the landscape of my youth. Is it possible that my fascination with place actually represents a longing for a specific time (or even an earlier self)?

Rebecca Solnit observes in As Eve Said to the Serpent, “Landscape’s most crucial condition is considered to be space, but its deepest theme is time.” (Solnit p. 48) While I have been considering my connection with place (my earliest home), I have actually been considering how I interacted within the space of the landscape at a specific time (my childhood). I chose to concentrate on my physical experience because, as Diane Ackerman claims, “Our senses connect us intimately to the past, connect us in ways that our most cherished ideas never could.” (Ackerman p. xvi) My physical (or sensory) experiences create memories, which in turn can represent time. Memory is recorded time.

Furthermore, in their groundbreaking book, Memory: From Mind to Molecules, Larry Squire and Eric Kandel maintain, “Loss of memory leads to loss of self.” So, if landscape’s deepest theme is time – time that is recorded by our memory of experiencing its space – and our memories build our perception of self, then it can be reasoned that landscape can represent our identity; our shifting identity of self.

I believe it is also possible for this identity to travel beyond our life span, powered by the vehicle of our imagination. As a child I use to love to listen to my grandmother’s stories about growing up in the very home we lived in. I would walk barefoot along the cool dirt paths in her garden with my denim skirt swishing around my legs – imagining I lived in the “olden days.” Of course, my play romanticized the time. My grandmother’s world (as I created it) was much more attractive than my own. This is not so uncommon. Rebecca Solnit declares, “Our culture is pervaded by nostalgia for things that may never have existed.” (Solnit p. 1) We imagine the lives of earlier generations as simpler than our own. Much like the promise of a peaceful afterlife, time provides distance from the discomforts of reality.

Ultimately, I believe my yearning for an earlier, romanticized time is actually a longing for a return of innocence. It could be the innocence of my youth, before pubescent and/or adult concerns began piling up. Or perhaps my desire should be traced back over time to the concept of original sin – the innocence of our species. We all have fantasies of simpler times because as we shed our naiveté we can’t help but see death on the other side of beauty.

New York Wildflowers

2009-02-22T13:01:00.009-05:00

I am by no means a botanist and only know the common names of a few flowers from having grown up in a rural environment. Of course this didn’t stop me from impressing some out of town friends years ago during a hike through the Catskill Mountains. I began naming all the plants we encountered and they were amazed by my skill until some of the names became so outlandish they couldn’t help but realize I was making a majority of them up as I went along. : )

All humor aside, I wasn’t terribly concerned by my lack of botanical knowledge until I began to focus on tiny weeds as subjects in my Roadside Flowers scannography series. I was less than satisfied with titles like Yellow Weed and was hard pressed to discover the true name of my subjects. I will be eternally grateful to the Connecticut Botanical Society and their wonderful website on Connecticut Wildflowers. Obviously, as neighbors Connecticut and New York share a lot of the same wildflowers and the great images I found on the Connecticut Botanical Society’s website enabled me to identify a number of my subjects. Here are some of my discoveries:

This is a great example of my ignorance. I discovered this flower while hiking along a trail at Sam’s Point in late October. The details captured in the scan were barely discernible by the naked eye and I named the image Paper White because of the quality of the petals. At the time, I did not know that there is another kind of flower called Paper White and the title I had come up with is a misnomer. The true name for this tiny flower is Sweet Everlasting (Catfoot) or Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium (Gnaphalium obtusifolium) as seen here.

This series was dubbed Blue Wild Flower 1 & 2. The true name is Chicory or Cichorium intybus as seen here. I remember reading about how Chicory roots were used to make a coffee substitute during the civil war – but I never knew it was the pretty blue flowers growing along my road.

And what I simply called Yellow Weed is really Common St. Johnswort or Hypericum perforatum as seen here.

This tiny sprig from a bush I titled Pink – for obvious reasons. But its true name is much better. It’s called Meadowsweet or Spiraea alba (Spiraea latifolia) as seen here.

Just as focusing on tiny subjects in the Catskill/Hudson Valley Region caused me to be more appreciative of the details in the surrounding landscape, learning more about my subjects has proven to be equally delightful.

The Increasing Popularity of Scanography

2009-01-10T11:57:00.005-05:00

Yellow Weed

A few years ago when I began scanning subjects directly on my flatbed scanner I wasn't sure what to call the process. Ever willing to conduct some research, I searched the internet to find what others were calling the technique. I figured I couldn't be the only one having so much fun. But when I first began my search I had a difficult time finding other examples. I did eventually come across a few folks who were working with the medium in similar ways and called the process "scanography." I'm not crazy about the name… it sounds medical to me. But the name seems to have stuck and there appears to be a growing interest in the process. Now when you google "scanography" a whole slew of sites come up. Here are a few that I find informative:

http://www.scanner-magic.com/index.html

http://www.scannography.org/

http://www.shows2go.si.edu/exhibitions/2007/12/scanner-photogr.html

http://blog.scannography.info/

The TTV Effect

2008-08-08T17:00:00.003-05:00

Beach Path

I have been experimenting with digitally creating the TTV effect. TTV or "Through the Viewfinder" is the photographic process of taking a picture with one camera through the lens of another camera. Typically, it creates an image with a distinct dark border and some lens distortion with dust and imperfections. Since many of my images are captured without a lens (using a scanner or pinhole camera) I thought it would be interesting to explore the unique results achieved by bringing these divergent processes together.

This image was originally captured with my pinhole camera.

About My Pinhole Camera

2007-12-28T11:33:00.001-05:00

People frequently ask me about my pinhole camera and pinhole photography in general. I first learned about this process when I was attending the Art Institute of Boston for my MFA. One of the faculty members, Jessica Ferguson, presented her work. She makes lovely pinhole images of dioramas she creates with collected objects. Her work intrigued me and I decided I wanted to know more about the process. I was fortunate to participate in a pinhole photography workshop with her the following semester. She then put me in touch with Craig Barber, another outstanding pinhole artist who doesn’t live far from me. Craig was kind enough to provide me with instructions for building the camera you see pictured above. He also provided me with the aluminum shim with the appropriately sized pinhole (which acts as the lens.) His instructions for operating this device were the equivalent of licking your finger and sticking your hand in the air to see which direction the wind is blowing… but I understood it’s an intuitive process. You have to go by “feel”. That’s one of the things I like about it.

Pinhole photography stands on the basic physics behind photography. Light passing through a tiny hole will produce a reversed image on a perpendicular plane. References to this phenomenon have been traced back to Chinese texts from the fifth century B.C. Many of us are familiar with the Camera Obscura, a drawing device used by some Renaissance artists, which was, essentially, a pinhole camera. Subsequently, lenses were developed to gain greater control over the refracting light and chemical processes evolved to create a permanent image – leading up to the wonderful world of photography we have today. (This, of course, is the highly abridged version of the history of photography.)

In an age when you can take a picture with your cell phone, I enjoy exploring photography’s roots. As you can see, my camera is pretty simple. It is made out of black mat board and duct tape and is fitted with a Polaroid sheet film holder. The Polaroid film holder is great on many levels – one being I don’t have a dark room and two, I’m not the most patient person. Since pinhole photography can be tricky at best, I like know right away whether or not I got a good shot.

The interesting thing is, I scan the Polaroid images and print digitally. So by using a pinhole camera, Polaroid film, and digital printing, my process just about covers the entire span of the history of photography. : )

Scanner Photography: Revealing Wonderful Details

2007-09-27T08:19:00.003-05:00

Onion Blossom
8"x10" • pigment ink on archival paper • 2007

Artists tend to work with the tools they are familiar with. I know a master printer who creates beautiful paintings with a brayer that are highly dependent on precise registration. His art has a direct correlation with his profession. I would even go so far as to say that the way his process transcends the expected use of printers’ tools and methodologies exemplifies the act of artistic expression.

Similarly, when I decided to pursue fine art photography – after working as a graphic designer for nearly fifteen years – it wasn’t long before I began experimenting with the tools of my trade. While I am well versed in Photoshop, I found I wasn’t much interested in manipulating my images digitally. I was, however, quite fascinated with what I could do with a scanner. Just about every designer I know has scanned a three dimensional object at one time or another, but I began to do so in earnest. Each day I’d collect small bits of plants during my morning walk and spend hours enlarging them (many times their original size) with my flatbed scanner. The results were stunning and had a profound impact on me.

Technology has never been difficult for me – but it had changed me over the years. I began my graphic design career in the late 1980s – just as the transition to digital production was beginning to occur. I gravitated to the field because I possessed the right combination of creativity, logic and craftsmanship. I could do amazing things with technical pens and x-acto knives. What’s more, tasks considered mind numbing by many, I found relaxing, even restorative. But, after years of fast-paced work on the computer, I no longer had the patience for the methodical precision I once enjoyed.

When I began using my scanner as a camera, my use of the computer changed. I slowed down. I was using the very tool that had sapped my patience to contemplate small details in the natural world – with an intensity and awareness that I hadn’t experienced since I was a child. The progression of the work that followed can best be summed up with the words of artists/authors David Bayles and Ted Orland in their book Art and Fear:

The need to make art may not step solely from the need to express who you are, but from a need to complete a relationship with something outside yourself. (p. 108)

Pinhole Photograph of the Delaware River

2007-08-22T18:51:00.000-05:00

Rafting the Delaware 1

16"x12" • pinhole photograph - pigment giclée on canvas • 2007

Last Sunday my family and I took a rafting trip on the Delaware River, PA/NY. It was cool and overcast - a perfect day for being out on the water. A number of people had the same idea - but with the long exposure of this pinhole photograph (about 1.5 minutes) you can't really see any of our fellow boaters. Instead, the image captures the serene tranquility of the beautiful landscape we all enjoyed.

Pinhole Photographs at Jersey Shore

2007-04-21T11:00:00.001-05:00

My husband and I took our children to Wildwood, New Jersey for a mini vacation early this spring. We had the whole beach to ourselves and spent the days flying a kite, searching for shells and riding our bikes along the boardwalk. I took plenty of candid snap shots of our family with my digital camera – but nothing could capture the vast open space and quiet solitude of the beach like my pinhole camera.

I shot my beach images with Polaroid 54 sheet film on an overcast day. I used my handmade camera (that I made with black mat board and duck tape) that’s fitted with a 4x5 Polaroid film holder. I sit this camera directly on the ground when I compose my shots. Exposure time was about one minute (during which time I was usually squatting to hold the camera steady in the gusting wind and counting the time quietly to myself.) I guess I looked a little suspicious squatting among the dunes because at one point someone called out “What are you doing?!” I don’t even want to contemplate what it looked like I was doing! I’m sure I looked like a crazy person bundled up in my rather worn LL Bean coat, lugging around a yellow shopping bag (of supplies) and squatting in various locations.

Fortunately, the remaining parts of my process occur in the privacy of my home studio. Here I scan the Polaroids and tone them digitally. If I look crazy when I’m doing this, only my dog knows.

The Impact of Place

2007-02-04T15:57:00.000-05:00

[The following is an excerpt from my MFA thesis.]

For most of my adult life, my attachment to my childhood home has been a reoccurring theme in my art. I grew up in a farmhouse, built by my great-great grandfather, in a small town in the Catskill Mountain region of New York State. My fondness for the area is evident even in my commercial work as most of my clients are non-profit land-stewardship organizations seeking to protect the very streams and hillsides so deeply embedded in my psyche.

During the first semester of my MFA studies, I produced an artist book that portrayed my emotional associations with a stream that flows through my family’s property. Upon viewing my efforts, a faculty member suggested I read the book Lure of the Local by Lucy Lippard. This book was instrumental in providing me with an understanding of the ideas I had intuitively sought to express in my work. Lippard introduced me to the concept of “place” and perhaps more importantly, the reciprocal relationship between self and place. I began to appreciate that because I am a “placed person” (having developed a strong identity with a locale) I return to this place (in actuality or metaphorically) as a method for remembering who I am.1 Lippard described Kennebec Point, Maine as her “soul’s home”; my book project enabled me to visit my soul’s home and reestablish my emotional connection with the landscape of my youth.2

However, as much as I valued this emotional connection, I suspected my bond with this patch of land could be traced to another level, that it could even be reduced to a symbiotic relationship among the very cells in my body. The next book I read was pivotal in the development of my theory. Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space introduced me to the notion of phenomenology – the philosophical investigation of how things are perceived. According to Bachelard, the physicality of the space we initially inhabit affects how we perceive and relate to all other spaces throughout our lives. He claimed, “But over and beyond our memories, the house we were born in is physically inscribed in us.” He continued, “…the house we were born in has engraved within us the hierarchy of the various functions of inhabiting. We are the diagram of the functions of inhabiting that particular house, and all the other houses are but variations on a fundamental theme.”3 Bachelard caused me to think about my physical relationship with the landscape of my childhood home – as it was instilled by my senses – and these thoughts became even more interesting to me than my emotional connection with the place.

Poet/author Diane Ackerman maintains, “There is no way in which to understand the world without first detecting it through the radar-net of our senses.”4 This biological system is the window of our awareness and shapes how we perceive and function within a space. As I type these words my senses tell me I am sitting in an office chair. I see its black leather upholstery in my peripheral vision and feel the cool, smooth texture of the material under my legs. I sense the warmth of the room and the stillness – maybe even a slight stuffiness – of the air. Without looking up, I have a pretty good idea of how high the ceiling is above my head. My senses quietly go about keeping me informed of where I am in space and enable me to process more than one piece of information at a time. For example, I am aware of the distance of the ceiling as well as the other attributes of my studio, in spite of my preoccupation with writing, because of a phenomenon author Tony Hiss refers to as “simultaneous perception.” In his book, The Experience of Place, Hiss explains:

We can experience any place because we’ve all received, as part of the structure of our attention, a mechanism that drinks in whatever it can from our surroundings. This underlying awareness – I call it simultaneous perception – seems to operate continuously, at least during waking hours, even when our concentration seems altogether engrossed in something else entirely. While normal waking consciousness works to simplify perception, allowing us to act quickly and flexibly by helping us remain seemingly oblivious to almost everything except the task in front of us, simultaneous perception is more like an extra, or sixth, sense: It broadens and diffuses the beam of attention evenhandedly across all the senses so we can take in whatever is around us – which means sensations of touch and balance, for instance, in addition to all sights, sounds and smells.5

Our five senses combine to create a sixth sense – a sense of attentiveness – on a subconscious level. Author Winifred Gallagher describes the same idea in a slightly different way. She says:

…the senses convey to the brain far more information than we can consciously be aware of; it is the totality of all that undifferentiated input that we perceive in a general way as ambience.6

Additionally, in her book, The Power of Place: How Our Surroundings Shape Our Thoughts, Emotions and Actions, Gallagher provides some excellent examples of how place can impact us on a biological level. She views “the earth and its processes as a unified living organism rather than as a grab bag of separate biological and geophysical systems.”7 According to Gallagher, everything is connected. She acknowledges how “even the simplest microorganism depends on environmental interactions to survive” and extends her examples from “our simplest [cellular] level up through any state in our development.”8

Gallagher supports her opinions by explaining how light, temperature, altitude and even geophysical energies affect us biologically. However, her most winning argument is embodied in her discussion of the womb as place. When one considers a developing baby’s physical dependency on its environment – a connection made so apparent by the coiling umbilical cord – it’s not too far of a stretch to accept our dependency on the places we inhabit. The light, the air, the temperature, the space – “our relationship with the larger world is built from countless sensory interactions between us and our settings.”9

I am fascinated by these ideas of how we subconsciously respond to the spaces and objects around us. That our response is primarily physical (biological) is even more intriguing and suggests a degree of dependency that most of us are unaware of. In her book, As Eve Said to the Serpent, Rebecca Solnit observes:

In making landscape art, contemporary artists recognized landscape not as scenery but as the spaces and systems we inhabit, a system our own lives depend on.10

Notes

1. Lucy R. Lippard, The Lure of the Local: sense of place in a multicentered society (New York: The New Press, 1997), p. 33.

2. Lippard, p. 4.

3. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space: the classic look at how we experience intimate places (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), pp. 14-15.

4. Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), p. xv.

5. Tony Hiss, The Experience of Place (New York: Knopf, 1990), pp. xii-xiii.

6. Winifred Gallagher, The Power of Place: How Our Surroundings Shape Our Thoughts, Emotions, and Actions (New York: Poseidon Press, 1993), p. 24.

7. Gallagher, p. 23.

8. Gallagher, pp. 15-16.

9. Gallagher, p. 127.

10. Rebecca Solnit, As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender and Art (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001), p. 47.

Mixing The Old and New In Mixed Media

2007-01-17T11:32:00.000-05:00

Interpretive Landscape 4
2005 - mixed media, 9"x12"

During my years as a graphic designer, I spent a fair amount of time in front of the computer. So when I decided to return to making fine art, I re-discovered the joy of tactile experiences. Materiality is very much a part of my process – and yet the computer remains a familiar tool.

I enjoy mixing old and new technologies/media. In my Interpretive Landscape series I combined digital collage with pinhole photography and encaustic medium. The digital component enabled me to seamlessly execute my vision with disparate mediums (photo and abstract watercolor) while pinhole photography and encaustic require the physical engagement I find so desirable.

The concept of an image captured through a tiny pinhole was around long before photographic processes became available to make the image permanent. (It was the basis of the camera obscura - a drawing tool used by many artists in the 17th and 18th centuries. However, documentation of such a device can be found as far back as the writings of the Chinese philosopher Mo-Ti in the 5th century BC.) The pinhole camera is based on a simple law of the physical world. Light travels in a straight line and when some of the rays reflected from a bright subject pass through a small hole in a thin material they do not scatter but cross and reform as an upside down image on a flat surface that is parallel to the hole.

Encaustic (a medium comprised of bees wax, resin and pigment) is another "old process." This sensory-rich material was used by ancient Greek and Egyptian painters and is currently undergoing an overwhelming surge in popularity.

So today, when it is so easy to capture an image with a digital camera, it is utterly appealing to “go at it from another angle” – to bring physical engagement to the process – and to combine ancient technologies with modern. For me, the computer is a tool among many.

Why Do We Make Art?

2007-01-02T09:26:00.000-05:00

In some of my previous posts I have shared reading responses - writings I did while pursuing my MFA. Reading plays a large role in the shaping of my art practice. It helps to solidify my ideas and identify my direction. In other words, I find it inspirational. I also often confess to getting my best ideas in the shower. (I don't know what it is about warm running water - but it's a conduit for my imagination.) Basically, I am always thinking and try to respond to my thoughts in a genuine way.

I was recently asked, “How do you stay fresh and come up with new ideas?” This person might as well have asked me, “Why do you make art?” I found the question difficult to answer. Continually asking “What if?” is just simply how my mind works. So one thing always leads to another. I guess I approach my art practice as I would a puzzle – constantly seeking a solution, yet recognizing that the achievement of the ultimate solution would mean the demise of my art practice. You can imagine that all this seeking can be somewhat frustrating because I never really experience a sense of completion.

So to be an artist is to be in the constant state of frustration of one pondering a puzzle with no hope for an answer. Because our work is really about the process of response – not the response itself. Heck, half the challenge is figuring out what the question is in the first place. The “why” should come before the “how” but sometimes we don’t even know “why” we do something. Often, we have to do it first and then figure it out. (To read more on this idea, take a look at Relying on Process.)

I believe we make art simply because we have to. It is our way of functioning in this world.

Memory of Place

2006-12-21T12:18:00.000-05:00

While making plans to get a dog, my husband and I had a discussion about the size of our yard. His first choice for a canine companion was a large breed notorious for its need to run. I argued that owners of such an animal should have a big yard. To which my husband replied, “We have a big yard!”

We don’t have a big yard, but I can understand why my husband might think otherwise. Chris grew up on a narrow street where the houses are so close together you can almost reach out the window of one and touch the side of another. His yard consisted of a small patch of grass and a sidewalk. By his standards, our one-acre parcel is huge.

I, on the other hand, grew up in a farmhouse surrounded by 100 acres. Our yard feels small to me, but to be fair I was willing to give it a verbal upgrade of “medium.” In spite of this, we ended up getting a small dog that can run like the wind in our medium sized yard.

The small dog was my idea. I guiltily admit to sabotaging all of our plans by coming home with him unexpectedly. (Not one of the smoother moments in our marriage.) While the acquisition of the little black ball of fluff truly was spontaneous, I suspect the idea of a large dog bumping around in our small (okay, medium) sized home was more than I could take. In addition to our conflicting spatial perceptions, my husband’s tolerance of how the space around him is filled also differs from mine. Prior to moving in together, Chris accused me of being “sparse” in my decorating, while I was overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of “stuff” crammed into his little apartment.

I believe our differences stem from an inherent sense of space imprinted on us as children. The environment we are raised in continues to influence our adult perceptions for a number of reasons. For starters, us humans cope with the phenomena we encounter by slotting them in to the understanding of the world we have already developed.(1) In other words, we process what we don’t know with what we do know. Our memories determine our response.

Now, I can remember growing up with a lot of land around me, but I can’t say I consciously think of this when I consider the size of my yard. My response comes from a feeling. What feels spacious to my husband feels closed-in to me. Our property is tucked into a hillside and surrounded by trees – it’s very different from the open fields of my youth.

However, my perception of closed space isn’t the result of a single observation or a specific memory of my childhood home, rather it is the result of all the messages carried by all of my senses and how these messages compare with previous messages I have received throughout my life. Obviously, our senses carry more information than we can process at any given time. The totality of all this undifferentiated input we perceive in a general way as ambience.(2) Thus, the ambience generated by my current yard feels different than the ambience generated by my childhood yard. I interpret or generalize this difference as a feeling of being closed-in.

Memory is key in determining how we categorize the ambience or feeling of a place. Memory functions on a number of levels to determine our response. As scientists continue to unravel the functions of the human brain and establish how memories are formed, they have recognized two different kinds of memory: declarative and nondeclarative.
Declarative memory is for facts, ideas and events. (i.e. I can remember growing up on a large piece of property.) Nondeclarative memory typically involves knowledge that is reflexive rather than reflective in nature. This memory is unconscious and results in performance without awareness.(3) (I inhabit space with stored perceptions of other spaces I have inhabited – I unconsciously refer to these perceptions and respond accordingly.) Nondeclarative memory greatly influences our interaction with space.

While declarative memory can create an emotional connection to a place (For example, the association of a place with a memory of a particular event or time.) I propose nondeclarative memory plays a role in the development of a physical connection to place. Nondeclarative memory is subconsciously recalled through a response or behavior and behavior can be reduced to biological function.
In her book, The Power of Place: How Our Surroundings Shape Our Thoughts, Emotions and Actions, Winifred Gallagher provides some excellent examples of the impact place has on biological function. She views “the earth and its processes as a unified living organism rather than as a grab bag of separate biological and geophysical systems.”(4) According to Gallagher, everything is connected. She acknowledges how “even the simplest microorganism depends on environmental interactions to survive” and extends her examples from “our simplest [cellular] level up through any state in our development.”(5)
Gallagher supports her opinions by explaining how light, temperature, altitude and even geophysical energies affect us biologically. However, her most winning argument is embodied in her discussion of the womb as place. When one considers a developing baby’s physical dependency on its environment – a connection made so apparent by the coiling umbilical cord – it’s not too far of a stretch to accept our dependency on the place we inhabit. The light, the air, the temperature, the space – “our relationship with the larger world is built from countless sensory interactions between us and our settings.”(6)

A high percentage of our sensory interactions and subsequent biological responses are primarily recorded by nondeclarative memory. In their book, Memory From Mind to Molecules, Larry Squire and Eric Kandel explain how early behavioral psychologists unknowingly characterized a number of nondeclarative forms of memory. Specifically, they identified two major learning procedures: nonassociative and associative learning.

Habituation and sensitization are examples of nonassociative learning. In these types of learning, a subject learns about the properties of a single stimulus – such as a loud noise – by being exposed to it repeatedly. [The subject will no longer be startled by the loud noise after hearing it over a period of time.] Classical and operant conditioning are examples of associative learning. Here a subject learns about the relationship between two stimuli (classical conditioning) or about the relationship of a stimulus to the subject’s behavior (operant conditioning). Thus, in classical conditioning, an animal that learns to associate a bell with the taste of food will salivate when it hears the bell. In operant conditioning the animal will learn to associate pressing a bar or key with the delivery of food… (7)

Squires and Kandel’s discussion on nondeclarative memory supports Winifred Gallagher’s claim that “much of what we assume is ‘instinctive’ behavior has actually been learned in early life.”(8) “In a very real sense, the places in our lives get under our skin and influence our behavior in ways we often don’t suspect.”(9) The authority place has on our behavior can be traced to the formation of nondeclarative memories and offers proof of our physical connection with place.

Notes:

1. Bender, Barbara, "Time and Landscape." Current Anthropology 43.4 (August-October 2002): p103(10)

2. Winifred Gallagher, The Power of Place: How Our Surroundings Shape Our Thoughts, Emotions, and Actions (New York: Poseidon Press, 1993), p. 23

3. Larry R. Squire and Eric R. Kandel, Memory from Mind to Molecules (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2003), pp. 24-25

4. Gallagher, p. 23

5. Gallagher, pp.15-16

6. Gallagher, p. 127

7. Squire and Kandel

8. Gallagher, p. 168

9. Gallagher, p. 127

A Sense of Awareness

2006-12-21T11:10:00.000-05:00

I have been skimming James Elkin’s How to Use Your Eyes and The Object Stares Back, Joseph Alber’s Interaction of Color, Martin Kemp’s Visualizations, and Katherine Harmon’s You Are Here, while I have begun to read The Power of Maps by Denis Wood. If I were to focus on a single thread these books have in common, it would be a “sense of awareness.” An awareness of the unnoticed, the hidden, or information we usually don’t take the time to think about; and perhaps more importantly, an awareness of the past as it manifests itself in the present. The past is revealed when one takes the time to notice and/or learn about its physical evidence. In other words, if we take the time to truly look, there is narrative in everything we see.

James Elkin’s book How to Use Your Eyes was instrumental in bringing me to this conclusion. I was first drawn to the chapter How to Look at a Map and was mildly interested in Elkin’s observations on the European influences apparent in the map maker’ efforts. However, it was his chapters on cracks in pavement (of all things!) and paintings that really caught my attention. Cracks are fairly common elements and are easy to overlook. The map-like quality of the chapters’ photos caused me to pause and Elkin’s text urged me to look closer. He explained how crack formations are indicative of specific events or conditions (material, weather, etc.) and in each case, the physical appearance of the cracks tells the informed viewer what those events or conditions were. So in a way, cracks are maps of the past. Maps that tell a story.

In my last post I talked about how we carry a sense of space derived from our birth house with us for our entire life. Now I am looking at cracks in paint and wondering what story they have to tell. While seemingly divergent, these thoughts do share a commonality: both require an awareness of the past.

Allow me to expand on my reverie by referring to the exercise in Joseph Alber’s book where you stare at a page of yellow circles and then focus on a blank white paper and see an after-image of yellow diamonds. The exercise is meant to demonstrate the interdependence of color (and does so quite nicely), but for the sake of my line of reasoning, let’s use it as an example of the physical manifestation of the past in the present. Although we are no longer looking at the yellow circles, their evidence remains. However, unless we are specifically doing this exercise and looking at white paper, we are not likely to notice the after-image. A “sense of awareness” is highly dependent on the act of observing.

Which brings me to another point (or the same point, but more so!) In his book Visualizations, Martin Kemp uses the power of observation to create a hinge between Art and Science. Both scientists and artists study an object in order to gain understanding, and sometimes their observations enable them to see things in a different way.

In Visualizations I was attracted to Susan Derge’s Taw series where she treats the surface of a river as a photographic transparency. The resulting patterns offer the viewer a new way of seeing the rivulets on the water’s surface. The topographic quality of the images is striking and I can’t help but think of Elkin’s cracks and wonder what stories Derge’s rivulets have to tell.

Perception is Reality

2006-12-21T10:37:00.000-05:00

My sisters and I use to play house in an area at the edge of our yard. The land, originally shaped by the foundation of my great-great grandparent’s first home, mimicked the space inside our nearby house. We would walk up a slight rise to enter the “kitchen” – a level area measuring approximately 20 x 20 feet. A mossy bank on the right was our “stairway” to the long “hallway” that led to our “bedrooms.” In reality the “hallway” was a two-foot wide path tucked into the hillside about four feet above the “kitchen.” Our furniture consisted of a picnic table, old camp stove, worktable and two large boulders were our “beds.” Young trees studded our “walls” and their leafy canopy created our “ceiling.” We pretended a large hollow tree trunk in our “hallway” was our “bathroom,” but we weren’t above stripping the decaying bark from the inside to serve as “meat” for our dinner table.

On a nice day, my sisters and I could spend hours in our make-believe home. Since reading The Lure of the Local by Lucy Lippard and The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard, I’m just beginning to recognize the significance of our play.
According to Bachelard, the physicality of the space we initially inhabit affects how we perceive and relate to all other spaces throughout our lives. He says,

But over and beyond our memories, the house we were born in is physically inscribed in us.

He continues,

…the house we were born in has engraved within us the hierarchy of the various functions of inhabiting. We are the diagram of the functions of inhabiting that particular house, and all the other houses are but variations on a fundamental theme.

Our make-believe house at the edge of our yard could very well represent the first time I projected my sense of space, derived from my “birth house,” onto another environment. I traveled the mossy bank and path the same way I climbed the stairs in our home. The imaginary walls offered a similar familiarity – the texture of the tree bark could have been cracked plaster. Even the cramped quarters of the hollow log felt akin to the toilet squeezed between the wall and the large tub occupying the closet-turned-bathroom in our old farmhouse.

It was easy for us to re-create our home in the nearby landscape. We naturally gravitated to this particular area because its features were suggestive of spaces already familiar to us. As Bachelard says, “The space we love is unwilling to remain permanently enclosed. It deploys and appears to move elsewhere without difficulty; into other times, and on different planes of dream and memory.” Our movements within our imaginary home echoed the movements within the spaces of our actual home. Our imaginary home was the equivalent of our actual home reduced to its most primitive elements and our play embodied the most basic notions of inhabiting space.

Because I was very young when we created our make-believe house, I am convinced its features are imprinted on my psyche as deeply as those of my birth home. The textures and sensations, smells and sounds of the actual location settled within me – essentially blending my recollections of the original space with the physical reality of the landscape. Therefore, in addition to the physical inscription of my birth house, I developed a strong connection with the land.
Furthermore, the result of these early spatial/sensory impressions extends beyond the physical realm. Lippard and Bachelard both acknowledge a higher level of impact.

In Lure of the Local, Lippard notes, “In his evocative book on domestic interiors – Home: The Short History of an Idea – Witold Rybczynksi traces the human dwelling place from campsites to bare rooms to the complex spaces we inhabit today, drawing parallels with the development of self-consciousness, ‘the house as a setting for an emerging interior life.’” And Bachelard claims, “Now my aim is clear: I must show that the house is one of the greatest powers of integration for the thoughts, memories and dreams of mankind.”
Bachelard also says, “Our soul is an abode. And by remembering ‘houses’ and ‘rooms,’ we learn to ‘abide’ within ourselves.” So, as the spaces of our birth home determine our physical interactions with subsequent environments, they simultaneously influence us on phenomenological and metaphysical levels. In other words, our thoughts and perceptions – the very essence of who we are and how we identify ourselves – are affected.

This notion could explain the difficult time I had in my early twenties when my sister and brother-in-law bought our family home. The transaction happened to occur while I was experiencing some difficult personal challenges and for the first time in my life I felt like I had lost “me.” In addition to the changes he made to the actual house, my brother-in-law completely altered the landscape of our childhood play area. The physical loss of this place was mirrored and magnified by an emotional loss I had suffered. I floundered for a couple of years before I developed Bachelard’s understanding that “the houses that [are] lost forever continue to live on in us.”

Relying on Process

2006-12-21T10:33:00.001-05:00

Before I began the Master of Fine Arts program at the Art Institute of Boston, I had not given much thought to the difference between conceptual art work and process-oriented work. To be perfectly honest, I had not given much thought to my artistic approach at all. I had been working as a freelance designer with the same handful of clients for several years and my work had become routine. My frustration with the mind numbing routine was one of the factors that lead to my decision to pursue an MFA.
Shortly before I attended my first residency in Boston, I read a book called The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear by Ralph Keyes. This book introduced me to several of the concepts that are the main focus of the “process” books I read during my first semester in graduate school. The following quote caught my attention:

“Every book,” said Iris Murdoch, “is the wreck of a perfect idea.” Once this is clear, it’s easy to panic, get blocked, or give up writing altogether as an impossible dream. One thing that separates would-be writers [substitute ‘artists’] from working writers is that the latter know their work will never match their dreams. Nonwriters typically vow that if they can’t make the book on paper look as good as the one in their head, they just won’t write it. Working writers know this is an impossible dream and settle for the closest facsimile.

“All of us failed to match our dream of perfection,” said William Faulkner. “So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. In my opinion, if I could write all my work again, I am convinced that I would do it better, which is the healthiest condition for an artist. That’s why he keeps on working, trying again; he believes each time that this time he will do it, bring it off. Of course he won’t, which is why this condition is healthy. Once he did it, once he matched the work to the image, the dream, nothing would remain but to cut his throat, jump off the other side of that pinnacle of perfection into suicide.” (1)

The above quote, along with Keyes’ overall message, caused me to question my own creative methods and decide that the artistic process was a worthwhile subject for starting my academic studies.
Subsequently, I read Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, Trust the Process by Shaun McNiff, and The Blank Canvas by Anna Held Audette and found that all four authors are essentially saying the same thing: 1.) Don’t strive for perfection, 2.) Just work and work as often as possible, 3.) Work with what you know/what is important to you, and 4.) Don’t worry about what other people think/how your work will be received.
I needed to hear all of these points. For years I entertained an abundant number of ideas that never reached fruition. (My work was so conceptual it never achieved material form!) I blamed my schedule, my lack of time, etc. for my failure to create personal expressions, but now I realize my approach was at fault.
The few times I actually started a project, I quickly became frustrated when it didn’t match the picture in my head or I became distracted by a “better” idea. (I suspect the parameters of deadlines and assignments prevented me from experiencing the same lack of productivity in my design work and as an undergraduate.) I was annoyed with myself on many levels.
So it was very liberating when I read that even William Faulkner couldn’t pull off what he created in his mind. Art and Fear drives the point home very succinctly with a single line:

…vision is always ahead of execution – and it should be. (2)

In Trust the Process, Shaun McNiff, of course, informs me that I shouldn’t concern myself with the initial idea in the first place, but allow the process to lead me. He says:

Truly original expressions can never be planned in advance. (3)

Anna Held Audette throws another slant on the subject in The Blank Canvas:

First of all, keep in mind that thinking about what you’re going to do is a way of stalling.(4)

I had definitely been stalling! Audette also remarks:

Of the two abilities, talent and the will to work, it is the latter that plays the more important role in an artist’s development. (5)

In spite of the Nike® slogan, the concept of “just doing it” had not really occurred to me. I have since applied this work ethic to my studio practice and the results have been very satisfying. I sit down and work for an allotted period of time regardless of where my thoughts are. Some days I follow a specific idea, other days my work is more spontaneous and directed by the media. I have adopted Mcniff’s belief:

The discipline of creation is a mix of surrender and initiative.(6)

I accomplished more in the first few weeks of my graduate studies than I had in years and, according to the above authors, by accomplishing more I increased my odds of accomplishing something good.
Aside from improving my productivity, my reading also encouraged a growing confidence in my choice of subjects and methods of expression. Bayles and Orland say:

In a large measure becoming an artist consists of learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive. (7)

Audette says:

The quality of your work is directly related to your involvement with what you are doing, (8)

and,

It is, however, of paramount importance to know what moves you and to act on that knowledge. (9)

I find that I am able to step away from a designer’s mindset and its accompanying commercial concerns for the “audience” and pursue highly personal work simply because I want to.
Of course, there is a good chance that such work will not be well received. Bayles and Orland encourage me not to worry:

…the real question about acceptance is not whether your work will be viewed as art, but whether it will be viewed as your art, (10)

and

…courting approval… puts a dangerous amount of power in the hands of the audience. Worse yet, the audience is seldom in a position to grant (or withhold) approval on the one issue that really counts – namely, whether or not you’re making progress in your work. … The only pure communication is between you and your work. (11)

Audette backs them up:

Jane Freilicher spoke pointedly to this issue when she said, ‘To strain after innovation, to worry about being ‘on the cutting edge’ (a phrase I hate), reflects concern for a place in history or for one’s career rather than for the authenticity of one’s painting.’ (12)

So I move forward by following the premise that genuine work is far more appealing than self-conscious pandering and that the best measure of my success as an artist can be found in the spectrum of my own work. This concept is truly cathartic.

Notes

1. Ralph Keyes, The Courage to Write (How Writers Transcend Fear) (New York: H. Holt. 1995), pp. 26-27.

2. David Bayles and Ted Orland, Art and Fear – Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking (United States: Image Continuum Press, 1993), p. 15.

3. Shaun McNiff, Trust the Process: An Artist’s Guide to Letting Go (United States: Random House, Inc. 1998), p. 60.

4. Anna Held Audette, The Blank Canvas – Inviting the Muse (Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc. 1993), p. 64.

5. Audette p. 42.

6. McNiff, p. 2.

7. Bayles and Orland, p. 3.

8. Audette, p. 98.

9. Audette, p. 102.

10. Bayles and Orland, p. 45.

11. Bayles and Orland, p. 47.

12. Audette, p. 63.

The Tree Is a Good Image To Work With

2006-12-21T09:19:00.000-05:00

Pathways 1
2005 - mixed media, 48" x 48"

This image represents the culmination of my graduate studies. From 2003-2005 I made the transition from working digitally in the commercial realm to finding my “voice” as a mixed media fine artist. It was a time of discovery as I experimented with different methods and materials and learned that humans have an innate need for physical experiences, especially in relation to the natural world. In this work, I explored the ideas of place, perception, memory and longing – using the visual vocabulary I developed in earlier pieces. The tree is a good image to work with – by its very nature of being rooted to the ground it exemplifies a physical connection with the landscape. Additionally, its reaching branches resemble the nerve endings that make up the biological system of our senses and act as our window of awareness. This particular image was achieved by solarizing the negative – the shifting of positive and negative tones creates a rich linear texture within the image itself. The image was printed in sections with archival pigment inkjet and mounted on sixteen 12” panels. Each tile was coated with encaustic medium (bees wax and resin). I then rubbed oil paint into lines I inscribed in the encaustic surface. The overall all result is a sensual, multi-layered evocative image.