#haplologic

Night 2 of GhostNoise residency at Pehrspace in LA

Can I just mention how lovely these individuals are. Gawby, Josh and John have been so sweet to Richard and I during their residency at Pehrspace. Even though I merely helped hang Richard’s framed works at the venue for the events of this month, they’ve made me feel included in the artistic process and completely welcome. Knowing such inspired, creative people like the members of GhostNoise and of course my amazing, talented partner Richard is exactly what keeps me, as an artist, fueled. 

So I decided to stop beating around the proverbial bush and go to school for photography.

A little history: I’ve been shooting since I was 15. I started when my grandpa perished and my family started cleaning out his home. He was a top class hoarder, with so many collections of things, that when my tia Vicki handed me over her compact digital camera, I couldn’t help but snap everything in sight. After that, I joined my schools yearbook staff and shot all the students and events around campus. My favorite thing to shoot was the behind the scenes of football games (I didn’t have a lens big enough to shoot whatever was happening on the field).

I did headshots for an opera singer when I was seventeen then when I finished high school I started assisting a wedding photographer and taking photo classes at my community college. I was highly aimless and when I decided that I just wanted to be independent and financially comfortable, as opposed to fulfilled, I started working towards a degree in respiratory therapy. I failed out but then started the program again and one month into my second try at RT, I found out I was pregnant. I was 23 and still aimless.

My son’s father had just graduated from school with a promise of a career in respiratory therapy (yeah it was popular in my family…both my mom and sister are RTs), so I felt secure. I continued with school throughout my pregnancy, but the second Lio came into this world I realized I needed to pursue what I wanted. Looking back now, I know that what I really realized was that I needed to NOT pursue something I didn’t want 100%. Because at the time I had no idea what the hell I wanted outside of my son’s health and safety.

I don’t think it’s important everyone knows about my love life, but I must mention that Lio’s father leaving me was a turning point in my artistic life. It lifted a heavy, opaque veil. I never felt any validity or importance or sincerity in my work until I no longer had the influence of him over me. He wasn’t particularly controlling or possessive. He was just…the artistic one. The experienced one. The funny one. The smart one. Not being part of a couple, and being a true individual very much helped me shoot whatever the fuck I wanted.

I used to think that I needed more compelling images. Then I started shooting what I wanted to shoot and realized that photography for me isn’t about the product. It’s about the act of trying to compose and capture an image. That process is so important to my well being.

Right now I cannot say that what I put out is great work. I can’t say it is my art. The images you are looking at are part of a HUGE, continuous process of me trying to figure out my vision. What you’re looking at is practice, experimentation, research, recording. It’s not the final product. It’s not a body of work. It’s all preliminary.

Honestly I don’t even know if I have a vision or if it will come to me. All I know is this: I am compelled to express myself and my ideas through photography.

And when I say compelled, I don’t take it lightly. I am resolute in this. And that is why I’ve decided to finally pursue photography as a career.

This is the thing that’s taken me so long to realize: I don’t have to be artistically fulfilled by photography as a career. I know I can be good at commercial lifestyle photography, but I also know that it’s not necessarily going to fill that space that only art photography can fill. It will fill a space though. As a person I just feel like a modular unit with a bunch of spaces that need to be filled.

Though the end result of going to school will (hopefully) be a career, I do know that it will provide me with the opportunity to use photography as an art form. Like I said, everything I shoot is not my body of work that I would consider art. I hope that school will give me the tools to start on that body of work I look so forward to creating. (I know it won’t just fall in my lap - I have to work for it obviously. But in the life of a single working mom, a safe, designated place for making art is much needed).

So, starting February 23rd I start school and work at my community college I’ve been going to for the past nine years (on and off, give or take). It’s going to be HUGE change, taking up a lot of hours that I would be spending with Lio (this I do worry about but he’s almost preschool age and I guess we all gotta grow up sometime). And of course making time to see my loving and supportive partner, Richard, will also be a challenge but there is very much strength in our relationship. I do believe we will make it through to the other side wiser, happier, more in love than ever and hopefully richer…in more ways than one.

I don’t know why I’m sharing this on here, but I just felt it was important and applied to this blog.

I don’t ask for very much from my followers, but I will ask for a bit of well-wished luck.

Signing out

all I can say is thanks. 

My blog is a personal blog…(I post what/who I love or like or what I consider valuable). If I foundsome interesting/or informational articles - I would share. Sharing is good- you know, thinking about something - people& emotions & ideas & mind states (new things or forgotten things)

Best way/s to waste time on the internet :)

Sometimes I don’t agree with someone opinion but I’ll post -I have my reasons…