It’s been a long while since I have posted, and needless to say there have been some changes in my art and life. But change can be a good thing.
It seems hard to believe that the last time I posted to this blog was in February. It’s not as if I have not been making images during the past seven months, but my work in the studio stalled a bit. I was exploring in different photographic media, but it was all feeling a bit stale. I had continued my work with the aluminum sheets, but had hit a rut last year. In some ways it felt like I had said what I wanted to say with the medium, at least for the moment. On top of that, some life changes disrupted my ability to spend time in the photo studio. But that disruption turned out to be a change for the better. Earlier this summer we sold our house and moved into an apartment temporarily. The smaller living space meant that a lot of stuff had to go into storage. It also meant that we needed to re-evaluate how we were living and what was important. Art definitely was on my “important” list, but my aluminum sheets ended up buried under a mass of stuff in a storage unit. So it was time for a change.
In the past I have done a fair bit of work using Mylar as the reflective surface. It’s easy to manipulate and takes up very little space- important considerations when you are living in an apartment. But I had stopped using the material when the aluminum work started to take off. Now I am going back to it, but this time with a model-couple with whom I have done a fair bit of work.
We started working with each of them posing individually in turn. Reflections in the mylar are incredibly fluid, allowing me to capture distortions of form. These fluid, re-imagined bodies become more than nude humans- they provoke an emotional reaction that goes beyond the form itself.
Depending on the lighting technique and temperature, the images take on a totally different feel and bring a different message.
So, not having access to my comfortable materials forced me to change how I would create. I’m now back in an experimental mode- learning and rediscovering what can be done with this material, and in the process finding a new voice to speak about the human condition through the body. I have found my new eyes.