… As a kid, I wanted to be a polymath. To learn and understand anything and everything. I suppose you could call me a dabbler even now. I think it’s because my brain is wired that way. Gifted in language acquisition and pattern recognition, I read at a college-level when I was ten. I find connections between arbitrary pieces of information.
In art, or any form of communication, the “medium is the message.” Further, there’s a collection of theories that the language you use impacts what you’re able to think about. When I’m choosing medium(s) for a new project, it’s this I’m contemplating: what are the capabilities and limits of this medium to communicate what I intend? How easily is it misinterpreted? What cultural baggage does this medium bring with it? What tropes does it employ, and do I want to subvert them?
I’ve been working off-and-on this site since January, trying to decide what it is I wanted to communicate when I call myself an artist. And, that’s where we get to my portfolios.
Neatly collected, under Work, I initially divided them up by medium and included anything and everything. If a piece didn’t fit in with others, it got put into my digital junk drawer of “other work.” I included projects I hadn’t worked on in a few years and ones that were less artful than crafty. Thinking of them still as projects, I had little or no commentary on the pieces and none on the groups as a whole.
It felt off, but I couldn’t quite tell why. I feared it was because I didn’t have a specialty. Who would want an artist who did painting and photography and printmaking and music and video. An artist that didn’t have so much clear themes as repeating motifs. It’s not like I didn’t have anything to say. With every work, I had wanted to say something. Hell, I view “l'art pour l'art” as best a naïve perspective: saying nothing is still a political statement.
My more recent photography work was the more problematic. It was developing into its own junk drawer, unified in using plastic cameras. I love the freedom of not knowing what the image will turn out and the low-tech nature to them. I toss a tiny 110 format camera into my bag whenever I leave home. I put random objects inside the body of the camera, unconcerned about damaging the internals. I love my plastic camera for its ability to democratize fine art photography. My medium reflected my values, so that was the message, right?
... I put my website aside for a few weeks.
I worked on a book project, a fractured fairytale of sorts. Still incomplete, it did help me reexamine what my work (particularly, my more recent photography) was doing. How they fit together (or didn’t) and how to articulate that relationship.
I watched a lecture by Aline Smithson (artist, photographer, teacher, & Lenscratch editor) created for the photography department at City College of San Francisco.
(Disclaimer: Smithson’s work veers into the orientalist and some sex shaming aspects? It’s kinda cringe in parts. Maybe stick with the Q&A?)