Thursday, April 6, 2017

Moment of Clarity

As I gather reference photos for #the100dayproject 2017, some images I shot back in 2007/2008 really popped out at me.

 
 

 Prior to 2007, all my work dealt with female representation in art with visual shoutouts to some of my female artist foremothers, particularly Judy Chicago, Miriam Shapiro, and Kiki Smith with an homage to the countless centuries of female lacemakers who went unnamed. 

In 2007, I started trying to make work that talked about emotional abuse, and peripherally about human trafficiking, which I was just beginning to learn about. 

From 10 years away, these images are truncated, beautiful pieces of me, both literally (I'm lazy and have used myself as a model for most paintings because I like to limit human interaction if I can, particularly about personal things like artmaking) and figuratively.  In learning about art and design history, one thing we talked about was eliminating heads and faces from women in advertising because it dehumanizes and commodifies the gender.  It makes us less.  I don't do faces- old carryover creep out factor from reading The Illustrated Man- so I told myself that I cut the faces for practicality, but these were intended as reference photos which would be edited in paint.  I had never intentionally taken faceless photos before.  Having just come through another, similar period of depression, I'm seeing that I was making art about being less than whole.

One of the devices I used in cognitive therapy for my depression was identifying pieces of myself as Miranda and Charlotte.  Charlotte was the worst co-dependent depressed self loathing bits of myself, and I could assign behavior to her to help identify it.  Miranda was who I wanted to be (Sex in the City era....super original names, right?).  That duality, also tied up in my reading and writing on the Virgin and the Whore, defined that time in my life- it let me fight the depression.  But it also let to things like this. 

Long story short, I'm a slow learner, especially about myself.

Want to see some happier work?
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