Diaphanous
Artist's Statement:
A few months ago, I saved a leaf that had fallen off a tree near my home. I originally intended to use it as a subject in some sun print experiments I was working on, but then forgot about it. When I came across it again, it was basically a leaf skeleton and seeing it deteriorating, I decided to photograph it as many times as I could before losing interest in the possibilities. I shot over 200 images. A few days after my "documentation" I experimented with layers in Photoshop using the leaf skeleton combined with some of the marionette images I have in my "collection". I liked the results and thus began to create a body of work that I have now decided to call, Diaphanous. I started this series exactly 4 years ago on 6/1/2015. As I update this statement, I am not sure if it is complete..or where I will take it. (6/1/2019)
A few months ago, I saved a leaf that had fallen off a tree near my home. I originally intended to use it as a subject in some sun print experiments I was working on, but then forgot about it. When I came across it again, it was basically a leaf skeleton and seeing it deteriorating, I decided to photograph it as many times as I could before losing interest in the possibilities. I shot over 200 images. A few days after my "documentation" I experimented with layers in Photoshop using the leaf skeleton combined with some of the marionette images I have in my "collection". I liked the results and thus began to create a body of work that I have now decided to call, Diaphanous. I started this series exactly 4 years ago on 6/1/2015. As I update this statement, I am not sure if it is complete..or where I will take it. (6/1/2019)
28th Street Trees - which inspired "Diaphanous" .....
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Artist's Statement:
Moments of contemplation and the idea of contemplation is something that I’m really obsessed with now in my work. I think that’s probably what drew me so much to the subject of marionettes in the first place, a subject I’ve been working with for a couple of years now. Lately, however, I am experimenting with collage and mixed media again, which is the art-making process that initially excited me in the first place, back in the early 1980’s. I want to expand the idea that we are almost like puppets on strings and question it, (of course, the metaphorical idea for the marionettes in the first place). Do we react to things because of what we see and what we experience? What affects our decision-making and what affects what we’re drawn to? How do the places we’ve been, the people we have met, even for a minute, affect who we are? I’m beginning to question all these things a lot but maybe that happens to all of us in different stages of our lives. I think that if people could look at my work and contemplate, not so much about the work, but about themselves, or what’s important to them, then my work would have a better purpose. I also see the work becoming more conceptual through the process of collage and mixed media. Theses three pieces, my most recent studies, will, I hope, bridge my photographic work with the creative process which happens in my studio as I attempt to make something meaningful out of isolated images, photographs, string, paint and carving tools. Perhaps the process is my way of contemplating on the things that are meaningful in my life as well.
Moments of contemplation and the idea of contemplation is something that I’m really obsessed with now in my work. I think that’s probably what drew me so much to the subject of marionettes in the first place, a subject I’ve been working with for a couple of years now. Lately, however, I am experimenting with collage and mixed media again, which is the art-making process that initially excited me in the first place, back in the early 1980’s. I want to expand the idea that we are almost like puppets on strings and question it, (of course, the metaphorical idea for the marionettes in the first place). Do we react to things because of what we see and what we experience? What affects our decision-making and what affects what we’re drawn to? How do the places we’ve been, the people we have met, even for a minute, affect who we are? I’m beginning to question all these things a lot but maybe that happens to all of us in different stages of our lives. I think that if people could look at my work and contemplate, not so much about the work, but about themselves, or what’s important to them, then my work would have a better purpose. I also see the work becoming more conceptual through the process of collage and mixed media. Theses three pieces, my most recent studies, will, I hope, bridge my photographic work with the creative process which happens in my studio as I attempt to make something meaningful out of isolated images, photographs, string, paint and carving tools. Perhaps the process is my way of contemplating on the things that are meaningful in my life as well.
