two summers in a row now I’ve put off editing the photos I took then until the fall. reflecting back to life in ohio.
fable
fairytales and fables with Alison in Triberg
paris in pink
late june in paris. colored in pink with expired (1992) slide film.
summer solstice
a lonesome, but beautiful celebration of long days in Annecy, France.
comfort
I think I am on the other side of the most substantial bout of inspiration I have ever experienced in my life. I fear that what has just passed will also serve to be the biggest bout of inspiration I shall ever receive; that what I worked through in my 25th year, and the conclusions that I landed on will in fact be the very most pivotal moments of my life. period. There is no way to hide that I have turned my life on its head within the past 12 months. I devised a way to change careers, I met a loving partner, I started taking classes again, I started teaching a whole different type of class....
Through all of this change, though it was completely necessary, I worry I will have nothing left to rewrite in the year ahead. I have simply changed everything about the way I conduct my life in the past 12 months, so much so, that I am concerned there is nothing left to change.
I also worry that I am too comfortable with change. Change is my comfort zone. What happens if the changes I have made this year don't stick? How will I continue to evolve and incorporate my new life into the equation? My fears are not that of change, but of stagnation.
meet in the middle
In the white-washed world of western yoga (you see, I can't just simply say, "in yoga" because this experience can't possibly be yoga's purest form), there is a lot of talk about the present. I think this obsession with the present while we are on our mats is a simple overreaction to the times we live in: they are fast-paced, future-focused, and tell us to fuck our past. While I understand the importance of being present, it is equally imperative to make peace with our past and acknowledge the present moment is truly all we have as we work for the future. We must know and respect that our past has in some way informed our present, and our present will in some way inform our future.
These thoughts come to me with the start of a new year--a jarring time where one foot is in the past, reflecting on the highs and lows of another year passed, and one foot is in the future, creating plans that will never see the light of day. We forget that with one foot behind us, counting every embarrassing thing we said in 2017, and one foot out ahead of us, agonizing over every goal we've set out to achieve, we a little bit even out--we find ourselves in the center of our mat, the present. Regardless of whether we are still going to the gym five months from now, I think the biggest achievement is that we have taken a second to let our previous experience and future expectations jolt us into acting in the moment.
In some abstract way this balance of past+future=present mimics my feelings when looking at a Rorschach painting. Perfectly symmetrical, sending identical information to both eyes and both sides of the brain, but creating an entirely new picture had both halves been separate. Some kind of absolute lies in the middle of these famous works; the left has informed the right, and the right the left, leaving no longer two halves but one complete picture and a sense of ordered chaos.
moons ago
erin, maisie and miriam moons ago (august)
certain nights
there are these certain nights, where I've put in the whole of the work for the day. and all day it felt like the grind, and I was maybe reluctant to do the day, but then the night happens. all the work is over, and I never set out to 'achieve' this feeling, but I am hit, slammed, overcome by gratitude. funny too that this feeling of fortune doesn't have much at all to do with the work, but rather with the people in my life who I cherish.
transformation, a season
the time in between taking a photo and seeing a photo holds many things. sometimes that space is just a couple days, other times a whole season has come and gone and a layer of me shed, flushed down the drain along with the film's chemicals. the latter is the case here. I took these photos in may, it's now nearly september. I knew a different person would return from that time in the woods, I just wasn't quite sure how she would get here.
I'm crying as I write this post. it feels like growing up. for every one sad tear, there is one shed for fear, one shed for hope and another for relief. never one to shy away from change, I've turned my life into a new thing this summer. full speed ahead, don't care to look back, but now I force myself to think about every little piece of life that passed through my senses and took me along for the ride during this time in between. I now carve out an evening (a life) to reflect on how I could have even managed to get to this moment.
I'll always come back to nature to learn and remember where I come from. to shut up for a minute and listen to swaying trees and to hear about my brother's life on a trail miles up a mountain. to watch the eternal fearlessness of my brother steer him down a path no one else sees. to listen to my father share about how he's made his dreams come true. and to touch my mother in a compassionate exchange. together basking in the glory of intentional human experience in five very separate, but similar ways. sharing blood in our quest for transformation, carrying each other along the way. I come back to family and find comfort knowing we are all lost in the same way.
reminder
in a world of so many opinions, I'll let these impromptu self portraits serve as a reminder that the loudest voice in my world should be my own
a thought story
when current events weigh heavy and loom in the air we breath, every question comes to mind. I wander through feelings of anger, confusion, disappointment and guilt. as I continue down my trail of thoughts, I pass that indication of awareness and acknowledge that through this tragic moment truth has been illuminated. I pause and remind myself that truth is power; that by knowing the true thought processes of others, we can continue to sharpen our tools to better harness our power.
the second trail marker is more puzzling and speaks to how I will act on that awareness. my tools for action are different from yours, and the diversity in the methods we leverage are an asset to our fight. your weapon is a protest demonstration, a run for city council, a facebook post, a sign in your front yard. and, our weapons may change depending on the day and subject under fire. this blog feels like the most useful tool for me at the moment; a minuscule contribution, but not nothing.
Tyree Guyton's weapon is his art. Guyton is the mind and artist behind Detroit's Heidelberg Project, a battle in the war on urban blight. This work is an example of fighting with the tools of hope and empowerment, as opposed to anger and violence. From my few moments walking through those couple city blocks, I found that his work enabled people walking on separate paths to intersect for a brief moment; a true artistic feat.
"When you come to the Heidelberg Project I want you to think-really think! My art is a medicine for the community. You can’t heal the land until you heal the minds of the people."
watermelon daydream
midsummer shooting, wide awake and dreaming
I am grateful that with the help of my friends and our collective imagination and creativity, we can revisit the lives that used to be ours. it was a life spent rummaging through the dress-up bin and eating ice cream cones with rainbow sprinkles. growing up is a complicated mess of a thing; for an evening at least it didn't feel inevitable.
all the love and more for the women in these photographs. they inspire me, and through their laughter and honesty I stay present in every moment we share together <3
ruth
outtakes from a shoot for Creative Babes' Babes of Summer show up at Blockfort through July 2017.
agitate
a few months ago, I was talking to a new acquaintance and told him that I work at a contemporary art center. our conversation wandered to other subjects, but came back to the subject of art. he was honest and overtly curious when he said something along the lines of how he never got much out of artistic experiences. he gave an example of a piece he read an article about. this piece he described was highly conceptual, so much so that it bothered him. because of this discomfort he felt toward the piece, and really throughout his journey with the arts as a whole, he said he didn't get art. I was piecing it together and finding that he assumed all art is designed to make you feel good. my response was simple: art is suppose to agitate you.
art takes something familiar, so familiar that we've almost forgot about it. and then it picks it up, turns it around and sets it back down in a way that we never considered it before. artists do this for us; they help provide the tools for us to open our minds, to expand our knowledge on a subject. and that feeling of letting go of the familiar, can most certainly be agitating.
but, I think we need to stop associating agitation with the negative. ironically, when you process film, you have to agitate the negatives every few minutes to ensure the developer processes evenly.
this act of agitation (in both art and film developing) is meant to stir something up and let it settle in a different way.
for many of us, this isn't an easy concept to accept. we want to cling to what we've always known, as opposed to being humble enough to allow our minds to change. why is it so difficult to understand that your opinions are evolving maybe because you've learned something new? do some people associate learning with fear, by way of the unfamiliar? why can't we accept that we are consistently learning?
given the way the world operates today, i'd say many people are fearful of intelligence. more specifically, fearful of others' intelligence. simply because they didn't think of an idea first, they feel slighted. when they should celebrate these other people's creative ways of thought, instead of responding with jealousy.
this celebration is where collaboration begins. where interdisciplinary thought is achieved and true strides are made to change the habitual thought process of entire societies.
over it
I dream of the day when the combination of me being a woman and the fact that I think critically does not make me a feminist.
what is so radical about a woman birthing original thought?
uncertain science
feel sorry for me even though I dont deserve it.
photos from a january trip to california. a heavy week for a vacation.
she is a woman
a dedication to our earth.
words and creativity are hard to come as a plague of corrupt people continue to pollute our planet.
bound by location
photos taken outside of a recently abandoned hotel. the only thing that makes these few photos a series is their shared location.
(too many photos of kyle. a certain science happens with me behind the camera and him in front of it.)
december diary
midnight moments. up too late, late in the year.
muse
inspo in the thrift store parking lot on new year's day. do not doubt the ability of a new-to-you, 1960s track jacket to inspire an entire day.