February 18th Meeting with Jesseca

     Jesseca was very concerned that she had influenced me to do pinhole.  I assured her that was not the case, that it was something I had done, enjoyed doing, and thought would compliment my sculptures.  Once she was sure the choice was coming from me she was thrilled, because obviously she loves talking pinhole.  She showed me several Pinhole Resource Pinhole Journals and mentioned several artists to look at, some of whom I knew of already.  She said I had to be prepared to answer ”Why Pinhole?”

     About my work, she said I need to get closer to my sculptures when photographing them.  She said I need to draw the viewer in completely to the world of my sculptures.  She said I seemed interested in creating new worlds.  She said even my ice photographs were like new worlds; islands in the ice.  I mentioned that my next paper is to be on Anselm Kiefer’s High Priestess and Rosamond Purcell’s Bookworm, and she said, “Wait a minute!”  She came back with an Anselm Kiefer book and put it next to my ice photos.  His paintings with straw and other ephemera looked oddly related.  She said since I seem so interested with the hand aspect of art, and putting actual pieces of nature in my sculptures, I should consider building up my photographs with pieces of nature and other ephemera, and she said Kiefer was a good one to look at.  Also, one pinhole photographer she mentioned, Walter Crump, is now painting over his photographs, and I should look at that.

     She said I’m doing something that has power and meaning, but I don’t know what or how.  She said I have to document it, write things down to find out what it is.  Why am I paying attention to certain things?  My ice photographs feel like small worlds, little islands, and there is something I want to tell with these.  My interiors are little worlds.  One way is to build things and photograph them.  But I should also try taking the photograph and construct over and with them.

     Since I left Jesseca I have selected some of my ice and some of my pinhole images and scanned them in to be 17” x 22”.  I got this nice cold press paper from Epson that has a nice tooth to it and is quite thick and printed them out.  Now I am ready to mess them up and see where that leads me.  I am pretty excited about it.