Visual Ovation

On Developing Our Artistic Voices

 

I just saw the incredible film, The King's Speech.  It is an extraordinary movie, beautifully written and filmed, with stunning performances by Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush.  It is the story of King George VI and his work and friendship with the iconoclastic Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue.  It is a story about healing, about a therapeutic relationship, about the effects of trauma, and about the power of finding one's voice.

2010 has been an extraordinary year for Frank and for me in terms of our finding and developing our artistic voices.  For this has been the first year that we have had the courage to submit our work to art shows for jurying by professionals, and for public view and scrutiny.

I will not downplay how significant this has been to us both, nor how, well, terrifying it can be.  It is one thing to show one's work to friends and family.  It is quite another to take that next step in the context of a professional art environment.  And yet it is quite marvelous to have one's work responded to positively, to be able to share that intangible thing that is your art - the combination of your vision, your skill, your heart, your creativity and your courage.  However one's work is responded to, the showing of it in public is a hugely important developmental step.

It has been really thrilling to have our work accepted into three juried art shows this year:

 

 

  

Our thanks to the staffs at Sebastopol Center for the Arts and Healdsburg Center for the Arts for providing environments that support artists at all levels in their professional development.

This year also has been the first year that we have been able to support causes which are important to us by donating our art for silent auctions.  We are so pleased to have been able to support Sonoma County's Face to Face and their Art for Life auction, the San Francisco arts organization, The Imagine Bus, and their Love is in the Air event, and to support Sonoma County foster youth through the Pennies for the Prom event.

The image at the top of this blog entry is one of Frank's, a marvelous image that was accepted into a show with the theme of Reflections.  This is one of those images that reminds us that photography is all about seeing and then capturing exquisite moments that will never be created again. 

The image to come is one of mine, entitled, Map of Desire.  It received a Merit Award at Sebastopol Center for the Art's Mapworks:  The Map as Art exhibition.  A piece that I love, it reflects my stretching and developing in my own work, and it was a thrill that it was received so well. 

So, 2010 has been a year in which we have taken big steps, stretched ourselves as photographers, individually and together, and the journey has been exhilarating. We are excited to move into 2011 as we continue developing our artistic voices.

 

Death Takes a Holiday

 
Today is Day of the Dead, so thoughts about life and death are with me today.  However, this isn't a new preoccupation.  One of my favorite movies in childhood was a 1934 classic called, "Death Takes a Holiday."  (OK, perhaps I was a strange kid).  The story is that Death wonders why humans fear him so much, so takes human form on earth for several days.  In that time he learns about life and relationships and experiences being loved by someone who truly sees him as he is, but loves him anyway. He begins to understand why humans feel loss so painfully, and the depth of love and connection.  In the end, he finds, "Love is greater than illusion and as strong as death."   

Brad Pitt starred in a remake of the movie several years ago.  But that movie neglected a part of the original story that always touched me.  That is, while death took his "holiday" there were no deaths in the world.  Despite the fact that car crashes, accidents and wars continued, no one died.  It seemed like such a relief to me to think about this.  To have a break from the fear associated with death and loss.  At that time I don't think I understood the part about love being as strong as death, and so I didn't focus on it.  It took meeting Frank, the love of my life, and to spend 35 years with him, to understand the strength of love, the strength of love that remains ever-present, (even when all of one is revealed, warts and all), and the idea, romantic as it is, of a love that can transcend time and circumstance.

So what does that all have to do with the above image?  It is in the Venice of the misty winter that I feel most surrounded by the mysterious forces of love, life and death.  I love that Frank and I both have such a deep feeling for the place, and the sharing of that is a delight.  But this sense of Venice embodying the romantic, the mysterious, the ghostly, is not just our experience, it has touched artists of all mediums for centuries. 

This was not the photograph that I intended to take, that wintery morning during Carnival,  but it was the one that was captured by my camera.  This figure seems so quietly mysterious, alone and, somehow, tired.  In my mind I see her patiently waiting as the morning light begins to reveal itself.  Who does she wait for?  Or has she taken a holiday, a break from her duties? In the movement unexpectedly caught on camera, she looks up at me, but it is not my time. 

I know that Death doesn't take a holiday.  I know that each moment is a gift.  And I know that because I am human, sometimes I get so caught up in the daily unimportant "stresses" of life, I forget that.  This image reminds me, in a tender and less frightening way, that time is limited, and life must be lived.  Some might say that this all is naive, over-romanticized, and to them I reply that I do know some about painful realities of life and death.  But somehow this gives me comfort, and in the face of the eternal unknown, that isn't a bad thing.   Stephanie