I don’t have a title for this but I’m considering whether it’s done or not. I might let it sit on my wall for a while and see how it grabs me (or doesn’t).
Photocopy transfer and typewriter drawing. The text is from Rebecca Solnit’s “A Field Guide to Getting Lost”
I used to have the luxury of sitting with a painting in my studio for a while and letting it speak to me, to tell me what it needed or tell me if it was done. I no longer have that luxury so instead I hang it in the living room where I can look at it and think about it for a while. One advantage to having a home studio I guess.
I’m reading Cheryl Strayed’s book “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail”
It’s riveting. And although we have different backgrounds and experiences, reading her book is conjuring all sorts of memories of my childhood, good and bad.
I miss my dad. The other day Juniper picked up his photo, the one he had taken in a mall portrait studio right after he found out he was dieing of cancer. Guess he wanted us to remember him. It worked. Juniper had it in her hand and I said “That’s your grandpa Jim.” I almost choked on the words. He never got to be a grandpa. I wondered what he would have been like if he’d lived until now. He would be 82, about the same age as Tom’s dad. I wondered what kind of grandpa he would have been.
The typewriter drawings are taking on all sorts of various meanings for me. I like that typewriters are basically obsolete, because the work is about fear of obsolescence. I like that typewritten word is linear in quality, unlike computers where things are editable. I like that the words are obscured and that they make up an underlying structure, like a programming language, like architecture. It feels like using something from my past to make something about my present. A forward progression of some sorts. A nod to where I came from and acknowledging that I take that with me into my future. That we are the sum of our experiences.