This weekend I discovered that I am becoming my mother because I enjoy watching TV while I fold my clothes.  I have distinct memories of my mother both folding and ironing clothes while watching Oprah.  Oprah was her laundry folding television show of choice.  Law and Order SVU is mine.

Love you mom.

I can’t ever really figure out what makes me make art and what makes me stop for a certain period of time.  For a good amount of time I have had the intention of creating a project with the working title of “A Conversation with my Grandfather.”  The basis of the project is taking photographs with my grandfather’s old camera that was given to me after he died.

Just about 4 days before I was set to graduate college my father called me to tell me that his father had suffered a stroke.  I screamed at the top of my lungs.  I had lost someone that had just begun to become one of my best friends.  We had written each other back and forth while I was in college and had grown to understand each other.  Most of it was me realizing both our vast differences and our great similarities.  I was also old enough to realize that my grandfather had lived for 62 years before I was born and that all of those years influenced who he was.  I understand him even more now, even though he is gone, as I get older.  Generations can grow together when they are willing to accept that they are leading separate lives in the same place.

I have rolls of film taken from my grandfather’s camera, but they are sitting in a drawer in my living room.  I don’t know if it is fear or what, but they have been sitting there for more than a year, waiting to be developed.  And, I know that one or two rolls will not be enough for a strong series of work, so I need to keep photographing.  But, I’m not.  I can give you many many reasons.  I don’t have the time, the energy, I have a lot of things on my plate right now.  But, I am figuring out at this moment that I am afraid.  I am afraid to say goodbye.

But, there is hope for me.  About 15 minutes ago I discovered Briony Campbell and the dad project. She used photography to cope with her dying father.  The artist also created a film which may be viewed HERE. The work is honest, soft, natural, heartfelt and very inspirational.  Just what I needed.

Briony Campbell, photographer

]]> http://laurenusher.com/blog/just-the-inspiration-i-needed/feed/ 0 http://laurenusher.com/blog/a-transitional-period/ http://laurenusher.com/blog/a-transitional-period/#comments Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:08:27 +0000 lauren http://laurenusher.com/blog/?p=221 My art collaborator, Lisa Rasmussen, and I have been discussing the idea of change for a a few months now.  We have been working on a project called Art is Moving for 2 years now and are loving our success.  Lisa will be moving out of the area in September of this year so the dynamic of our collaboration will inevitably be effected.  We are attempting to practice having a long distance art relationship so that we can continue to be a positive force in the art world and community at large.  At this point we really won’t know what will happen to our project until it happens.  Luckily, we are both fairly easy going women that are not afraid of change.

It seems as though I am going through an individual transition as well.  My own artwork and art concept seem to be shifting.  As I am attempting to live a minimalistic type life I am starting to wonder where art fits in.  By minimalistic I mean, low impact, sustainable, eco friendly and the like.  As I try to limit the amount of new material I purchase for my house and life and increase the amount that I reuse and recycle, it has started to make little sense to by new materials to create art.  About 2 years ago I started a project called Significant Stranger, where I made a rule (as I usually do for my art projects) that all of the material I use for my “canvas” had to have been used by someone else before me.  It tied wonderfully into the concept of the art project, that those in the past have created the world I live in today.

There seems to be another reason my body and mind gravitated towards reusing material. This past week I starting having trouble using linoleum to carve because I cannot find anyone who will recycle the small leftovers that I create.  Although I can’t believe I am saying this, I am going to give up linoleum.  Artists are supposed to be creative, right?  Well it is time to get creative and find some used material to act as my linoleum.  Book pages that are stacked and glued together make great carving boards, old wood from the dump, old doors, drawers, lots of stuff.

If Art is Life and Life is Art it only makes sense that the two should mirror one another entirely.

This week, for the first time in 5 years, I scheduled a time during my day to go outside and photograph.  This used to be my life.  My camera came everywhere with me and captured my life and the lives of others I saw along the way.  I stopped loving photography during my undergrad studies and have had a shaky relationship with it ever since.  But, after photographing two of my friend’s weddings, I am beginning to remember why I loved photography to begin with.

It is almost like I need to practice at not taking it so seriously.  I had to go to art school to learn how to technically take photographs and now I have to almost unlearn all of that–in order to take away that pressure to take the perfect photograph.  The best advice I ever received from a photographer was (I am paraphrasing) “Take as many photographs as you can because you will be lucky if you get one image out from one roll of film.”  1 in 36 is apparently the average for a talented photographer.  The digital age makes it a great deal easier to take a ton of crappy photographs in order to find that one gem.  And, reflecting on that advice today, what I really think he was getting at was, just take it!  Don’t think, just photograph.

I could not just take it last week.  I had a really hard time photographing.  It’s like I lost my touch.  It used to be automatic for me.  I didn’t think, I just pointed and clicked.  It was straight from my gut.  That’s what I love about photography.  It can be so genuine and honest if you approach it correctly.  That’s another part of me I will have to find again.

Photography used to allow me to look at a scene as though I had never seen it before.  I was like a 5 year old at the circus for the first time.  Instead of pointing my finger in awe, I was pointing my camera and recording that composition I framed in my head.  Where did that photographer go?  And can I get her back?

So, I have a solo show entitled, “Did you wake up this morning?” coming up in July.  It will be held at the Rogue Community College in Grants Pass, Oregon from July 3- August 27th.  For the last couple of days I have been preparing to ship my work out to the gallery for them to install.  This gives me sort of a silly feeling in my stomach.  One because I’m struggling with a control addiction.  I’ve come a long way in the past couple of years trying to “just let go” (that’s the mantra I use when I am being too much of a control freak).  And two, I have a love/hate relationship with the install aspect of my work.  It’s a huge part of the process, project and concept, so I feel strange handing it over to someone else to do.

On the other hand, I am so pumped to see what the curators and installers come up with.  The reason I always have one step in my work process that is sort of out of my hands is because it adds a sense of surprise for me and my audience.  It also forces me to let go of some control.

I will be showing 8 works from my Morning Picture Project, also known as I am a Terrible Morning Person.

Another aspect to the show is that instead of having all 21 pieces from the original project it will only have 7.  I am curious how this will affect the viewer’s reaction to the work.

This photo provided by chueynickels.

So, I found a couple of artists that I know I would totally have been friends with if A. I were French B. I were in my 2o’s in the late 1990′s and C. If I were making the work I make now in the late 1990′s. I happened to be in high school at the time, obsessed with the weather and photographing it as it was occurring. (That was my senior year final project–sounds interesting I know! But not really if you live in Arizona, where the weather doesn’t really happen.)

Onto the essay I read where I found my new friends. Written by Lynn Gumpert, entitled, “Beyond the Banal: An Introduction to the Art of the Everyday.” If you have seen any of my work, you know I should be in this club. Anyway, most of the artists seem to be documenting the everyday. Lots of photographers using their own lives and own families as subject matter. Photographing everyday events like putting on make up and the like. They also named an artist, Claude Closky, who makes assemblage pieces from grocery ads and magazines. So, I was sitting there and thinking, “Alright, some cohorts!” And then a little voice replied, “You are not unique.” And for the most part I would agree.

I have to go on a bit of a tangent to explain this part of my discussion with myself. A while back my family and I had an AWESOME discussion in regards to original ideas. I argued, and was the only one at the table that was on my side, that there was only one original thought. Believing that one thing leads to the next and that we are all connected, how could I not? My father pointed to my art and my ideas and told me I was selling myself short. I told him that it makes my art and my job so much more beautiful. It is made up of all of me and all of everyone else (past and present) all at the same moment. What could be better than that?

So, the thoughts I had today, after wondering if I would find my present day cohorts, was, “do I want to find my present day cohorts?” Artists survive on being original. It takes a great deal of effort to impress a viewer and even more to get them to stay a while or come back later. What would happen to my psyche if I found someone who did art exactly like me? I think I might be shattered. I know she/he is out there. But, for now, I don’t want to find them. That is so against everything I believe! I’m such a hypocrite sometimes.

These questions I have and the connections I want to figure out stem from my philosophical belief that absolutely everything and everyone is connected. Every event influences the next (sort of a rippling effect). Every person’s actions today set up the world we will all experience tomorrow. So on and so forth. So, I am on a mission to write a sort of art history book that includes the connections and influences of the society that existed during the time the work was created and the culture the artist was experiencing at the time he/she completed the piece.

I have already attempted to do this on another blog, but decided I was focusing too much on the facts. I was listing the time and place that each work was made and the artists birth and death–important facts there’s no doubt, but I want to dig deeper. I want to trust myself to make inferences. I will record them and hopefully someday be able to map out all of the connections I come up with.

The question I have now is, should I pick an event in history that shaped and changed the world and go from there or should I pick a century and learn all I can from it? I started with the 15th century for my last blog and found some interesting books, but not many. Perhaps I will pick an event and go from there. I’ll keep you all posted.