A door closes and a soul opens

 It’s been a minute or maybe a million. Haven’t felt like writing much but that haze is passing thankfully. I’ve parted ways with my beloved gallery…too much this too much that yada yada. Loved a lot, learned a lot, leaving a lot. That being said sometimes when a door closes the entryway to a truly free and unfettered soul opens up. I believe things happen as they are supposed to and for every little thing to be as it’s supposed to it has to happen at its own pace. Living with a chronic (usually mild…usually) illness I’m finding the direct approach to a path in any direction is the best way to go. I’ve noticed in the last year that I have two parallel lines of art work. Stuff that’s appropriate for a gallery such as that which would be appealing to tourists and art collectors looking for Maine-specific pieces. In the other vein of work I am noticing I am delving deeper into the “feels” a piece gives me whether photo or painting. I spent my whole artistic career so far making sure that every pixel was perfect, if an image wasn’t sharp enough to cut butter it was never shared in any way. Now I take delight in the noise and some softer edges as it evokes a serenity for which I guess I have always been searching. 

So now, with my membership with some unbelievably talented and utterly kind women and a lovely and dear gallery  entering my rear view, but not the friendships we have created,  I want them to know something. Thank you! Thanks for the fun, the teaching moments, the learning moments, the tears, the jitters, the hugs, the stress…and ultimately the love! Thank you. 

Love, Sue

Of feelings and flash cards...
Have you ever heard the one about the girl that answered an innocuous question with a truthful answer with some actual verbiage beyond yes or no? Well she answered the question with some detail only to have the questioner either have the "eye glaze of boredom" occur, or even better walk away without a backward glance. Maybe they didn't understand that they are supposed to wait for the response and then further interact with said answerer, you know like a...

conversation:
con-ver-sa-tion noun, a talk, especially an informal one, especially between two or more people in which news and ideas are exchanged.

Why do we feel the need to only listen as a chore, not even as a courtesy anymore but to get through the niceties in order to reply with our own ish or move on to something better? When did we lose our ability to communicate face to face? We don't listen to hear. We are all hit with so much information, instantaneously, from every direction all day long, and it's presented in such an entertaining way that plain old boring communicating through speech just can't possibly measure up. Hurry up and finish yammering already so I can read this Instagram Post or watch this Facebook video of some stranger's cat pawing stuff off a countertop...I mean it must be important right, as two and a half million other people also watched it. Besides, I see you all the time! I can find out how you are doing any time, after all there's a ton of commercials during the tv shows I watch that I can message you...oh no I actually stream my tv as I can't be bothered to watch the commercials so that won't work. Ummm I will text you, hey now there's some good communication there eh? I have snapchat I can snap you some photos with text it, will be just like we are sitting next to each other looking at a photo album. Except it's not, it's not anything like sitting next to someone looking through the dog eared pages of a photo album. It's lonely to be a human these days. We have social media where we keep all our friends, like the paper dolls or green army men in a cardboard box we used to play with as children, remaining suspended there, in the atmosphere of our internet til we log on and see them again. Some of those friendships have actually proven to be some of the closest, most honest, and rewarding. But what about our neighbors? The people in our zip code? Our reality is turning virtual. Another friend recently mentioned that she was experiencing the same phenomenon so we decided that perhaps we should manufacture and market flash cards for adults. Here a few of our sample cards: "Stop talking please, I'm bored" "I'm sorry, I have already forgotten your name" "I don't really like you" "I am not a fan of talking, can we text" "Don't take it personally, I just don't like chit chat".  It's a funny concept but it does feel like they might come in handy sometimes. Used to be, we would all converse within our day with everyone we met along the way. Now I go to The "Ractor Rupply" and the very pleasant young man at the register, just happens to have his apple earbuds in during my and other customer's transaction, and I wonder, how is this a thing? How is it acceptable to be a casher while your ear-holes are covered up and you are listening to new Post Malone(hey-yo Posty...maybe) helloooo can you hear me? Truthfully he was quite pleasant...but was he present? Are we present? Do we really want to listen to some heifer drone on and on about "things are pretty cool, working on some new art pieces thanks for asking, and how have you been?" Apparently not by the empty space where you were just standing in front of me. Have you noticed that cell phone plans no longer make their money on the "talk" portion of your plan, only data...in fact on our plan there is no charge for talk. Does that mean not only talk is cheap, but is it altogether worthless? Here's a challenge, from 6pm to bedtime, count your words, count your families words...I think you'll be very surprised to see the results.

Brave "New" World

Well hello there, it's been a minute eh? Reinventing yourself can be a drag, especially when you are evolving so quickly that you feel you could burst into flames at any given moment. Your skin feels hot, the air vibrates just a little bit, you catch yourself staring off into space leaning to the left side...thinking...but be careful, that resting bitch face might just buy you some trouble. Reflection is a deep and wonderful way to pass the time, and I seem to be doing it more and more lately. it's like sinking deep into a cast iron, clawfoot tub of wonderfully, warm water in a candlelit, dim room. Who was I, who am I, who will I be and will I ever freakin' get there and oh shit I'm there??? Like this is it? I look around at the strong and beautiful Maine women that surround me and think to myself they are the goal. These sage women are what I hope to be when I grow up...umm grow "upper"??  What then and how odd when I realize some are the same age or just a little bit older than me. But how can this be, shouldn't I be able to recognize the age of my sisters? Surely so, I used to be so adept at guessing someone's age, recognizing the nuances that separate the generations. As a photographer, I have had a career-long and intimate relationship with skin and their wrinkles, expression lines, etc.  Years ago, I thought they were something to erase, soften, and smooth. To be fair, a lot of my clientele were not particularly interested in an extremely realistic portrayal of where THEY were in their OWN ish. No matter how young, thin, beautiful my female subjects were, it seemed they all wished to be more, less, different. Never one to change someone's features, I would accommodate, within reason, some "refreshing" so that they looked well-rested but still themselves. I used to think, if that was me I would be so happy within myself. And now you ask, well my perspective is changing and evolving, maybe I am finally reaching adulthood...it had to happen sometime right?!. Maybe that's why I can no longer recognize my age in others or pull out that fun “let me guess your age” parlour trick without insulting someone. My idea of beauty and youth is shifting. I am thinking if you have wrinkles, it means you have laughed loudly and from deep within your soul. If you have crows feet, well, those were caused by the wide smiles of joy and pride from things that made you happy. Every bit and millimeter of those lines have been well-earned and deserved, they should not be something to fear, rather to be celebrated and enjoyed in that warm bath of reflection.  I'm still gonna slather Pond's Beauty Cream all over my mug twice a day, that's never going to change and sometimes I still feel like a bratty adolescent; in that way I won't ever grow up I guess. But when the Pond's stops working and the bratty adolescence is no longer cute, I will wear my stripes proudly and boldly and maybe even with some bright red lipstick to enhance them. And so it goes, we all reinvent ourselves over and over in our lifetimes, it's inevitable. But, don't shy away, let your eyes travel those lines, well-defined or not, read the story of the spirit encased in that perfect envelope of exquisite skin. In doing so, see the roadmap of the intricate and detailed journey each individual, in their own individual way, has taken to arrive at this very point in their lives. Every single mile traveled on that path is beautiful, the wrinkled and the smooth, the happy and the sad, the good and the bad...and my oh my and so far...what a long strange trip it's been.
Cheers,
Sue

Fulfillment on an empty stomach with a broken heart...

What is fulfillment? What does it mean to be fulfilled? Is it only something that comes from within or can you be fulfilled from the outside? I find that I am most creative when I am the least fulfilled. When my heart is hurting the only thing I can do is express it. Sometimes I can channel it into my art, sometimes I endlessly post on Facebook about my loss as though the emojis and comments can build a wall of protection around my soul until I am able to protect it myself. My far away army of foot soldiers manning the bastions while my tears fill the moat, my bereftness the alligators swimming in endless circles on guard against further attack. She was just gone, in a second, a breath. I held her as she passed and told her we would be together again someday that it was ok to leave me but it was a lie. It wasn't ok to leave me. I begged you every damn night "don't leave me, please don't leave me I love you so". But she did and I am left with all this. We were together for nearly fourteen years, that's a really long time, geez ha! most marriages these days don't even last that long and yet there you were, my best friend, by my side every day. We spent only a few days apart during those years, long thousand hour days. When I had a creative block she was there, the good the bad, when I was in demand and everyone thought I was the next big thing...and then when everyone realized that I wasn't. It didn't matter I had her by my side and they all could just piss off. I love ferociously, if you don't personally know me then you would never guess. I believe in loving openly, fiercely, without hiding or excuse, people, things, etc. That love is love! If I love you or anything really and you are close to me, you are going to hear about it. You are also going to hear a lot of I love you's, big hugs, I miss you's, and that sort of stuff. I didn't get any of that as a child from my mom and my dad died in a car crash when I was fourteen so I suppose I figured out at an early age that everyone leaves. Some leave of their own volition, some we have to take our own leave from to save them or ourselves, some are taken from us in a puff of smoke...and some, some are gone in one single breath. Through every loss I have been able to channel at least a portion of the fallout into some sort of artistic space dust. This time is no different except that I am allowing myself to hurt...deeply. Its a fine line I am walking and I know that, putting salt in my own wound just to feel the sting. It validates our bond somehow, as though the more I hurt the more valuable the relationship is...was. I threw myself into my abandon and decay project. I reveled in the decay, the peeling paint, the crumbling, the discarded, the "left behindness". Because it is me, I AM the "leftbehindness".  Working the "Abandonment Issues" project has helped me fulfill myself, made me realize that her last breath is still inside me and will remain so. Made me realize that this beloved companion of mine lives on, she patters beside me as I walk the ruins, she sits at my knee as I edit, she sleeps beside me as I dream of colors and light filled rain. She reminds me to love ferociously, to love, and hug, and laugh because someday we will all draw our last breath to live on in someone else. We want that breath to breed fulfillment, fulfillment from the inside out which then in turn fulfills us from the outside. But first, we as humans, we grieve and we cry and lament, we feel...and then we let them go. I will see her again one day, my love, I will see her. I believe the pain from her leaving me is imposed over my work like a satiny patina, like maybe my viewers see something just outside my focal area. That's not dust on my sensor, it's Bella's last breath. It's time to let you go now, baby, I love you.

"But dreams come slow and they go so fast
You see her when you close your eyes
Maybe one day you'll understand why
Everything you touch surely dies
Only know you love her when you let her go
And you let her go..."
~Passenger~

Bella 2003-2018

"Abandonment Issues"

"Abandonment Issues"

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Same fish, different pond

So a move...a big move... a move across the country in fact, from Illinois to Way DownEast Maine almost to the Canadian Border. I can actually see Canada from my house.  When I sold my house I also sold my studio, my refuge, my prison. I saw moving as an escape from all that anyone knew of my present...laying the groundwork for a blank canvas for my future. I sold ninety-nine-point-99 of my gear, props, backdrops, “schtuff”, even my lights (the lights were hard to give up kind of like a crutch). But give it up I did. I had grand ideas of stripping back my process like peeling back the layers of a decaying onion with the hopes that the layer lying just below was still fresh and useable. I was going to go back to the basics. I felt like photographing people for so long had exsanguinated my lifeblood from my creative veins. I was a shell, with with a huge creative block. The fear that my spark was out or at least almost out never far from my thoughts. Photographing people was always a high for me, trying to get the client to open up bit by bit until their vulnerable ”ish” was laid out bare for the square piece of glass I resided behind to capture it away. When that little bit of their ”ish” was read and wrote onto the memory card it breathed a bit more life into me. Many cultures do not allow their photographs to be taken as they believe it fractures off some of their soul to be lost forever within the camera. I believe this to be true except I believe that piece, that glow or glint in an eye, the crooked smile, that whistful set of a jaw, reminiscent of prior generations that set their jaw in just that same way, that fraction of a soul I believe goes through the camera and into the soul of the photographer. An “ish” zombie if you will. So I digress...this big, grand move would free me, free me from the self imposed constraints of my artistic perspective. I would no longer be photographing portraiture I exclaimed excitedly only bear, moose, loons, whales, ships, and sunsets. I have FREED myself!  And for about a month that was the case. Until the portraitess in me whispered against the inside of my skull ”soooo whatchadoin”?.
I live in an artistic community. The arts are embraced at every turn here which is amazing. Coming from a self-fueled and highly competitive environment it was as comforting as a warm bath at the
end of a long, cold day. People are supportive, they are friendly and noncompetitive. They are enthusiastic about culture and how it impacts and enhances life. It also is very much an environment of self promotion as far as getting your name out there. “Ain’t nobody gonna do it fer ye here”. I have been encouraged by the overwhelmingly positive feedback on my work but I find it so very hard to shove my proverbial foot in anyone’s pretty, brightly-colored, gallery door asking (née demanding) for wall space. How can I sell my work if I find myself holding back when I should be breaking down the doors saying “everyone says there’s nothing like mine around you simply MUST hang me” ha! Hang my work!?!?! But what if my exsanguination was too complete? What if my artistic life blood is now anemic? What if those lights I so cavalierly got rid of were the magic fairy dust over my previous work? There I was someone, a fish with a name...whether that name was artist, bitch, amazing, bullheaded, inspiring, too far out, too loud, too quiet, not enough too much...at least my gear bag was full of adjectives, full of names, words, descriptions-it was full. Here I am the same fish but in a different pond... and my gear bag is decidedly empty...

For Now!


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Feedback

Good Day. So for the first blogpost here at PhotoFugue let's talk about sex...no not really but now that I have your attention, let's talk about feedback. When I mentioned the word sex I would imagine that you, the reader, would have a visceral response based on your belief system...good, bad, interested, taboo, some sort of response was garnered to the sight of the word. To an artist, that immediate, visceral response to the work that is produced out of the heart and veins and their very soul is the lifeblood that sustains. Money is awesome don't get me wrong, notoriety, fame, exclusivity, oh yeah those are all the things we chase after and desire, but the nucleus of our passion is fueled by feedback from those that take witness to what we render. As a photographer, I often say if I didn't self-feed my ego, I would starve...ok maybe it isn't THAT bad, but we all ache to have that atta boy(girl), to be sought after, to be liked, shared, recommended. Social media has impacted this theory in a huge way. We base our success or failure on views and algorithms and on thumbs and hearts. How many of you have posted something really epic on your Facebook or Instagram Account expecting tons of likes or emojis...to have it go completely and utterly without acknowledgement. Kinda disheartening huh? Now imagine that those likes and emojis are what you pay your bills with, or at the very least, they are a means for further exposure to clients that provide you with that money to pay your bills with. Hmmmm, never thought about it like that right? Conversely, as a poetess, the silence and the lack of comprehension of the words that drip out of my pores cause my words to flow forth with more emotion, rawness. So why does one fire of my art need stoking while the other fans it's own flames? I think it is because the photographer side needs a subject, no matter if it is human, landscape, even self portrait, they all require a recordable facade. How much of the photography is influenced by and reflected from my own psyche, my own fugue state if you will...how much of what's in front of my lens actually portrays myself in the end product? When I take a photo and have a mentor or someone's whose opinion I greatly value make the statement "I knew that was your work as soon as I laid eyes on it" or I can recognize your work anywhere" is that a good thing? Is that belying just how much of myself is ingrained in my works? Does it make the rendering more easily relatable or does it shut off a portion of the viewer populace? In my poetry I can't help but think I really don't give a rat's behind if a piece is well received or not. I flow and if the audience gets it fabulous, if they don't then its easy to say its above their mindset, its not relatable to this culture, this area, these folks just can't grasp it. When one half of your soul is a self fertilizing tree and the other half isn't...well what then...they are not congruous they are not compatible. Will one half overtake the other if it wilts and dies? Will they grow straight and strong together the roots of the one sufficient to sustain the other. When you give an artist feedback, you nurture them giving them courage and strength to build upon any cracks in their weakened foundation. When it is critical but heartfelt, it teaches them to be free to adapt and grow into their strengths. When feedback is positive, it has the power to enhance the creative process, to encourage to press further into self expression. Being an artist is a lonely place of reflection, of feeling the process, and birthing the result into existence. Have you fed your artist today???