22. Magic

In his early work Alfred Stieglitz was one of the first photographers to take photographs in extreme weather conditions because he felt that it created the perfect pictorial approach. It was all in the name of atmosphere... to record the idea of suggestion and mystery rather that clarity in the image. Later his style did a 180 as he embraced the modernist aesthetic. He threw out the soft and fuzzy and concentrated on form and abstraction.

I was out photographing in extreme weather conditions the other night - a very rare instance for a LA native. It was late at night in the San Bernardino Mountains, just after a storm, and the full moon just broke through the darkness for a few moments. I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time... with an adjustable camera... and a tripod. This tree is illuminated solely with ambient moon light. The result is so surreal and magical. A blend between Stieglitz's two favorite styles. I am so pleased that I was able to make several photographs of the area before the moon was once again swallowed up by the storm clouds.

21. Snow

I am still up in the mountains teaching and a snow storm came in last night. We woke up to a beautiful blanket of snow, but not a good day for working in the field. I was excited to lecture to students in the main lodge with a fire blazing, but unfortunately I spent a bunch of the morning in bed with a nasty migraine. Thank goodness for team teaching!

So when I stumbled out of bed to take over the afternoon teaching shift, the snow storm had cleared and the sun was poking through. There was little time for making photographs, but I did spend many hours teaching students how to take photographs. So with the light fading a few minutes before dinner I ran out into the winter wonderland and worked on making my own photographs for a little while. It is hard to adjust a camera with frozen fingers.  I thought about on of my favorite photographs that Harry Callahan took of a weed against the sky. In person his image looks like a simple, black ink drawing on crisp, white paper.

So later, after dinner, I was going back to my cabin and the most amazing full moon emerged from behind the dissipating storm clouds. Wow. The light against the snow was like nothing this Socal gal has ever had the pleasure of experiencing. The moonlight sparkling on the odd forms of the snow. It was so hard to choose which of the many photographs I took today.

Every night to start my blog I first spend a little time in Photoshop color correcting, resizing and such. I eventually choose a photograph or two to post. Tonight when I saved the photograph below I called it "boob". Not because that will be the ultimate title, but because there is an obvious form and sensual quality to the image. The odd thing is I could not get the photograph to upload to Blog Spot. After two computers, numerous checks on the internet connection (it does go down quite a bit in the mountains) and one last shot with my iPhone, I thought, may be it is the title. So I changed it and in a quick instance my photograph was up... interesting... do you think Google has some sort of filter to prevent the uploading photographs of boobs? How sad Google.

20. Experience

I made the transition from student to full time worker right after our last recession. It was 1997 and I just graduated with my MFA from Cal State Fullerton a few years before. I had been teaching part time at half a dozen different campuses and hoping to find a full time tenure track position.



I timed it just right. The economy was in a very different place than it is today. We were on the upswing headed for the dot com boom. It was the beginning of digital photography and I was great with computers. In 1997 I was offered two full time positions, one at College of the Canyons and one at Chaffey College. I was in final interviews for a third. (Like I said, different economy). May be it was luck, persuasion, preparation, proximity, who knows but I chose COC. It was the right choice.

This weekend I am teaching a class up at a camp in the San Bernardino Mountains that the college leases for our relatively new Field Studies program. The program gives students an opportunity to experience work in the field while completing their courses in geology, photography, biology, history, ASL, sociology, etc. We literary teach outside of the box by taking the students outside of the box. They love it. The faculty love it. And here I am thinking that it all came back to that decision in 1997. What if I had chosen a different campus --one that stuck with tradition because it always worked before in education? Well the same-old-same-old doesn't cut it any longer. Humans learn best through active experience.

19. Covet

Long, long day. And all I thought about.

18. Success or Failure

Health insurance is so public - it's in the news daily. Everyone has an opinion. During a routine doctor's appointment today, my physician had an opinion about the recession, health care crisis, and even the failure of Generation Y. I like this man, because unlike most Kaiser Permanente doctors he actually finds the time to talk to patients like we are real people. It is so unusual. During our discussion we agreed on a lot of things... that the health system needed an overhaul, LA public schools are a mess, and "kids these days" are so down right disrespectful & lazy. But we didn't agree on everything. Our conversation started with the typical the recession is starting to bottom out but it will take awhile before things feel right again.  I mentioned I hoped that living during these insecure times would give the next generation what it needs to be the next great generation. Living through times of difficulty is often what a culture needs to turn its self around. My doctor didn't agree. How pessimistic! How could you get up in the morning if you really thought we are all going to crash and burn? What would be the point to continue? I just can't think this way. No matter how annoyed and pissed off I am one day, after a good night's sleep, I have to refocus and hope I can be part of the solution.

So as I wait one month for the first available appointment to receive my first of many routine mammograms, I have to have faith that we can succeed.

17. Conspicuous consumption

Jules... here we go. I never actually had this assignment in high school, but I have thought a lot about it in the last couple of days. The term may have been hard to understand from the perspective of a 17 year old spoiled girl, but we didn't have Wikipedia, "Conspicuous consumption is a term used to describe the lavish spending on goods and services acquired mainly for the purpose of displaying income or wealth. In the mind of a conspicuous consumer, such display serves as a means of attaining or maintaining social status. A very similar but more colloquial term is 'keeping up with the Joneses'."

The simple answer is designer handbags, yachts, and sports cars. But as I began to work on this assignment the term "conspicuous consumption" had a much deeper meaning to me. As Americans I think most of us are all guilty of it. It is not about the top 5% of wealth with their fancy homes, around-the-world vacations, and private schools. Consumerism is an epidemic in America.

My husband and I are both teachers. We live in a modest middle class neighborhood in Van Nuys.  We both drive Saturns and pack our lunch most days. Our vacations are mostly road trips to visit friends and family. My purse is from Target. Yet as I looked around our simple home I see evidence of unnecessary consumerism at every turn.  Even in the midst of a recession (or as some feel depression) America might be having a "hard time" but we still maintain our cable TVs, cell phones, take out food, gas guzzlers, more clothes than we could wear in a week, skinny vanilla lattes, shoes for every occasion, and a garage full of shit. If this isn't conspicuous what is?

16. Perspective

I met a co-worker, Vince, at a tavern tonight to discuss some upcoming projects. I was completely distracted by this man over in the corner madly typing away on his laptop. I was trying to figure out what he was thinking about. He wasn't a very attractive man. He was balding well before his time and this made him look much older than he likely was. He didn't smile or socialize with anyone in the bar. He never looked up to enjoy the environment around him. Why did he come to the bar? Why not stay home? Does he not have beer and wireless in his apartment? Could it have been the beer on tap that dragged him out into the outside world? Was he avoiding someone? Did he still live with his mother and needed to be away from her nagging words? Was he writing a blog? Maybe one about people minding their own business? How did he have such hyper focus?

As a thousand scenarios ran through my head, I realized my perspective would never match his. Even if I came up with the correct answer about who he really was and what he was really doing, I would never know if I was right. Two people can be within a few feet of each other at the same time & place and have two totally different perspectives.

Photography is fascinating because it allows for the prolonged stare. Once the exposure is made the viewer has permission to dissect the subject with his eyes. Tonight my perspective frozen in time. And the subject's perspective? Transient thoughts.

15. Lost

I need an assignment. I am clearly out of ideas. I assign my students a project called the "Scavenger Hunt". I give them a list of 10 vague but rich words and ask them to try and visually articulate them using the photographic medium.

If any of you out there want to send me a list of words to photograph I will do my best to respond to them photographically.

Much obliged!

14. Focus

I broke two cameras in my life and both of them were in Zion National Park. This image was taken with one of those broken cameras when the lens mechanism no longer focused. I started shooting images with its new limitations. It was challenge to photograph lacking one of the key elements in photography - focus.

Many photographers would scoff at the idea of a blurry photograph, but I have always loved them. They remind me of a distance memory...or reaching for something distant in your mind.  The image never clear no matter how hard you work.

The blurry image was influenced by a substitute high school photography teacher. My regular teacher,  took a leave to participate in the Great Peace March (now I am really dating myself). A young artist, straight out of graduate school was hired to fill in for a month. Her work at that time, had little to do with photography. She showed us self portraits of words painted on her body and I honestly never understood it. None-the-less she challenged me to consider not only what was in the photograph, but what was also communicated to the viewer outside of the photograph. Mr. O'malley came home and she moved on but the influence stayed.

Eventually our paths crossed again. Both of us had further developed our work. Some 6 years later, Uta Barth had become a rock star of the art world. She is known as the photographer with the blurry photographs and one who continues to challenge the conventions of photography.

Uta Barth

13. Self

The thirteenth post could be bad luck right? So it seems like a time to be self indulgent. It has been a long day...long week. And honestly all I looked forward to tonight was not writing my blog, the long expected rain, a take-out dinner, movie on the couch with the kids, but a good glass of wine. So with that... I post a screen capture (yes I guess technically it is a photograph) and I'll say see you tomorrow.

12. Second Chance

I had a long conversation with one of my classes today about a photograph I had taken of my step dad. It is a terrible photograph in that it ignores all recommendations for decent composition. I explained to my students it is a true snapshot I rushed to make because I was afraid I might miss a shot of my nephew sitting in his grandpa's lap. My brain shut off and I operated the camera on automatic pilot.

I got lucky that day, my nephew stayed put and I was able to take a second, better-composed shot that truly communicated the beauty of the moment. As photographers, we don't always get lucky enough to take another shot. Ever since that conversation today I have been thinking about second chances. A series of images came to mind. One day I realized that my younger daughter's hands went from those of a baby to those of a girl. How did this happen? How does time move so quickly? That day, I decided to start photographing her hands not obsessively, but often enough to have a second chance to see her grow up.

11. Busy

This week is busier than most. So busy that I am wrestling with my ability to actually follow through with the project - ready to break. I simply can't get a chance to pick up a camera and make photographs. Exhaustion is uninspiring.

So instead of giving up, I reviewed some photographic work I shot in the last few months but never had a chance to really do anything with. This week I will be posting work from the recent past.

This composition is a page from one of my artist's books. It is called "3 minutes in the Kitchen" and was in effect another photographic project I assigned to myself a lot like this blog. I had 3 minutes in one room (which ended up being the kitchen while I was browning chicken) to shoot the photographs for an upcoming edition of books.

These "assignments" are free of deep concept, and more a mere exercise, but great art is only achieved through practice. I so have a ways to go.

10. Three

I often group photographs in triptychs. My earliest connection to the number three started in Sunday school with the idea of the Holy Trinity. A bit heavy handed and punitive, but I have to admit this early training came in handy studying Renaissance art in college. Later in graduate school my collaborative partner, Peter, and I started to research fairy tales and again, the number three is prevalent...three little pigs, three wishes, Goldie Locks and the three bears, etc. In composition three is consistently stable like tricycles, triangles, and tripods. The triptych seems balanced and secure like a built in set of book ends to hold together the composition.

9. Form

Abstraction is so common place, so acceptable, so easy. It is hard to believe that it was ever shocking, or inaccessible to the masses. It sprung out of the Avant-garde's desire to move away from pictorial representation. In the 1950's if you didn't get abstraction, you weren't part of the "in-crowd".

Artists have gone onto to shock in so many more dramatic ways - Mapplethorpe's bullwhip or Hirst's bisected animals to name a few. So who cares about abstraction expression? It's so passe that it has become kitsch. Call me nostalgic, but I still love it. I love it the same way my mom's generation runs to every exhibit of Impressionists paintings that comes to town.

So in the last week I have taken so many simply beautiful abstract photographs but posted none. Why? I feel they are dated, passe, too little in the age of over-the-top. Again, the critic.

8. Preservation

When visiting the San Miguel Mission today with our fourth grader we noticed a huge shift in philosophy of art restoration to preservation. We have visited a few missions and all are buffed, polished, painted, and primped to perfection to look more like Hollywood sound stages than historical structures. The San Miguel Mission received grant funds from the Getty Trust to preserve the mission in it's current state. It's beautiful. The girls recognized it's authenticity and age and had an instant sense of awe for the space. Instead of giving San Miguel a face lift the Getty is just making sure his nose doesn't fall off. Sometimes aging is graceful. Kudos!


- excuse the typos...posted via Windo's iPhone

7. Big Papa

We are spending the weekend in Paso Robles. So this is the first post on the road so I have no idea if it will work - wish me luck.

I was poking around my uncle's winery and I happened across tonight's photograph. I came around the corner and was hit with an instant memory. My Grandpa, or as the girls call him Big Papa, was suddenly present even though he died years ago. At first it may seem like a mess, but at closer study there is an insane logic to this wall. I remember hunting in his garage for trinkets as a child. The center was packed solid and the walls were lined with tons of junk. We could get to everything if you only knew where it was.

So here was a work bench at my uncle's that could have been my Grandpa's. Did Tom set it up to mimic his father's work bench? Or is it something deeper like genetics that drove this insanity? Where does our sense of visual logic or taste come from? Is it learned, inherited, or both?


None-the-less it was great to see Grandpa again.

6. Muse

Oh Katie! She changed everything. I had no idea that having a child would be as wonderful and stressful as it is. She came out of the womb screaming and never stopped. The screaming just slowly morphed into a rhythm of demands, tantrums, and fantastic discussions.


So much passion, talent, beauty, and intelligence. She is my muse.

5. OCD

Sometimes I just want to post a photograph and call it quits for the day. I feel confident in my ability to compose an interesting photograph, but not confident in my ability to communicate in the written word. So I am struggling every day two fold... one to make a photographic image and to put something down in words that anyone would want to read. Now that I have a whole three followers (well really two because one of the three is my husband) I feel even more pressure to perform. I know why I started this project but why do I continue?

Neil Green, father to one of my dearest friends, clarified it in one word for me today... compulsion. He's right. The one thing that drives me nuts about my daughter Katie is her obsessive to be compulsive. The apple didn't fall far from the tree.

For years I have always just thought of myself as a really great worker. I always did my homework, cleaned my room, paired the socks, lined up the salad dressing in the refrigerator, closed the window blinds so the slats are always facing up, not down. Wind me up and I go.

What I have always loved about Neil is that he is honestly straightforward. To hear such honesty can be hard on some, but he always had a gentle way of delivering it. I started working for the Green family art supply store at the early age of 13 years old. I was paid $2 cash per hour to help count all the General's charcoal pencils, gum erasers, tubes of gouache, sheets of foam-core, boxes of Chatpak Ad markers, rolls of armature wire, reams of illustration board, bundles of sable brushes, drawers of sculpture tools, and bottles of glue during the yearly inventory. An art supply store is an obsessive person's dream - so many items to put in rainbow order. Thirteen years later I graduated with my MFA. Neil knew that given my compulsive behavior I would never leave Carter Sexton on my own. So in his gentle way of delivering the truth, he fired me.

No worries. He was right and we are still close friends. He now spends much of his time up in San Francisco with his daughter Kelly and her family. I look forward to his trips down to LA and we go out to dinner. Tonight, we shared a plate of baby back pork ribs and talked about a lot of things...family, Haiti, the economy, chimpanzees, my girls, and old friends, but it was that one word that stuck in my head - compulsion. As an artist, is it so wrong to be compulsive?

4. Snaps

make lunches
drop off kids
hike


grab a bite
work


give mom a ride to the airport
phone meeting


pick up kids
music lessons
lunch

run errands
make dinner
go to Girl Scout meeting


write blog

It was a hard day to make anything other than a bunch of snapshots with my iPhone. It's quantity over quality today.

3. Rules

After a 7-hour teaching day I am having trouble being creative. All day I have been thinking about the rules. I remember reading about this couple that decided to have sex everyday for a year. When interviewed on the radio the couple described that many days the commitment to making love had become burdensome and mundane. I remember them likening the act to brushing their teeth.

I decided to make 365 photographs one day at a time. Does that have to be 365 consecutive days? If I am exhausted can I skip a day? What if I can't post until just after midnight, did I blow it? I never really stated the rules. And honestly as an artist aren't I supposed to be breaking the rules? I invent rules to live and work by. Why? Are these false boundaries necessary?

I remember the day I decided to become a visual artist. My high school photography teacher took me to a John Baldessari exhibition at Margo Levin Gallery. Mr. O'Malley explained Baldessari didn’t take the photographs but instead appropriated and juxtaposed them to create something of his own. I was shocked down to my Topsiders!

Not only does Baldessari break the rules, but also he is his own critic.

John Baldessari "Wrong," 1967

2. The Critic

As soon as I woke up the Critic started in my ear. What was I thinking? This is unoriginal and silly. How many projects are crushed before they even start because of the Critic? It would be so easy to stop posting, roll up into a ball, and protect myself so that my pride isn't hurt. But as artists we have to put ourselves out there. It would be easy enough to make one photograph a day and not show it to anyone, but then what value does the image have. One component of art is to communicate... and the photograph can't do that as an inaccessible file on my hard drive.

A year ago I worked on some composite portraits of my daughter. The series was called "Gemini" after her astrological sign and often Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde personality. For months I have wanted to return to this series of composites. This image created today is inspired by my "Gemini" series and Duane Michals' "Self Portrait as I Were Dead". I am disappointed in how the photo manipulation on the left hand figure is rendered so subtle on this site. In print the figure is reminiscent of a body ready for burial - the skin smooth, painted, and translucent.

1. Dreams

I can't sleep. This is probably how a ton of blogs (and other projects) begin. My mother called me by accident at 2:30 AM and even though I have to work early in the morning I can't make myself go back to sleep. So my mind starting working on problems like it so often does when it is rarely dark and quiet in the house.

My daughter Katie has so many ideas and dreams. They come to her at an exhausting pace and there are no limits. No monetary obstructions, no physical restrictions, no legal liability, no inhibitions. She isn't even bound by nature law. Her dreaming is part 9 year old and part ADHD. There is simple manic component to it. One day she is all obsessive in, the next the project is long forgotten.

As a mother I try to guide her without adding to that critical voice we all have in our heads. I would like her to be able to follow her dreams and complete something. As I look around the living room there is evidence everywhere... an abandoned half knitted scarf, an electric guitar that is rarely touched, a model of the San Francisco Mission half built, plans for a horse stable in our small San Fernando Valley backyard. I constantly preach that in order to build a dream or make a change, one needs to break the project down into small parts and work on it a little bit everyday. The process of basic goal setting. Good idea?

The weird thing is, where her dreams started, mine stalled. I have been so consumed with trying to make a living, raise the kids, and take care of my aging parents that I have forgotten to practice my own advice. I went to school for art to be an artist. But at 40 years old I am doing a fine job advancing my students' (and childrens') goals, but not my own. So here I am starting a blog in the middle of the night.

The dream? To do what I love... make photographs. The goal? To make photographs. The catch? I have to post at least one photograph a day, everyday. (I know, not original...there has even been a few best sellers and a couple of movies - don't care).

In a few hours the beginning of the semester will start and as I hand out a new batch of assignments to my students, I am finally giving myself an assignment too. Wish me luck!

The first photograph published in this blog is one I took of my sister, Sarah... it is inspired by a mother that picked up a camera for the first time late in life. Julia Margaret Cameron was 40 before she ever took a photograph. In the mid 1800's the age of 40 was close to life expectancy.