If I possess a superpower, it’s my ability to second guess everything. No thought goes unexplored, no possibility is overlooked, no matter how absurd or impertinent. Within my current pursuit of still life as a vehicle for exploration it has led me down more than a few broken paths, some which seemed promising but ended up in the weeds, and a few which were plain flat wrong. But just the other day I read an article that snapped my attention to attention and made me think about how to proceed with greater intention and purpose- fostering a genuine sense of direction over a simple will to find movement for movement’s sake. So I’m returning to the genesis of this entire line of imagery to attempt to further refine its raison d'être- in essence defining an origin story.
In the beginning Markie saw an old garage and took pictures of it. In an attempt to make it make sense- to understand the “why” Markie layered a bunch o- photos on top of one another and something clicked. He described it as a convergence of separate memories into one big “Thing”. More work followed. Some still life photos created not necessarily with the same thing in mind in retrospect seemed to have the same thing in mind.
And lo, a series was born.
But then came the hard part. Art making has to keep moving, changing, improving, exploring. It’s a shark in the water thing. It gots to keep moving or it dies. And over the past sixteen months now I’ve been moving it along, but not always thinking of the direction I need it to go. Last weekend I made three new pieces- I’ve never made three in that short a stanza. And looking back on them I know why. Yikes! No soup for you. So I went back in and decided to keep two and refine them. Refine, define, and re-purpose. To give purpose to.
So if exploring memory is the purpose, what is the backstory? I needed to define what memories and why. I felt like I had adequately addressed that part of the conversation, but looking at it now it’s all jumbled. So here goes…
For more than a few years now I’ve been dabbling on a memoir of what I like to call my “repressed false memories”. Quirky stories of being a stupid kid. I think it’s pretty good, but like my art it is also currently lost in the weeds. In thinking about how to fix that reality I began to understand that my art needed some/more direction also. So- the series is now two concurrent, non-competing parallel-ish paths.The memory path (I’ll find a better name) is now firmly the domain of the world-based imagery that reminds me somehow of boyhood and a life of learning and discovering. The still life is the opposite end of the conversation. Memento Peoni, as it is known, turns a light on the under-appreciation of age and patina of life.
So “Bang zoom Wilma- I think we got’s ourself a ballgame…”