July 9, 2016 by
The world seems like a very dark place right now. I find the violence of the past decade, the past months, the past days, the past hours, specifically here in my country of residence (the USA), deeply offensive to my soul — to the eternal portion of my being. I don’t talk about it here very often because I don’t know how to talk about it, I only know how to fight the tide of my own inner battles, to temper my own clash of darkness and light. To be more clear, there are many different kinds of violence. There are many different ways and degrees in which one human can murder another. There are many different ways in which we can reach out and murder ourselves, cut away at our own personal souls, slice at our own minds and bodies.
It is our way, the human way.
It is also the human way to rise up from those small and large deaths, to shake off the bitterness of unbreathing, to bandage those shattered and fractal pieces of ourselves and each other, to learn from brokenness and darkness and to pass through the flame not as lifeless versions of ourselves but as bolder, brighter things of faith and beauty and grace — to not remain victims of ruin but to rise and to keep on rising.
A few summers ago I was reading Makoto Fujimura’s book Refractions and in one of his essays he talked about the role of artists in society. To paraphrase him heavily (and might I add, you should read the essay yourself for a full sense of context), he said the true work of artists is to bring light to the world, to illuminate. I took that notion to heart because it’s a beautiful notion but sometimes, it’s the only thing I have to cling to in my work, in my life. It’s the only way I can fight back against a tide of shadows in a world that cuts itself to ribbons as quickly as it is able to heal.
So I go forth. I walk the natural world, I glean what lessons I can from the energy cycles I witness there, I disappear, I reappear, I catch the light with my cameras, I try to tell you the what and why of my experiences as best as I can. I attempt to find the Truth and draw it up and out for myself and for you — to light one match in the darkness and claim that flickering space for Good.
I don’t know what else to do.
July 8, 2016 by
Oh drat. I meant to get a preview up for you much earlier than this but life happened. Trips to acupuncture, the vet, a grocery run to the city, cooking food for myself to eat, galloping to and from the post office, another trip to the city for printer cartridges…yadda yadda. Anyway, there are duplicates of pretty much everything you see here. Lots of turquoise crosses, labradorite, wapiti…I had so much fun making this stuff for you and coming home to a few series I thought I was finished that I’ll never be truly finished with.
It will be live in the shop tonight at 5PM MST.
See you there, bumblebees.
XX
Jackrabbit Juju (if you believe in that juju mumbo jumbo)
July 3, 2016 by
I go outside a lot and when I am out there, I find a lot of cool things. I used to bring it all home with me but now I try to practice a little self-control and I bring home only the best specimens. In point of fact, I’m starting to leave antlers behind if they are less than perfect, according to my personal sense of perfection. Anyway, I found a full jackrabbit spine scattered about in pieces while hunting quail in some sand dunes in New Mexico this winter past. I set my shotgun against a yucca, bent low, collected all the tiny vertebrae and put them in my trusty zip-lock bag which I carry for just such purposes while I’m in the field.
I loved the shape of this particular bone and it cast up beautifully in sterling.
I added it to a little vignette that also features a cut of OLDoldOLD rough top turquoise I procured while on a desert trip to Utah two winters ago. The pendant is flanked on one side by one of those ridiculously beautiful carved turquoise crosses that I’m admittedly besotted with (and I’ve been little panicky lately
because my stock in those beads is growing a little low…).
Anyway, I love how this piece turned out and I’ve been making plenty of other interesting things so look for a shop update late next week.
May Film
July 2, 2016 by
I’m sure I failed to tell you that Robert gifted me with an old film camera for Christmas. I was delighted. I started with a film camera when I was very very little — my grandmother on my dad’s side of the family gave me a pink and black point and shoot camera at the age of six or so that I used constantly until I upgraded to something else sometime in high school. Speaking of high school, I took eight semesters worth of film photography there which included film developing and print making in a glorious darkroom. I loved those classes very much. Between then and now, I’ve become a full-time working artist (or creative, or whatever you want to call what I do for a living) (everything I can think to call myself sounds a little pretentious), despite the fact that I’m a university drop-out by way of three different institutions. I think instruction is a wonderful thing but there’s no substitute for simply diving into a medium and figuring out your style on your own by muddling through the troughs and crests of creative flow. Never mind being elbow deep, get neck deep in your medium and don’t think for a second there’s a right or wrong way to do it.
Now I’m rabbit trailing a little and pontificating a lot so here’s the bottom line, I’ve always enjoyed photography so returning to my film-y roots has been a true joy. What I cherish about film photography is the delayed gratification. I send it away to be processed and looking at the developed image files is always a surprise for me. I didn’t have to re-learn a film camera. It was like a bicycle — I climbed back on and began to effortlessly swoop about on the asphalt.
The other important thing I want to mention about film is each image I shoot costs me about a dollar so I find myself slowing down and choosing my shots wisely. It’s not for everyone, but it’s for me. I like the pace. I like the sound of the shutter. I like that there is no immediate result on a screen on the back of the camera. Sometimes I think film is one of the last great things.
Anyway, here are some of my favorite photos from the month of May. They were taken, respectively, in a hotel room in Missoula, on the Owyhee River of Oregon/Idaho, at Little Payette Lake of Idaho and Shepp Ranch on the Main Salmon River of Idaho.
No digital image has the grit, grain or feel of film photography, even if you take the time to add some grain back into your image in Photoshop. It might be obsolete, but it’s still very beautiful. I hope you think so too because I’m going to keep on shooting and sharing.
