ARTIST

WayMaking Artist’s 2019 Calendar by JulieV

2018 was the inaugural year for my limited edition calendar featuring photographs I have taken while in a state of mindful awareness, a state of being and creating that I eventually came to refer to as my contemplative photography practice.  More about that practice in paragraph 3 below.

Making the Calendar this year and last year:  As a creative act in and of itself,  selecting the images, assigning each to a specific month in the year and the design of the accompanying calendar page was so satisfying for me that I felt compelled to repeat the process for a 2019 calendar.  In 2018 I accompanied the images with poetic prose and poetry that felt somehow resonant with spiritual elements in the photographs.  In 2019 the images are presented wordlessly in my attempt to discover if they indeed are ‘worth a thousand words.’  Your feedback is welcome.  AND, I have a few more calendars left in the original run of 100 – they begin with February 2019 and end with January 2020.  Email me if you’re interested in purchasing one:  julia.m.volkmann@gmail.com —  $10 per calendar plus $2.50 to ship.  Tell me your birthdate and I’ll personalize it for you.

About my practice: Even before I found a way to label this practice (or should I say “characterize” this practice?), I had been explaining to the unfortunate souls who had to suffer my long philosophical ramblings on the subject that the act of taking the pictures afforded me an opportunity to be still and be totally immersed in the contemplation of the object or scene in situ; the quality of the light, the touch of air on my skin, the sounds of the place and the sense of being both observer and subject in the image, even if I was not seen  in the viewfinder.  My experience of capturing the image was actually an act of paying deep attention, which elicited in me a stillness, a focus, an awareness of the breath that everyday noise and bustle of life could never permit.

During my MFA IA studies at Goddard College in Vermont, my photographic practice was awakened again after lying dormant for some years. When I submitted a series of my photographs as part of my portfolio work for that semester, it became necessary to research this “thing” I was doing so that I could speak of this art practice in relationship to others’ work in the world – how it might be similar, where it differed, etc.  I was gratified to find Stephen Batchelor’s essay “Seeing the Light – Photography as Buddhist Practice” in Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, edited by Mary Jane Jacob and Jacquelynn Baas (University of California Press, 2004).   I saw how Batchelor and I were aligned in our approach and experience, even though the work we produced was not at all similar.   Having read his essay, I was able to lay claim to the term “contemplative photography” as the way to refer to my practice.

About the cover image:  I took this picture on my way back home from Goddard College summer session in August 2014.  I had stopped at a local motel for the night.  The next morning this motorcycle was in the space next to mine.  I was stopped dead in my tracks by the message and had to dig out my camera to take the picture before I went across the way to get my free coffee and continental breakfast (i.e. dry sweet roll) prior to continuing my drive home.  When I feel most aimless or hopeless or clueless about whatever road I have found myself on  – be it spiritual, metaphysical or literal I try to remind myself of the value of exploring.  The straightest distance between two points is not  A way, or the ONLY  way, or the best way, to get where you’re going. Life happens on the journey.

 

Introducing JulieV’s 2018 Contemplative Calendar

NECESSITY GIVES BIRTH TO A CALENDAR of IMAGE and WORD

Over the holiday break this year while I was down with some indefinable malaise – who can really tell what is flu and what is cold?  Especially if it moves into bronchitis?  Too sick to do much, I did find focus and drew energy from reviewing thousands of images that I have taken over the years.  I’ve come to understand the lion’s share of work with camera as  my contemplative photography practice.  A subset of images within this practice contain the presence of the WayMaking Cairn (WMC); an avatar-like manifestation of my spiritual engagement with my surroundings as I walk.  In anthropological terms the WMC serves as both witness and subject in the environment where I framed and took the shot.

GETTING ONE’S CREATIONS INTO THE WORLD COSTS TIME & MONEY

As I reviewed all these images I was experiencing again the almost intolerable frustration that I couldn’t share these images in a tangible encounter with others. Paintful reality that I need to overcome:  getting my images out into the world is  a time consuming enterprise and costly.  Here are the biggies:

  1. Printing images ($15 – $100- depending on materials and size) and
  2. Framing images ($50 – 125-depending on materials and size) ;
  3. #’s 1 & 2 are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of cost because applying to the various galleries also costs time and money – one spends a lot of time combing the internet for opportunities.
  4. 98% of the time to apply to be in an exhibit or show requires an entrance fees of $20 – $40 for the privilege to submit 3 – 5 images for the curator’s review.
  5. Let’s not forget the time to frame and mount the images and the costs to deliver the finished images – either I drive these images or I ship these images – shipping is always a coin toss.  The real risk of damage to the image requires especial diligence to protect it – and more material costs for packaging
  6. Applying to show work in festivals is another huge time suck that requires more money to pay for the booth, the tent, images printed on spec with no promise of sale, and time and travel to and from these festivals also requiring overnight stays in hotels and restaurant meals
  7. Those who are early in their practice are pretty much confined to group shows in pop up or non-traditional sites.  Opportunities for solo shows in accredited galleries are slim and none.  There are a few more opportunities to get a solo show in a coffee shop, or a bank or a clinic, but those require a lot of prospecting and the possibility of sales from these personally curated shows are not significant.

THERE’s MORE THAN ONE WAY TO….

As I pondered these things and weighed their costs against my limited resources of time and money, I wondered how I might get my work in front of peoples eye’s without a gallery, group show or retail outlet.  Challenge:  How to get my work to a place where they would see it all the time?   Where they might also have a chance for a contemplative experience?  I couldn’t afford printing, framing and shipping complimentary full size 16 x 20 images to their home. Plus, giving it away sets a very bad precedent.  I need to at least cover the costs of that printing/framing/packing/shipping exercise.  How to get my work tangibly present in their homes and offices?  Though I love the digital world for its reach – its getting too noisy out here and there’s too many distractions.  Attention to one’s work on a website and blog  is fleeting.   The tangible, physical artifact seemed the strongest way in.   So, I  determined to design and print my own calendar of images.   This way each month there would be a fresh image and opportunity for a contemplative encounter for the onlooker.  Publish a limited edition of these calendars and give them to family, friends and prospective clients as a loss leader, if you will. An audience that includes potential buyers of future calendars, as well as organizations  that might commission the design of special interest calendars, and outlets where I might place my own calendars for sale.

ECONOMIC LIMITATIONS = LIBERATION + EXPANSION OF ARTISTRY & BUSINESS MODEL

This calendar becomes a liberation and expansion of my artist’s role:  I have curated my own exhibit for each calendar recipient.  This also sets the stage for the next phase of creating a way for these and other of my images to be purchased online.   I also hope to design each year a new calendar which can be ordered on line as well.  A survey will be sent soon to all who received those calendars to get a sense of how to think about next year’s design and how to price it.

Along the way though, another idea came to mind, springing from my love of poetry and poetic prose.  Though not a novel practice – many other calendars have been printed pairing evocative imagery and  writing – I welcomed the additional exploration and discovery to pair my images with text that in some way created a rich dialogue of deepening discovery between word and image.  While I made every effort to look for writers’ whose work was in the public domain, occasionally a contemporary writer’s work was so perfectly aligned with my own spiritual stance that I could not look any further.  This is a challenge and an opportunity for future calendars.

I’m a little late in this first explanatory post of the what and why of the calendar and hopes for future calendars.  The next two posts will serve as catch-ups for the January and February images and text.  At the beginning of each subsequent month I’ll post another image and the literary work that appealed to me.

MIRRORS Installation at GALLERY 1039

Thanks to the power of Eduardo Galeano’s writings, I have created my first outdoor art installation, entitled MIRRORS, in my own front yard, smack in the middle of this working class neighborhood of Hammond, Indiana where I have been living for 13 years.     

This installation opened on Halloween, just in time for trick or treating children and their parents on Monday, October 31st.  I thought that the subject matter of the exhibit lent itself to the opening days of the exhibit which include Halloween, Dias de los Muertos, and the feasts of All Souls and All Saints.  And, I thought, it might find persons more open to participating in the Woman from Oslo segment of the exhibit.

This installation includes three short works excerpted from books by Eduardo Galeano, a journalist, novelist, poet, and artist from Uruguay. He is considered one of the great writers of Latin America. I created the elements you’ll see pictured here in response to his stories.

As a sonic backdrop that evening, from my open windows came the movie soundtrack from “American Beauty,” composed by Thomas Newman.

The title piece of the exhibit, MIRRORS:

Mirrors are full of people.

The invisible see us.

The forgotten recall us.

When we see ourselves, we see them.

When we turn away, do they?

                                  from MIRRORS, Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano

 

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Taken before dark – the dress hanging from the tree in the background is part of the Woman from Oslo segment of the exhibit.

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The mirror now reflects the night sky and the dress , blowing inthe breeze, only a shadowy suggestion of form.

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The Art of Drawing You

     THE ART OF DRAWING YOU 

     In a bed by the Gulf of Corinth, a woman contemplates by firelight the profile of her sleeping lover.

     On the wall, his shadow flickers.

     The lover, who lies by her side, will leave.  At dawn, he will leave to war, to death.  And his shadow, his traveling companion, will leave with him and with him will die.

     It is still dark.  The woman takes a coal out of the embers and draws on the wall the outline of his shadow.

     Those lines will not leave.           

     They will not embrace her, and she knows it.  But they will not leave.   

                       from MIRRORS, Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano

 

The third piece took the most time, thought and work to create, and has a dual title:  “The Woman from Oslo, aka The Passion of Speech [1]”; the latter title being Galeano’s original title in his book.

Marcela was visiting the snowy North. One night in Oslo, she met a woman who sang and told stories. Between songs, she would spin yarns, glancing at slips of paper like someone telling fortunes from crib notes.

This woman from Oslo had on an  enormous dress dotted all over with pockets. She would pull slips of paper out of her pockets one by one, each with its story to tell, stories tried and true of people who wished to come back to life through witchcraft. And so, she raised the dead and the forgotten, and from the depths of her dress sprang the odysseys and loves of the human animal for whom speech is life. 

                     From The Book of Embraces by Eduardo Galeano

     

 

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I made the “enormous dress” and affixed three pockets.  In each pocket I placed a slip of paper.  On the slips were written:

“Joan Ruel McQuade / Daughter-Sister-Cousin-Wife-Aunt-Mother / 1932-1985.”

“Sean Francis McQuade / Son-Brother-Uncle / 1957-2012.”

“Mary Katherine McQuade /Daughter-Sister-Aunt-Mother / 1962 – 1986.”

By evoking and including the names of my family members, I felt I could invite others to do the same, without fear of being prescriptive – I wanted to be a colleague in the exercise, rather than a puppeteer.  As trick-or-treaters came streaming by, groups of adolescents, youngsters with parents and/or older siblings, it quickly became apparent that the entire exhibit was drawing them in.   They were interested, asking questions, taking selfies in the mirror, eagerly reading the words, asking what the slips of paper on the table were for.  I explained that this was an art project, something called public art and that it needed the participation of others to be truly successful.  If they would like to write the name of someone they knew who had died, someone they could keep alive in the act of remembering, I would add that person’s name by placing it in a pocket of its own on the dress.  By the end of Hammond’s trick or treating session I had 21 names on 21 slips of paper.  This level of participation was more than I had hoped for and it left me feeling at once awestruck and deeply satisfied.  My work had made an impact.  People welcomed the opportunity to name and give life, in that moment, to someone who had died. They wanted to share their story.  My interest reminded them that their story had meaning just as their loved one’s life was precious and worthy of remembrance.

Each weekend during the monthlong exhibit I will take down the dress long enough to affix new pockets and add the slips with names.   I have posted a sign inviting those who care to record their stories to contact me.  I’ve also invited people to write their stories for inclusion in a dedicated website and for possible printed publications.

This project is one which I hope to continue in other places, even as I hope to repeat it each year at this time for one month.  In future years I hope to include a performative element by wearing the dress and telling stories of the people whose names are on slips in my pockets.

This project also opens the door for other hoped for, yet to be imagined public art projects which I would like to facilitate, which would be expanded to include the works of other artists in the community.   I would like to work with students of all ages in the schools in creating visual and sonic responses to literature by the many important writers of our times and earlier times.  I would like to facilitate art that brings people together in discovery and sharing.

I welcome invitations to facilitate this project at other sites.  Similarly, I would welcome an invitation to be an artist in residence in community working on other installation projects.  Write me at julia.m.volkmann@gmail.com to begin the conversation.

My thanks to Eduardo Galeano, who passed away April 13 2015.   He is remembered by the many people who loved him.  His spirit also is alive and well in his many literary works, which include The Book of Embraces; Mirrors, Stories of Almost Everyone; Open Veins of Latin America; and Memory of Fire Trilogy, among others. 

Also, thanks to Barb McBride who spent hours with me getting these pieces in place in the yard. Thanks to Eva Volkmann whose counsel came in just the right ways at the right time as I developed the work.