Strings Attached

As my previous Parallel Play series is about looking back so too is this new group. I am thinking about my long career in art schools. I loved being an art student and have now been an educator for many years continuing to spend lots of time in an art school. What does it mean to be surrounded by this activity through the ups and downs of funding and cultural dismissiveness, learning along side changing students, new technologies, and increased responsibilities? My attempt at reconciling this history is to go back to the early days of my art career. I came to photography from drawing, printmaking and installation work. This series is really trying, no matter how awkward, to draw with photography. The images mimic notations, chalk on blackboards, crosshatching, perspective, mark making, calligraphy, making scale translation grids, blind contour awareness, etc. All these processes were a revelation to me when learning to draw and now engage that same excitement from a very different angle. It is about lifelong learning and the desire to nurture my inner life while bumbling along this path of constant challenge, new assignments and humble realizations.