Dreams.

I napped today after spending the afternoon with Courtney Mannion digging through shelves and inhaling deeply into bound journals on the upper levels of Cabell Library. We talked for a brief moment about a perfume that smelled of library books, pipe tobacco and mildewy cloth. That may not sound appetizing to you, but it sounds like heaven to me. Well, I had some of the most vivid dreams ever, it was a bit like time travel, as they were really just memories of mine. I think all this thinking and conjuring up my why has started to yield some results. Let me take you with me...

The hayloft of my barn in Herndon, Va summer of 7th grade we were cleaning out the low eved "attic" and I scraped my back on the wood, and collapsed onto a creation our barn cat was making. Several animals killed and brought up the ladder to his "lair" it was a rat-pigeon-squirrel-vole-mouse-baby barn swallow that had literally congealed together... I had just face planted into it...

Then, I was in California the first year I aged not in Virginia, my birthday, turning 19 my little brother sent me a box, this was the best present I ever received (and a really intense couple of years doing, inhaling, taking things I had no business ingesting made me forget all about this box.) It contained a scrap of fabric I had used to sew a dress with in high school he must have found in a dresser stashed with other things I left when I moved away, and a note that said "STOP: Put on the blindfold and have William help". There was instructions that my then boyfriend followed. I heard him opening little jars and told me to inhale. In through my nose came the smell of my life in Virginia in the fall. First was straw from the horse stalls, then in the next jar was rotting leaves from a big birch tree in the corner of our yard, then ash from the fire pit, then dirt from by the lake, then a small clipping of leather off an unused horse bridle ... I can't remember all the things he put in the jars, but as they say scent is the strongest link to memory and a nauseating rush of homesickness poured over me.  I woke up and spent the last few hours staring at old negatives of mine from high school, when I was so enchanted with photography I wanted nothing else in my life. I haven't felt that way in such a while, and these old images were invigorating and inspiring. I spent much of my high school years crawling through abandoned houses taking slow shutter speed images of me creeping through walls and over exposed windows eating away at my image. I was amazed at the themes and ideas that were floating in those images and I'd like to revitalize them, I seemed to better understand the nature of the camera, the nature of light, and ideas about identity, permanence, memory, and image. I don't know if this is allowed, but it's pretty early in the game, and I'm so very much infuriated by my lack of enthusiasm for my current project. I feel as if art school has shoved things/ideas/images down my artistic esophagus so forcefully that it has engulfed my own self. The work I have made recently, and not so recently does not seem to be mine, it seems to be a response to Richmond, to Being, yes but not to myself. Looking at work from the past year at VCU I see nothing reminiscent of my own personal style except one roll I took during alternative processes, and it's like I'm just looking at things for the first time, because they don't speak of me, my experiences, my desires, my visions. I think there is a more natural and fluid way to express what I've been trying to say, I feel as if I've been devoured by an artist that is not me.  Stay tuned for what's next, I'm heading home to the farm, to memories, to me.