Filed under: Art Gallery | Tags: april, family, friends, polaroid, portraits, spectra
jules
Caught in a whirlwind of productivity this past month and now it’s finally winding down. I’ve been daydreaming about a ranch vacation in the Dakotas and Wyoming (I really want to see that part of the country). I am happy with the writing I’ve done lately, something I haven’t felt in a long time. I’m moving to a different position at my day job starting Monday, and shooting photos somewhere between family’s and friends’ baby showers, confirmations, first communions. A spring full of ceremony, of turning my attention to the outside after a fruitful winter.
self-portrait
masha
melissa
lucy and cj
becky c. and becky r.
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Filed under: Art Gallery | Tags: aluminum, creatures, fiber, installation, penn avenue unblurred, sara rekrut
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This month’s Unblurred features Sara Rekrut’s “Untitled,” an aluminum, steel, wood and fiber installation. sararekrut.com
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Filed under: Art Gallery | Tags: dream, grief, letter, motel, polaroid, softtone film
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I dream about you a lot since you’ve been gone. Usually you seem very real, and the things you do in them are things you would have done if you were still alive. Like in one dream, you booked a room at some crappy motel next to a broken-down Ferris wheel, and Kristy, Fred and I had to scramble for money to get us all out of there and home. Or another time, you spent all the vacation money on souvenirs, so we couldn’t enjoy the rest of our trip. Why are you so irresponsible? I said, as if I were talking exasperated to a child. I have to remind myself, even now, that you were a grown woman, my mother.
But last night’s dream was different. I was standing at the top of the stairs of an old house. I heard knocking at the front door and peered down to see a man waiting for me to open it. I couldn’t see his face, but you were standing in the corner looking incredibly sad. Mummy, I said, and I panicked because you were disappearing. That’s not mummy, that’s a man at the door, Kristy said somewhere behind me. I was the only one who knew you were there.
[from A Conversation project]
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Filed under: Art Gallery | Tags: 70s chevy, east liverpool, love letter, Ohio, travel partner
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One of my favorite weekend games is when we pick a direction and go, no plan, just you and me and the road. Going west into eastern Ohio is like time travel, and I try to imagine what we would have been like if we had met in 1979. We trade the GPS for a map and after only a few years of technical geography, I’ve almost forgotten how to read one. You assure me it’s impossible to get lost in America, but I see how you grip the wheel when we miss an exit. As we drive along Route 65, I see a photo of you and me that has yet to be taken: the two of us leaning against an old car outside a dusty motel. A neon sign, the setting sun, a slice of moon. We are laughing. The map catches in the wind, flies out of our hands.
[from A Conversation project]
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Filed under: Art Gallery | Tags: industry, letters, polaroid, rust belt, softtone film
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Today Jeff and I drove past the nuclear plant near Industry on our way to a flea market. I never realized how far your commute was from our apartment in Moon to the steel plant in Midland. You told us stories about river rats, swing shifts and trading adventurous food with the guys at work, late night meals of squirrel or bear or venison. Remember when you took us to Niagara Falls and introduced us to chow mein? A group of monks sat in the middle of the dark restaurant silently eating. Paper lanterns shifted lazily over our heads while we speared dumplings with our chopsticks. I was amazed eating in such an exotic place in a different country. I didn’t think about it until now, but isn’t it strange so many Pittsburghers traveled on holiday from one industrial city to another. It’s like we did this so we’d never have to leave the comforts of home.
[from A Conversation project]
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Filed under: Art Gallery | Tags: letters, polaroid, rust belt, softtone film, time capsule
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I remember your house like a familiar drive home – knowing no route names or street signs, just landmarks that have stood before my time. In a past life, I am sitting in your kitchen, listening to you tell stories about your trip to the 1939 World’s Fair. I devour the Sara Lee cheesecake you feed us because it is American and convenient. I laugh when you complain in Hungarian. I walk through rooms, looking for the things that remind me of you: the mounted deer heads over the guest room beds, the cuckoo clock by the back door, the ringer washer at the foot of the basement stairs, your wedding portrait from 1928. Your house is a time capsule, and when I need to organize the chaos in my life I open it, knowing everything is in its place.
[from A Conversation project]
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Filed under: Art Gallery | Tags: diary, ga/gi 2012, installation, penn avenue unblurred, sarah wojdylak
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This month’s Unblurred and GA/GI Festival features Sarah Wojdylak’s, “Untitled,” a reclaimed materials and digital photography installation recounting the six-month journey of a mysterious, rare illness. swojdylak.wordpress.com.
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Filed under: Art Gallery | Tags: east liverpool, ghosts, history, Ohio, polaroid, self portrait, softtone film, spectra
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Last month I shot a Polaroid series of Ohio River towns for an Utata project. The “Conversation” theme was a challenge to convey through image, as well as words when it’s only you who can do the talking. I chose to write letters to the people and places who I think about a lot, who have made me who I am. I always felt that some of my better writing came out of letters to friends, and that the letters from others I’ve received over the years were gifts to me. I saved boxes and boxes of them from the time I was in junior high through undergrad, and then before I moved in with Jeff, I felt like cleaning house in my life and shredded almost all of them – seven trash bags full of my personal history down to one small box. It wasn’t until recently when writing for the project that I felt a twinge of remorse for what I had done, realizing how much I miss this kind of communication.
I’ll post the six letters throughout the month. The entire project is found here.
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Looking through mummy’s papers, I noticed that in the late ’70s she listed “housewife” as her occupation. This surprised me, considering we never lived in a house – we lived in that apartment off Sharon Road, the one with the groovy plaid couch. Our neighbors thought it was weird that she gave us fire-belly toads for pets instead of a dog, and that she decided not to send me to kindergarten because she thought nuns were evil. Or how she’d blast Parallel Lines and sing really loud in the kitchen while she baked cookies. Or how she’d roll down all the windows in the car and yell out crazy things to people because she was so happy. You were too young to remember any of this. Everything along the rivers was closing up and falling down. Our father lost his job like most fathers lost their jobs, but that didn’t stop us from dancing.
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Why do you hide your face in your portraits? This is something people have asked me a lot lately, something that is hard for me to answer, but I’ll work out the demons here (And while women may think it, it’s only men who have asked it).
They make for more interesting stories. When I began doing photography, the photos from other artists that I found most interesting were un-obvious portraits, where a person is not looking directly into the camera. It made me want to explore all the ways photos tell stories. My photos have to have movement and place, and I like working with the constraints of still image. Acknowledgement of the camera by the subject is taking away the mystery of the photograph, and I want that mystery.
It lends some privacy in social media. When I began posting self-portraits to the Internet, I chose ones where people couldn’t see my face for physical and emotional safety. I have many self-portraits where I’m showing my face, but those rarely make it to the Web – a gift of solitude for myself in an age of too much information.
I’m not getting any younger. I marvel and freak out over getting older. I want to be one of those women who embrace their wrinkles, grays and all, but I’m a little terrified – even more so now that my mother didn’t make it to 60. I am self-conscious about the dark circles under my eyes from insomnia and allergies, something I inherited from my mother. Along with her vanity, perhaps? All reminders not so much of beauty fading, but my mortality.
The irony is that hiding my face in self-portraits started as a way to make me feel less self-conscious and now I am more self-conscious for not revealing it. I’m taking this as an opportunity to re-examine my work and see other worlds I can explore.
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Filed under: Art Gallery | Tags: illustration, jody perigo, myrtle corbin, paintings, penn avenue unblurred
"Swing"
This month’s Unblurred features oil on canvas works and pencil illustrations by Jody Perigo. thisisjody@hotmail.com.
"Untitled"
"Myrtle"
"Hand in Marriage"
"Lover's Secret"
