Apr 2013
Coming to the final project and final Artist Statement of my days at Emily Carr University. I am more confused about Art, and what makes Art, Art. I have tried different things, some better than others, some worse. I have used different formats, different film sizes and different subject matters and focal points. However, The last ideas that I have shared have not gone over as happily as I would have liked. So, yet again, I find myself changing my project to please my peers and faculty. While doing so, I have lost why I fell in love with photography in the first place. Forgot all about my photography award in High School. Forgot about taking pictures of everything I see. I did that for me, and now it feels like Art has become some kind of popularity contest of who is more abstract and charged, something we’ve never seen before. But I feel everything is already been done, in one way or another.
With sharing this, I do not feel, I can even remotely come up with something completely new and have some philosophical subjective interpretation of whether a picture of a leaf is just a leaf, or a tiny glimpse of global warming, or a sign that fall has once again, fell. To quote Andy Warhol, “Art is what is what you can get away with”. Has art really become, whatever we can ******* our way through?
I feel completely drained of any creative ideas or thoughts. So I have decided to do something for me. I have taken pictures of different places or things in my apartment. In black and white, with 120 film on RC paper. They are on 11x14-sized paper. I decided that photography was once a way to keep all the moments of my life kept, safe and documented. And this is what I plan to do. Document the place where I have been banging my head up and down the 4 walls of this space, trying to come up with something magical. Instead, I took a more literal route, and focused on the space I was in, trying to not create something for an institution and something for my personal archives. I think we as artists, and as individuals can all take some wisdom from Oscar Wilde when he said, “It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.” As I am my own toughest critic, I do not see myself in the art I have created over the past couple of years, therefore I don’t feel as if my practice is truly reflects my voice as an artist. Thus, I plan to create something within myself for myself.
With sharing this, I do not feel, I can even remotely come up with something completely new and have some philosophical subjective interpretation of whether a picture of a leaf is just a leaf, or a tiny glimpse of global warming, or a sign that fall has once again, fell. To quote Andy Warhol, “Art is what is what you can get away with”. Has art really become, whatever we can ******* our way through?
I feel completely drained of any creative ideas or thoughts. So I have decided to do something for me. I have taken pictures of different places or things in my apartment. In black and white, with 120 film on RC paper. They are on 11x14-sized paper. I decided that photography was once a way to keep all the moments of my life kept, safe and documented. And this is what I plan to do. Document the place where I have been banging my head up and down the 4 walls of this space, trying to come up with something magical. Instead, I took a more literal route, and focused on the space I was in, trying to not create something for an institution and something for my personal archives. I think we as artists, and as individuals can all take some wisdom from Oscar Wilde when he said, “It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.” As I am my own toughest critic, I do not see myself in the art I have created over the past couple of years, therefore I don’t feel as if my practice is truly reflects my voice as an artist. Thus, I plan to create something within myself for myself.
