Get Out!

I remember having a conversation many years ago with a student about what art-making is - what its purpose is. The student was very involved in her new experience of making imagery but she hadn't realized that just making the work isn't enough to be an artist. It's very easy to get confused between exploring your creativity and actually trying to be a working artist. What's the difference? 

4th Street Bridge, Multiple Viewings

Bringing creativity into your everyday life is a valuable way to make each day more meaningful. You find yourself surrounded by a world full of wonders and questions...and that's a worthy goal in and of itself - but being a working artist is different in that you're creating something that must find its place in the world. Making art and then just hiding it in your room/closet/studio isn't enough. Art is a commentary about the world/time/space we live in and you owe it to the work to bring it out into the world. Additionally, you don't really know the work until you've seen it in a different environment. 

This week I'm stepping out in two very different venues. The first is part of MOPLA which is a month long celebration of photography in Los Angeles. I will be participating in a group exhibition at a "pop-up" space presented by OFFSITE Projects. The exhibition features the work of five photographers all exploring Los Angeles and is called LA Story.  I'll be showing work from my Multiple Viewings series which explores the iconic spaces in LA. This is a collaborative effort and we're all pitching in during the four day run of the show. It is located just a block away from Paris Photo, an international photography fair, so we're hoping to get traffic from there as well. 

At first I only saw the trees, Razor's Edge

The second event is Connect 2013, The Palm Springs Photo Festival, which starts on Sunday and runs for the week. I'll be bringing a new body of work - Meditative Spaces Found While Traversing The Razor's Edge - this will be its first real journey into the world and I have no idea what to expect. My work (all the different series) has always been about the experience of living, who we are, what we leave behind - but it was always fairly subtle. This new work speaks to the experience of living in a much more solid manner. The images came out of my meditations dealing with change, life, age, fear, joy...you name it...I'm trying to illustrate the human condition. As I said before, it's not enough to just make the work, you then have to bring it out into the world to start to fully understand it - so this is my first step at that process. 

LA Story, April 25-28th, 660 N. Larchmont Blvd, Los Angeles

Connect 2013, April 28th-May 3rd, Hyatt Regency, Palm Springs. Come by this Sunday from 2-5 for an open Portfolio event.