8.31.09 - 365/365

all of a sudden, it came into my head to do a nude for my last 365.
it is one of my studio rules:
"if you think of it, you do it"
(which is exactly how i got into this mess in the first place)
i only have 2 (rules), the other is:
"don't judge the process while you are in it"

and,
since one of the reasons for doing this project
was to confront what it means to become a "woman of a certain age",
this feels appropriate and perhaps even necessary.

as the 365th day got closer,
it became increasingly clear how meaningful this project has been for me
and why it will be so hard to replace...

as many people reading this blog know
(are there many people reading this blog?)
daily practice is the cornerstone of my creative life

at this moment
i am feeling a tremendous pull
a real sense of something ending
something that is valuable to me
that i don't want to lose

i have been trying to identify exactly what that is,
what sets fastforward30years apart from my other daily work;
one factor is the (almost) daily writing (introspection),
but i have always had an outlet for that with my fotolae.
another aspect is that i have been able to incorporate monthly mini-projects
within the context of this larger one
(my favorites being march's diptychs and may's studio drawings)
but i believe
the true significance of this project
lies in using the self as subject matter.

no matter the medium,
i subscribe to the theory
that to produce something of value
requires a deep caring
and a deep connection,
and there are very few things in a person's life
that hold a greater or more meaningful position than the self,
that is why it is said;
all first novels are autobiographical
and
you can't love/trust/care about others
more than you have the capacity for those feelings about yourself

so,
while taking a picture a day is a good exercise
taking a self portrait a day
forces you to continually engage with loaded subject matter.
if you compromise, you compromise yourself
if you take a short cut, you cheat yourself
and you are doing it publicly

i also believe that parameters are good for creativity
and the limits of "self portrait" have some inherent advantages:
for one thing
your subject matter is always available,
where ever you happen to be,
another
is that boredom can be a great motivator for taking risks;
& believe you me, nothing becomes boring more quickly than you
hence a great impetus for pushing boundaries.
and
you can apply just about any approach to the subject:
you can be yourself or you can be other,
you can be deeply personal or coldly objective,
you can create fantasy or describe reality,
you can take a strictly conceptual approach or flow with your emotions...

kind of perfect,
kind of hard to replace,
i have toyed with the idea of keeping it going for another year
and if my medium was solely photography, i might
but i feel i need to take what i've learned and move forward,
tomorrow i will post the next step in this journey

thanks for tuning in
and special thanks to fernando and l3iLL
who have been so generous with their comments and support.

8.30.09 - 364/365

something came together today,
not only was i able to come to some decisions about how to proceed
but i also had a real feeling sense that i am doing the right thing
for my process
and i really felt that the paint was waiting for me
not neglected or stagnate
but just there with me
bubbling below the surface

a little fantasy

8.29.09 - 363/365

today it took me 2 hours to remember that i had switched my hosting account to a linux server
since that's the only way godaddy will parse ssi's
and that because linux is case sensitive
was the reason why certain pages weren't resolving

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

not so interesting i know
but this is where i am at;
a bit sad but true
and
from this perspective
this is what i see
which is also a tad sad
because while i am a beneficiary of the industriousness of spiders
too much of a cobweb build up in the studio
tells a story of neglect

8.28.09 - 362/365

struggling,
struggling,
with upgrading my site
for starters,
it's not going to be as easy to convert all those (100's of) pages as i thought
but it's more than that really
it's that it involves an analysis of my entire process
which is a big and complicated endeavor
but that is what i see as the site's function
and then
the design aspect consumes me
(the same way people get sucked into video games or tv)
and i can't do anything else at the same time
this means paint, eat, sleep, community work
so the rest of my life is crumbling around me
it's very unbalanced...
but it does follow
that with all this self referential activity:
reviewing old projects,
trying to map & make sense of
the twists and turns of my process
that it's all about me today
and because i've been leaving taking these pictures until the end of the day
it's all about the lx3 in low light
it's one of the main reasons i chose this camera
and yet
i haven't been taking advantage it
i do love what it does

8.27.09 - 361/365

i am so consumed by design/programming right now
that i fear the end of this project is getting short changed
but i suppose.
that's (real) life

below
a sign of things to come
from a series i took but never posted
and that's were i am living right now
between what has happened
and what will come

(and remember... you can be part of it too)

8.26.09 - 360/365

i like these meta portraits
the endless self referential loop...
fitting because august was meant to be about evaluating all daily process
so that i can make some decisions about going forward
well,
i am still not clear...

i can't keep taking these pictures of myself
(at least i don't think i can)
but there is an aspect of it that's working
since it is very different from saying:
"i will take a picture a day"
with a self portrait project you are guaranteed 2 things:
1. access to the same subject matter each day
2. subject matter with which you have an intimate connection
this is hard to duplicate

there are also other questions that i have to answer like:

which blogs to continue & how do they overlap?
during this time i have stopped posting on random thoughts
even without that pressure
i sometimes feel that it is too much
to create compelling material each day
for both this blog and my 2 fotolae

and
am i more comfortable with...?
a strict photoblog like random thoughts
or
with a more traditional blog format like this where i write as well

and
what to do about my daily watercolor project?
do i continue with the same 5 journals which are becoming unwieldy
or
do i create some new format for it

and
what about my website overhaul?
am i just upgrading the infrastructure:
adding style sheets,
getting rid of the frames architecture,
making it more inviting to update
or
am i also giving it a stylistic overhaul
going for a lighter, more airy, stripped down approach?

these are a lot of questions to answer in 5 days...

8.25.09 - 357/365

so, i thought i should do one more for fgr before this thing comes to a close
i think the point of this group (the anti penguin domination league ) is weirdness
this wasn't what i had originally intended
but getting out of this garment kind of fit the bill

& the not so weird ones: