What I love (One)

I LOVE helping students locate their idiosyncratic voice/figure out what they want to make art about. Being involved in the process by which an individual suddenly sees that, "Yes, I have something to say, and it is mine to say, and maybe (hopefully) it's a little odd but I'm going to say it anyway!" is absolutely thrilling because my own belief in the fact that we all have something hopelessly and wonderfully unique to offer the world is affirmed yet again by that student's discovery.

On the process toward those realizations is a lot of work though--and one of the things I ask my students to do is, quite simply, identify what they love. Accumulating an understanding of what one loves visually and viscerally is like gathering up clues toward self-knowledge. So simple but so helpful.

Toward that end and being that I am in a bit of a searching mindset myself, I thought I'd start posting some of my "loves."

The first:

I love this photograph of Hella Jongerius. (taken by photographer Gareth McConnell for the NY Times)

I collect images of female artists, and this one is a favorite. The blend of austerity with subtle femininity, (shot through with a bit of purple) her evident focus, her stillness in pose, the mesh sweater half tucked in and therefore perfectly revealing the silver belt buckle and pleated pants, a work space evidently and fully considered--a woman of focus and immense ingenuity, creativity and singularity of vision--incredibly inspiring to me in the studio, but even before that is my love of what the image simply says.