Autobiography: Family History Shredded

In memory of all the family letters I could have read that were burned in an incinerator in the 1940s.

For all the unlabeled photographs where identities are long lost.

For all the stories where the truth is untold.

For all the unknown suppositions.

For all the hypotheses.

My Swimsuit Mini-Crisis Part 2

Many months later, the task of throwing out my favorite swimsuit was still problematic. It lived in my dresser drawer unusable since winter. This was the first suit that I had to get rid of since I stopped saving them to create this piece. Everything about living in the PNW is wrapped up in this article of clothing, hence the difficulty. I convinced myself that only with photographic documentation, the crunchy straps facing the camera revealing why it could no longer be worn, was I able to toss it. Not so.

It did not feel right to discard it in a known or random trashcan, so I brought it back to the house, carefully folded it, and tied it with a bow. Even then I could not throw it away! I returned to the studio to document it and without hesitating (otherwise I would have invented one more way to photograph it), I dropped it in the garbage can at school.

Swimsuit Mini Crisis

The straps on my current lap suit, purchased in the Pacific Northwest and worn throughout its entire life in Indiana, have grown crunchy and it has stretched as a result. I am suffering through a small crisis because it is the first swimsuit that I will throw away rather than save to represent the time lived in Portland, Oregon (see image from Echo of the Object below).

I question why this is a problem but it likely relates to not wanting to toss anything that pertains to my life lived in the Northwest (but then I could not keep it because I would be saving an object past the time where I lived in this location). The dilemma!

One year later, the paper is weathered

Somehow it survived the worst winter and coolest summer in Indiana. Now to flatten it and determine what list will live on it (hopefully) permanently.

Promo Postcards!

At long last, I listened to my friends, my colleagues, my former professors, professional portfolio reviewers, authors, etc. A year and a half after promising myself that I would design blank promotional postcards to send as thank you notes, they arrived in the mail today. Two look great and one is more saturated that I would like but they are done!

Now to find some people to thank .... (don't worry, that shouldn't be a problem).

"A Chronology of Water: A Memoir" by Lidia Yuknavitch

Rochelle loaned me Lidia Yuknavitch's A Chronology of Water... in the winter. It sat on my end table for months. Knowing she was graduating and I would be attending a residency focusing on my interest in water during the month of May, I plowed through this book in April (the second of surprising things accomplished before the semester ended). Many thanks, Rochelle, for knowing it was the perfect publication for me to read at this time.

Here are some highlights that directly relate to my series in progress (oh title, why aren't you forthcoming?):

"Events don't have cause and effect relationships the way you wish they did. It's all a series of fragments and repetitions and pattern formations. Language and water have this in common." (page 28)
 
"In water, like in books - you can leave your life." (page 152)

"It is possible to carry life and death in the same sentence. In the same body. It is possible to carry love and pain. In the water, this body I have come to slides through the wet with a history. What if there is hope in that. (page 247).

On 5th May 2014, two days after arriving at Surel's Place, I wrote the following about the previous paragraph: It's not just the body that has a history but the water and its relationship to that body. For Yuknavitch, her story was a chronology. For me (and perhaps this is because I am still immersed in another series with the same title), it is my autobiography in water. It's about what my family deemed important as a child (water as destination) and what they passed on to me. It is about giving meaning and specificity to the locations (that which I could not do with Nine Fake Cakes and Nine Bodies of Water to the degree I would have liked). It is about narrowing down who I am by seriously discussing where I am from and the places I once called home (though all are so far out of reach in the Midwest). It's about longing for and giving homage to the past (in some cases the past is yesterday and in others, the span of my life, my parents, my grandparents). At the same time, none of this will be advertised, unless asked, as these photographs have to be as universal as the cakes were in their appeal to others. This is not my story - this is everyone's.

We will see how effective I will be at the latter. Still sorting through images for more blog posts. It is not easy creating a lecture on what I have accomplished this month when I know so very little about it myself.

Portrait of Javy Russell 1992 - 1996

I created my latest self-published book to remember a small box of cassette tapes that I threw away one month ago. In addition, it was a gift for my brother's birthday in January (three parts: this book, a gift card to Everyday Music, and a mixed CD = nearly obsolete). The action of photographing the objects before they were thrown away fits the series, Autobiography, but in reality, this project is about someone else (therefore it is not my personal history).

From the text above:

In 2004, while living in a Portland, Oregon rental, the basement flooded. I lost several of the mixed tapes Javy made me from the mid 1990s. They revealed his ingenuity in titling and compiling songs - one reason why they were saved long past having the means to play them. Here are the twenty-five that remain. They are not only a document of an era but the life of a 16-20 year old growing up in Boise, Idaho.

Side note: my brother hates cucumbers.

Weathered Paper Part 2

Last July, I hung notebooks under the eaves to see if I could use them in their weathered state. I was extremely disappointed that one sheet attached to the larger sketchbook disappeared within the first month. I always wondered what happened to it. Did someone pull it off? Did the wind sweep it away? I had plans for that sheet in its yellowed, water stained state and they were foiled when it vanished.

Earlier this week, I gathered information for my next artist stalking adventure on Google Street View and discovered the image of the rental cave was updated. Lo and behold, the Google street car photographed the missing sheet of paper in the yard.

As everyone in this part of the world will tell you, this winter is the worst in decades. I ventured outdoors a couple days ago to look at the current status of the suspended paper and this is what I found. 

The two notebooks on the left were removed a couple months ago but the other two are sufficiently weathered. At least I know that the Google car can help me locate them if they dematerialize before my next trip outside.

Broken Music Box

I attempted to photograph this broken music box three times since it shattered in transit two summer's ago (thanks UPS). I am calling it quits at this image and will now throw it away. I suppose it fits under the series, Autobiography, but more likely, it is a photo I took for me and it will only exist in this blog post and as a file on a hard drive for the remainder of its life.

Addition to Autobiography: Hair

Jacinda Russell, Muncie, 2014 (winter)

Jacinda Russell, Tucson, 1997 (fall)

Jacinda Russell, Boise, 1984 (summer)

The aughts are represented in the Ball jar on the above right (every haircut since moving to Muncie).

"Beautiful Decay"

Here is an article on Autobiography by Ellyn Ruddick-Sunstein published in Beautiful Decay. This series is ongoing/in progress so I have not been able to separate myself from the photographs and sculptural objects yet and deduce how they flow with one another. It was interesting to read a stranger's take on the matter and I was most drawn to her concluding paragraph:

"The narrative of the series is hard to follow, and therein lies its power; the viewer is tasked with the impossible exercise of constructing a life between bookend-like photographs of chopped hair. What emerges from the powerful work is not the objects themselves, or even whatever personal and mysterious experiences they might symbolize, but the artist’s movingly frantic and ultimately futile attempt to immortalize what is already gone."

Thank you, Ellyn, for the thoughtful words. I hope the narrative is clarified as more pieces are added to the series.

College Ruled and Graph Paper in the Mike Kelley Retrospective

The following three photographs were taken of Mike Kelley's drawings and photographs at PS1 MoMA. Thank you PS1 for changing your photography policy!

One of my favorite details of the Mike Kelley Retrospective was his use of paper - both handmade and found. They were painted and photographed with text written in block letters, neatly and sloppily.

Around the same time I saw this, I finished an entire page of "Names People Think I Am Called" that begin in 1999 while working for the Houston Center for Photography. I have struggled with how to present it (currently it's written in a spiral notebook from Archaeology class in undergraduate school). I am now brainstorming whether or not I want to apply some techniques other than "found."

There is a growing pile of cardboard notebook backing in my studio. With school and work combined, I produce a great number of these over the year. They might make an appearance in the resolution of a few lists.

It doesn't hurt that I take a great deal of notes that look like this in faculty meetings (grow cardboard pile, grow).

Found: Wedding Ring

Responsibility = check (two weeks on Craigslist with only one response identifying it to have diamonds = wrong).

Emotional baggage = check (see above photograph).

Solicited advice from anyone who would listen = check.

Best advice received from Pat (below):

a few things to dwell upon....

this sounds like a premise for a body of work on your part, as gold comes with its own baggage, aside from your personal baggage.for one thing, any gold you have in your possession must, by the laws of probability and of history, have molecules of gold melted down from the whole world's treasures and possessions, ancient and modern.  therefore, a gold ring contains bits from the various pharoah's melted treasures, plus  the many artifacts of the ancient, medieval and modern world that were melted down time and time again. Gold is the one material that seems to be infinitely recyclable.  You are getting your gold back, the same mix of gold your wedding ring was made from.   

so whatever emotional baggage the found ring seems to possess, that very gold - cold, incorruptible, neutral - has had a billion tears of gratitude and sorrow shed over it by countless human beings.  The tragedy / loss of the particular ring now in your possession, whether it was an unfortunate accident or a deliberate act of ridding oneself of an intolerable burden, was one of many lost and found moments for the gold.  It is now yours. 

Pawned = check.
In the name of Art = fast forward to 2015 when I spend the $45 en route to the Gold Coast.

Lenscratch Post This Week

A Tale of Two Obsessions: David C. Nolan & Marilyn Monroe and Arline Conradt and the Cat Scrapbook along with Autobiography were featured on Lenscratch this week. Thanks Aline!

The Switch

This happened today. I finished the Ice Plant 5 Year Diary. This is a horrible present to give someone unless they ask for it because the responsibility and commitment loom for months before they decide to use it 1/3 of the year later (thanks former friend not mentioned here). Then they become addicted until an unnamed airline company searches a suitcase and slips it into the wrong bag. Four months go by with no entries, just a vague wondering of what happened to that diary. Then an email is received with a "promise to send it back as a Christmas present" (translation: owner of the other suitcase needed to finish reading it).

Aside from those two instances of blank entries, I stuck with it and (GASP) purchased a new one that now has an entry dated on the first day of the year rather than in the middle of March. The potential of having ten years of every day of my life accounted for at the end of the red volume is frightening. Maybe I will learn to vary my schedule, focusing less on documenting hours spent on powerpoints and laps swum. However, it is hard to break a system that has five years of practice compressed not so neatly into five small lines.

Another List in the Making

I may have downloaded my Twitter archive this week. I may be counting hashtags. It may be final critique week where another mindless method of creating artwork has overcome my tired brain.

Fortunately, I do not overuse the hashtag so this is not a painful task. As I cut and paste them into a Word document, I cannot help but notice their merit as yet another list that defines who I am. Hello Autobiography.

(Two) Origins

I have a vague recollection of owning an old typewriter in graduate school. Perhaps I left it in Arizona or Oregon - I am not very sure. The last serious project that featured typing was Alive in Every Closet, an artist's book in my MFA thesis show.

Aunt Eleanor was a paranoid schizophrenic who unwrapped cigarette packs and wrote descriptions of people parked in front of her property on the foil. While sorting through the house where she died, I discovered similar characteristics between us - she was as orderly within her chaos as I am in my cleanliness - sometimes too fearful a prediction. In this series, I question my relationship with a woman I met only through the remnants of her possessions. She is my symbol of excessiveness and obsession - the one familial guilt shoved aside in a refusal to acknowledge her mental illness.

I miss the days of making ethyl acetate prints on kleenex and bags in the printmaking studio. I was fascinated by brown paper back then too. After completing this series, I challenged my future self to create a project focusing on my orderliness (AKA the neat freak disease). I'd like to think that Autobiography does that, not overtly but the white backgrounds are symbolic of all that is clean and organized in my world.

Film Cannister #2

A little while ago, I wrote a post reminiscing about metal film canisters and the objects that are stored inside them. My mother found another one for me to photograph containing a disintegrating pack of sugar from Denmark. I am still on the hunt for more (for reasons that are not yet known).

Teddy Bear in Progress

Autobiography: 25.5 Years

Jacinda Russell
25.5 Years
Archival Inkjet Print
Size TBD
2013