Summer 2020

I've been working on my 'process' for about a year now.  Actually, whatever process I have is partly due to the years that I have spent problem solving as an operational software consultant.  Developing software for many different types of corporations.

However, although the problem solving is important, it is not the part most people want to talk about  I think we mostly like to hear about the creative aspect of an artists process.   Which, for me, was firstly simply a matter of inspirational experience, and response to the experience.  The response, to elaborate, was always a set of questions...what is it that I am feeling about the experience, what visually might summarize my feeling and embody the subject, and last but not least...is there similar work that I have seen?

For example, with regard to YTTW!, First was the experience; it was a television show that depicted an  expression of stereotyping on the part of a law enforcement officer.  I was not expecting my own reaction to the comment, but I thought about it more deeply than usual.  The,, that week I kept on seeing more of the same from many people.  So I thought, hmm, I should write a short essay on the subject, and how I think we have come perhaps innocently to a place where the kind of reference was not unusual.

At some point I realized wait, no one wants to read my essay.  But maybe, I could put together something photographically that would speak to the issue.   This thought took me through weeks, and then it occurred to me that I had seen an exhibition that presented people in a way that I thought would speak to my issue.   That photographers name is Richard Avedon, and there was another that who had an aesthetic I like and also captured people in a way that uplifted them.  His name is Irving Penn.   Both had a clean and beautiful style....Avedon also had scale.  I liked all of that and figured out how to say what I felt they said but say it my way.   

From then on it was a matter of working on the envisioned piece.   

I spent a lot of time, consulting professors, and a contact that I had who had previously operated a gallery, and asked all the questions that would be pertinent.  Does my idea say what I wanted it to say, what did it say that I did not want it to say...and I considered those responses.   Don't get me wrong, it is a very small circle of people.  I heard it said once, keep you circle of insiders small.  I'm a little adventurous, in that I asked people who were outside of the academic circle for their reaction...but my processes is to respond where I can, without loosing the core vision.

I don't know that I will continue this way, but so far it is working.  I've got a bunch of ideas that I propose to potential audiences and consider their reactions.  Perhaps only a little, but enough that I believe in the end that my work speaks what I hope it to.