A Little About Me and My Work

As previously mentioned, I graduated from Herron about 3yrs. ago with a fine arts degree in photography and a minor in furniture design. I spent 4yrs studying to become a photographer, for which I began to questioned during my senior year. During those 4yrs, I struggled with the notion of how society had influenced me as an artist as well as a woman and also how to find my voice through my work. Most of my frustration and anger was from the feeling of being constricted within my program and not being able to incorporate other mediums into my photo work. I also was very frustrated with the fact that I felt as though I had to prove my "Worthiness" to Herron that I was truly an artist and that I belonged there.

In the beginning, my work was about how society viewed the female body and how women throughout history had deformed themselves to fit into this idea of "Standard Beauty". I too struggled with this preconceived idea that I had to fit into society's "Standard of Beauty".

I began to use myself as the model to express my feelings of how I felt society pressured me to look a certain way. In today's society, we are so bombarded by the media and advertisement, that we become programmed to being obsessed about physical appearances. If you didn't fit within that excepted appearance, then you don't really fit into society. I was really intrigued by this, so I began to explore how to express this through my work.

After using just myself and some colored lights, I began to add props into the scene. One of the more interesting assignments was to take a previous project from our black and white class, and create it in color. So I chose to redo the the "7 Deadly Sins"

The very last photographic project I did using myself was of a series of images depicting 2 very different characters that had to get ready for their day using the guidance of magazines advertisements to apply beauty products and clothing. This series is title "Miss. Molly and Holly".

It wasn't until towards the end of my junior year that I began to really hate using myself as the model and what I was trying to communicate through my work. I felt as thought I had beaten to death the idea of beauty, but I was really interested in this subject matter, so I had to come up with another way of creating this without the use of the darkroom and photographic paper. I wanted to do something that no other photo student was doing. During this time I began to experiment in the darkroom. I began to combine multiple negatives together to create one image and also taking pictures with a pinhole camera. The pinhole image is titled: "This Life is More Than A Read Through".

I really loved making pastel drawings of the human figure, so I wanted to push the boundaries of my drawing skills and also the acceptance in the photo program that you can show something else other than a flat piece of paper that had chemicals on it to create an image.

I had decided to make a 5 foot drawing from a piece created in the 15th century by one of the "Master Artists", titles "Vesalius". The concept was to combine 3 main deformities of the body that have been emphasized throughout history and place them on top of this figure that was once considered to be the ideal body. The 3 deformities were: the corset, foot binding, and neckrings that were printed onto transparencies. The idea was really great, but the actual piece was not successful because of the transparencies.

After creating this image, I began to think of another way to make this a successful piece. I thought the idea was really great and that I was onto something, so during my senior year I began to experiment with other forms of photography. I was really tired of making a flat image that you put into a frame and hang it on the wall. I found that this was very boring and that this way of making an image had no life to it and it didn't have a way of communicating.

I knew for my senior year I was no longer going to create a photograph, rather an image transfer onto a surface. I began to experiment with fabric and photo transfers with an early photographic process called cyanotype print or "Blueprint". It uses the sunlight to expose the image onto your surface. I then placed a sculpture on top of the image, but the image was very light and the sculpture didn't come out very well also. So I used turpentine to do the transfers and placed the sculptures on top. Each sculpture was created with different materials to give them a more nature appearance. The feet were created with self-hardening clay and Barbie legs, the corset was created using a sheet of flexible metal and covered with fabric and the neckrings were created with gold wire. This piece is titled "Beauty's Sacrifice".

After graduating from school I hit a road block in my work and didn't created anything for 3yrs. It wasn't until I decided to return to school for my masters degree that I started to become inspired. I entered the New Media program last year and have really find something that I'm really passionate about. I know have something to grasp and build upon. I plan on entering the New Media Masters program in about 1-2 years.