Visitationwebsiteupdated
Visitation, 2024
Installation, performance and photograph
Not exactly meant for a small screen - this new image (Scene), Visitation, is my ultimate hidey hole. It contains secrets and stories and memories and heartbreak and realizations and grief and history and longing and loss and clarity and introspection and writing. Writing and poetry because that’s initially where it came from but also because writing (for me) is difficult and therefore, important. Done again and again, reveals personal truths, both good and not, and unavoidable reckoning.
Where Visitation began is quite different from where it finished. My friend, #KimParko, brilliant visual artist, writer and educator has written fantastical short fictions inspired by two of my images over a span of years. The initial inspiration of Visitation was the desire to answer her collaboration with an image inspired by one of her pieces - specifically Visitation 4. Here is a link to her site https://www.kimparko.com/writing
and the poem: https://citronreview.com/2020/12/22/visitation-4/
So grateful to all who supported this project through kickstarter and for their patience and faith in letting me do what works best for me, even if it takes a long time (this one breaks the record). The process of creating this image and to a certain degree letting others in on that process - and therefore not being able to hide that I often need to do things more than once to get it right - has been freeing.
I chose incredible artist @amandaplatner to be in Visitation because, without even knowing her, and only seeing her durational performance pieces, she struck me as a person who is not only unapologetically fiercely herself but also someone with determination, perseverance and strength. Skilled and creatively fearless. Qualities that are to me admirable as hell.
I planned on having a lot of berries in this image but it took me such a long time to make it, the mice in the studio ate them.
Captured with an 8x10 camera & #film