Moving Forward, classes and summer in 2017

As we move forward into the busy  summer months, there are a few big events happening in our lives.  The biggest, is that our family trio will shortly become a quartet, as baby number two is due to arrive later in the season.  I have decided to dedicate the next few months to spending a little more time at home, resting, planning, and readying our family for this next transition, so as of now, I am on a hiatus from teaching dance.  

Taking a break from teaching feels a little early, to be honest, but time has been flying by.  I have had such an amazing winter and spring, beginning to find my place in the dance community here in Portland, Maine, meeting so many wonderful dancers, and seeing all the work that they make and vibrant energy that they bring to my class every week.  Stepping away for a bit has been a difficult decision, but one that I had to make.  

I hope to return to teaching this fall, so please don't hesitate to contact me with questions about my upcoming schedule, classes, and workshops, and keep moving this summer!!

Make sure you check in with Studio 408 to get schedule updates and learn about the amazing workshops and events that are going on there! There is so much to take part in here in our wonderful city!

Spring!

As I look hopefully towards spring, after my first winter in many, many years, I am so eager to share what I have been working on this past few months.  One of the most challenging photo subjects that I continue to attempt to shoot are dancers.  Movement can be thrilling, frustrating, rewarding, and addicting all at once.  While shooting in a controlled studio setting, or even a bright outdoor shoot can yield incredible results, it isn't the way that dancers always want to be captured.  So, you shoot in-performance, which can add a whole world of layers and challenges to the process. Dramatic lighting with stubborn focal points, the position and interaction of audience members, and the unpredictability that accompanies each are just a few of the many surprises that live performance can provide.

So when I was recently asked to come and document performances at the local dance studio and venue here in South Portland, Maine called Studio 408, I leaped at the opportunity. It was such an awesome showing of thoughtful performance by artists that are crafting not only performances in the traditional sense, but experiences for the audience to participate in as well.  The evening left me feeling full in all the best ways.  Here are a few of my favorite and most successful shots of the evening.

As I move further into spring and grow to know my dance community more and more here, I hope to continue shooting and featuring local performers in my photography. It is so rewarding, I just love it!

Generosity and the Imperfection of Antiquated Mediums.

Fall may be my favorite season.  There is something so refreshing to me about letting things go, clearing them, and readying yourself for a new year.  This year, as the fall colors began to make their appearance, I had the opportunity to learn a technique that I've been dreaming about for years.  

I first became interested in photography because of film.  Film intrigued me.  The literal freezing of a moment of time, what one of my college professors used to refer to as a "visual absence."  For practical purposes, my work that I do now is all digital, but I still shoot film often, and if I am given an opportunity to shoot film, I take it, because there is just something about those chemicals, that silver, the tangible realness of film that I can't divorce.  I love it too much.  When I began learning about film and different processes, I was introduced to the work of Sally Mann.  I scoured the internet and the library searching for information about her and found a documentary, broken into parts, on Youtube.  I was fascinated with how she worked, transforming her suburban into a mobile darkroom, preparing glass plates, and pouring the collodion just so, all out in the field, so she could get her shots on her large format camera.  I decided years ago that I would learn this, try it at least once, and if it was too hard, or I hated it I never had to do it again, but a part of me knew that wouldn't be the case.

I was fortunate enough to have some help getting to a collodion workshop this last September. I had initially began fundraising because I had been accepted into another workshop entirely, but it was too expensive, and even with the generous gifts of my donors, there was just no way it was going to happen. I found out that not too far from my home, I would have the chance to study, gaining hands on experience in collodion process.  

I am so glad I attended this workshop.  Maine Media workshop is a gem, and I hope to attend more workshops there in the future.  My teacher, Brenton Hamilton, and his assistant Harrison, were exceptional.  I have to just take a moment to talk about them, because it is rare to find a teachers that are so generous.  They must have been just exhausted after this workshop because for two full days, 9-5, they made every students' vision, ideas, and inspiration happen.  This isn't just a matter of helping us take a picture, it is a matter of staging a shot, placing the camera, preparing the plates, exposing the shot, and developing it. I watched Harrison move a huge 8x10 wet plate camera and its enormous tripod across campus several times. They gave us individual attention, they gave us as much or as little information as we wanted, they didn't flinch at even the most repetitive series of questions. They endured extended periods of time in a darkroom, with some serious chemicals, (ether, anyone?) and they did all of this without any hesitation.  I'll say it again, it is RARE to find teachers that are so generous.  It was inspiring.  

Collodion process is finicky and difficult, you must coat and prepare your plate precisely or you will ruin it, you need to expose your plate within just a few minutes, or the collodion will dry, or again, it is a waste.  It is incredibly EASY to destroy your work.  It was far more stressful than I had initially thought.  You have to really and I mean really let go of the reigns in this process. Part of the beauty of these exposures is that they have an incredible spectral range, there are literally more grays to be seen.  Even really amazing digital cameras just don't get quite the same effect. The trade off is that there are imperfections in all of them, specks of dust and tiny spots.  On one of my favorite exposures, despite my best efforts, some of the collodion must have coated the plate wrong, leading to some spots I didn't intend.   I was lucky enough to be able to make four exposures.  I really love them.  

It made me realize that the artists whose work I have admired who use collodion process are far more amazing and skilled than I had initially realized.  I plan to keep learning as much as I can about this process, and hopefully I'll get the chance to do more of it.

Here are the images I created that weekend.  I hope you love them as much as I do.

Gypsy

November 29,2022. A note: at the time I rescued my old dog, I was not aware of the derogatory nature of her name. It was meant to be a celebratory one, of a culture whose music and dance I had studied and loved, for an animal who had been cast away by society but was the greatest character and kindest nature I have ever encountered. Now, in retrospect, I would choose a better name for her, one that doesn’t represent harm to a group of people. I am sorry if my ignorance to the hateful origins of this word have caused hurt.

Today we said goodbye to my sweetest old friend. My dog, the Tijuana Special, Gypsy, the super-mutt.  She was given to us by a couple of kids on the street.

"That's such a cute puppy." I said.

 "Do you want her? We can't keep her, we'll lose our apartment, and we just got this apartment, and we can't get kicked out." This youngish looking girl looked up at me, pleading.

So we took her home.  She destroyed my husbands house, his roomates' rug, she drove the older dog crazy, she tested the boundaries of friendship, and if it weren't for the fact that Kneeko's roommates were his REALLY good friends, we would have been kicked out too.  But after the adjustment, she showed us that she was sweet, and loving. When I took her to the vet for the first time, she got a parvo vaccination and as soon as we were home, had an allergic reaction, her face swelled up and I held her in my arms, rushing her back to the vet.  We looked in each other's eyes, and that was it, I was hers.

She was a gentle soul.  She loved everything. She once met my sister's cat, and spent the entire time trying to convince the cat she wasn't a threat, the cat didn't want to hear it. She ate kale and would beg at me feet every time I'd open up a fresh bag of salad mix. We would always say that she was a friend to all creatures, great and small.  She was my sweetie pie, my confidant, my protector, and my friend.  She was always there.  Days were spent with her at my side, while I hammered away at jewelry projects.  She never let me be alone, not even for a second, sometimes she drove me crazy, but she just had so much love to give, she never made me sad.

When she was a puppy, she found a tennis ball at the park, and from there, she was  fetching champion.  I threw and she brought it back.  Sometimes I would think that it was her, that she loved the ball and loved to fetch, but then sometimes, I would wonder if she was only doing it only because she thought that it made me happy.

A few weeks ago she began walking with a limp. I thought she had hurt herself leaping off the porch playing fetch, but it didn't heal, and just kept getting worse.  I thought perhaps she had jammed a paw.  So, I was shocked when I heard the diagnosis that she had stage 4 bone cancer, and even if we chose to have surgery, to do dog chemo, that it wouldn't really do much good.  It was like a puzzle piece I didn't know was missing, the last few months, sometimes she would cry at night, or inexplicably she would yelp.  She had always been a sensitive dog, who needed a lot of boundaries, but lately, she was extra touchy.  So, when I realized that she had been hurting, for probably much longer than I had thought possible, I knew it was time for me to let go.

So today, we said goodbye.  At home, with her ball, and us, and all the bacon a dog could ever dream of.  She went peacefully, to that big old dog park in the sky.

Across the US

It took us years to work up the courage to finally move away from Southern California.  I felt like such a cliche', the person I had grown up resenting, the "Californian" that flees to another state and ends up ruining their new home, driving up the cost of living, paying too much for rent, or a mortgage.  I grew up in Montana, a place that prides itself on being the last best place, the only place left that hasn't been ruined by developers, until it was, and now it is just like everywhere else.  Growing up it wasn't strange to see old Ford truck with a bumper sticker reading "Welcome to Montana, now go home" or "keep Missoula weird"  on it.  

This is the story I grew up with; a place is good, has everything its residents need, people are happy.  Then, like locusts, Californians come in and destroy it.  You could say that I felt conflicted as a Californian.  I was.  In fact I always held deep inside of my heart, a tiny sparkling gem, a reminder, that I wasn't "one of them."

The people I befriended in San Diego are so dear to me, but I was always guarded, held people at arms' length.  I knew that someday, I would be leaving them. Now, people are really only a mouse click away and I keep all my long lost friends in my pocket and can look at their highlight reel any time, day or night, but still. That is so strange, when I think about it, I'm old enough to remember the world before 9/11, cell phones, and facebook and I'm okay with that.

Before we finally made the decision to really leave, we searched desperately for a better living situation in San Diego.  When I tell people how much rent we paid to live in our tiny studio apartment, they usually shake their heads, it's embarrassing.  We would hear about people we knew moving and would try to get on their landlord's waiting list, we contacted rental companies, we tried everything we could think of.  We were stuck, everything we found was either too expensive, or wouldn't take our dogs, or was just too far away.  I would post our search on Facebook, hoping someone may have a lead, but no.  At one point, an acquaintance (who I am convinced just really never liked me that much and was gunning for me to leave) sent me a link to some really affordable rental listings, of course, they were in El Centro, which if you have any access to a map is over two hours east of San Diego. El Centro?  Its a real shit-hole that literally smells like death and decay.  That was it, the straw that broke the camel's back.  We stopped looking to stay and started planning to leave.

A few months later we left.  It was hard; emotionally, the actual act of packing everything after living in a place for so long, the driving for a week with two dogs and a baby, the uncertainty of starting over, everything was hard. Some days, it still is.

I miss San Diego a little, I was never in love with it so I don't feel really sad that I left it.  Really, I miss my friends there.

On our way from one far corner of the United States to the other, we took a lot of pictures.

So here they are, some are not really my best photography work, but they are a record of this huge leap that we took as a family.  

Pretty Darned Grand

New Mexican Truck Stop Ponies

Somewhere In Texas.

Zelda and her Grampa in Eureka Springs

All of my pictures of Niagara Falls were terrible. My only defense is that I could not stop screaming. I have seriously never been somewhere quite as thrilling.

Portland Maine, our new home, at Sunset.

Lastly, a goodbye, to one of our oldest friends.  My husband's dog Beezle had to be put down a few weeks ago.  She was beautiful, she made everyone happy, and she loved us beyond the limits that human love could ever extend and our brains can comprehend.  After years of apartment and city living, I had one dream for my dogs, and that was to give them a big yard to run in before they died.  So, even though it wasn't very long, Beez got to have a home with a yard, and see where we ended up.  We miss her.

Beez is one of the only dogs I know that has been to both the West and East Coast.