Ways of seeing

click to enlarge, Chris Jordan, Prison Uniforms, 2007
10x23 feet in six vertical panels

Depicts 2.3 million folded prison uniforms, equal to the number of Americans incarcerated in 2005.

It was this time a year ago I found myself in Ucross, Wyoming luxuriating as an artist for two whole weeks. It seems like so little time now, but back then, it was two hard-earned weeks that felt like I had worked all my life towards. To be fed three square meals a day without shopping, cooking or cleaning up! To have not just a room with a view, but my own studio complete with saw horses, spot lights and enormous blank walls–repainted, I was told, after every artist left no matter if they were a graffiti artist or an artist of the loom. And most importantly, to have someone out there validate me as an artist worthy of hanging out with other artists and allowed to spend my day art making no matter what the results!

Ah yes, it was another time indeed. And though I promised myself that within the year I would, no doubt, be invited to attend another such residency, the reality is that I have been rejected three or four times. Turns out, they are rather hard to get into...

So here we are, lamenting the fact that I don't get to roam around the dusty plains, camera in tow, cowboy hat firmly on head, tooling around a rusty bicycle, searching for anything that makes me open my eyes. If I were to be honest, it's the seeing I miss most. Having spent the better part of the year since then either holed up behind the computer, hurriedly walking the dog twice a day, or negotiating the peaks and valleys of a new relationship, it is an exercise to which I greatly look forward. Focusing for one year on a singular goal, makes one tunneled-vision to say the least. It's about time I take some time to start absorbing once again, for, as John Berger would say, we only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice, obviously one critical for anyone who even dreams of calling herself an artist.

And I choose.

Detail at actual size:

What's not to love?

Corey Arnold, from Bering Sea Crabbing

My God, has it really been almost three weeks since I've written anything? Judging by the date of my last post, I have to assume Yes! Partly I've been busy. I mean like ass-glued-to-the-work-bench, sleeping-for-days-in-my-contacts, too-weary-to-even-run-for-breakfast/lunch/dinner busy. And partly, I've managed to piss off my family (again!) by writing something needlessly cavalier just for a cheap and most unlikely laugh.

So, insert deep breath here, to my sister who came up to visit with her family–kids and all–for probably only the third or fourth time in her own life and definitely the first time in their lives, I apologize. It was a pleasure to watch my nephew, scared and excited, delicately hand over the doggie gift he'd been holding onto for over four hundred miles, it was my honor to escort the gang through our city's exemplary children's museum of science–perhaps even redefining the "human scare response" exhibit–and it was with great sadness I left them standing at a long line waiting for a ride on our city's famous public transport (editor's note: Casey has perhaps taken some poetic license here).

I totally appreciated the visit and the only excuse I have, is that sometimes I totally suck. The girl who learns not to put her foot in her mouth is a girl I hope to one day meet.