An Inquiry of Place
I live in Asbury Park, New Jersey. I don’t know what it means. I just got here.
I moved to a shore town to be closer to work during the final crescendo of summer. On an evening walk last month I overheard a child complain to his mother that it was still too hot, even after sundown. She joked, “We’ll have to start vacationing in Alaska.”
I cannot imagine being a person who uses “vacation” as a verb, let alone doing that verb.
2017 has not been a kind year for many in the United States, and beyond. It’s painful to look back at what we’ve been through and intimidating to stare down all the work that awaits us in 2018. But if the work is worthy, we’ll find a way to get it done as best we can.
Tomorrow is a holiday. If you can, take a break.
I hope that you care for yourself today. You need your strength. I hope that you get involved in activism and advocacy. We need your voice. I hope that you prioritize your writing or other creative output in 2018. We need your work.
I hope that you take a breath. This post will likely take you less than five minutes to read. Breathing is encouraged while you scroll through it.
The rest of this space will be filled with photographs from various hiking trails in Arizona alongside facts about the peoples and ecosystems of this region. Please enjoy this, if you can spare the time:
It is early December and daylight hours are so short that I worry I am forgetting what colors truly look like. My eyes are ever tired. I am weary. It happens every year around this time and I feel worn-out until spring arrives.
This week I found an antidote in photography-prose hybrid Blind Spot by Teju Cole (Random House, 2017).
A gorgeous collection of color photography and evocative text, Blind Spot shook me awake from dormancy. Each photo is titled with the location it was taken, featuring datelines like Venice, London, Lagos and Beirut. The accompanying text sometimes introduces the picture or refers to previous shots. Other times, the text muses on a philosophical idea, classical painting, or bit of music where the reader is left to connect the words to the image. (I was pleased to learn that Cole is a fan of both Bjork and Beck, among others.)
Of course “home” means many things, and perhaps most importantly, it means people.
It is also made up of objects. Artifacts. Things inside a home are there to make life work, as well as to remind us who we are and where we’ve been. I like going home. After being away, the stuff there evokes memories. If I’m home too long I take these things for granted. I can’t see them anymore. This is a photo essay to help me see again.
Bethany Johnson‘s work contains a kind of calm objectivity. Check out two of her series in the current issue of Newfound Journal.
Johnson delivers lightly removed yet confident gestures, made by a sensitive and observant hand. This deliberate mark-making still contains poetry. In “Field Notes,” Johnson creates beautiful landscapes with her obsessively meditated drawing and in her most recent series, “Notes For An Emergency,” Johnson uses vintage ephemera and photography to collage work that expresses not only an analytical eye, but a deep empathy and exploration as well. Bethany Johnson talks with Newfound about the thought process behind her art practice, how she became an artist and what inspires her.
Austin-based artist Rebecca Marino is no stranger to the strange. Her photography is often influenced by astronomy and the cosmos and her most recent series, “The Best Available Evidence,” explores the world of paranormal investigation.
The series was inspired by a book discovered in a used bookstore, which generated a personal photographic inquiry into the world of UFO documentation. Her work is as serious as it is playful, found in both the lightheartedness of subject matter and in the thoughtfulness of her photo compositions.
David O’Brien is an artist based in Sante Fe who works in video, printing, installation and painting. Recently showcased in Newfound’s Other Worlds issue, O’Brien’s work takes a meditative look into the micro-world of humanity’s discarded waste and the implications our enduring monuments of trash leave behind.
Each painting is a hand-printed photograph, screen printed with multiple layers of resin, ink and other materials, and then stretched around a round frame. These geographical studies take on an informative and thoughtful look into what marks we make as a species. In a recent discussion with Newfound, David shares his thoughts on his work, his artistic process and what influences him. You can see more of O’Brien’s work on his website.
Courtney Simchak: How did your Disc paintings get started? What was your inspiration for the series?
David O’Brien: The disc paintings began when I started getting serious about photographing the ground. They are a way to map and document the landscape from my own perspective. Each title is a set of GPS coordinates, accurate within a few feet of the photo.
On any given day, I prefer being out of doors. I’m a hiker, a gardener, a beach bum, a wanderer. Being inside is difficult. For me, Seasonal Affective Disorder manifests itself as claustrophobia.
Unfortunately, I live in a part of the world that gets a very real winter. Short days, snow, clouds covering the sun. Chafed ankles from snow boots. Chilled red ears from a biting wind.
This is the time of year when we make resolutions to do better, be better. I’m going to try to think better. I will try to enjoy being indoors more, and take more opportunities to create. Sitting at a table. Knitting by a fire.
Kuma Kitsune is a mixed-media artist and photographer living in Portland, OR. Her work incorporates a diversity of materials, such as fabric, projection film, tiny shreds of paper — and, in her most recent installment, other people’s poetry. More of her work can be seen here.
E. D. Watson: Your current work, A Walk Through the Looking Glass, is an assemblage of twenty-four individual pieces, titled with fragments of poetry produced by Hafiz, Ray Bradbury, Mary Oliver, Rimbaud and Lewis Carroll, which form a corresponding poem. Viewers are then invited to re-position the works and create their own poem from the new arrangement of the titles. Can you talk a little bit about how literature influences your work, and how you came to select these particular, seemingly disparate, writers?
Kuma Kitsune: I think what most influences my work is the Surrealistic concept of unleashing the unconscious.