Comeback Trail

I must have traumatized myself. I chased myself away from doing art for several months, but I'm not exactly sure how. I applied to a show and got rejected, which wasn't unexpected but certainly didn't help. My dad died after a lengthy decline. I got lost a bit trying to find a trendy schtick with the dog paintings, and that ran out of steam. I spent a lot of time looking at the work of other artists who seem like they have a stronger technique, color sense, or vision, and maybe got a bit dejected. My job went through a rough stretch with a grueling project, which is thankfully over. Mostly, I guess art didn't seem like fun and the basement studio seemed too gloomy to enter.

Today I stopped by Momopeche's blog and read about her recent fascination with lomography-- photography using truly horrible 80's era eastern bloc film cameras with plastic lenses. I'm in love with the photography of a local artist, Erin Antignoli, a master of the genre who reignited my flagging interest in art photography; the creative diarrhea of digital imagery has overwhelmed the market a bit. Unfortunately I am too neurotic about precious film to participate in a movement where the golden rules are to not think and be fast. I tried reading online about techniques for adapting a fixed focus digital camera to using cheaper lenses, but the engineering involved is way out of my league. Instead I took my ancient Olympus C-4040 camera, poked a hole in a piece of tin foil, put it over the lens adapter, and took some photos to achieve my "crappy camera" effect. Instant creativity.

For those of you waiting on my "Pay it Forward" promise, I have the pictures all finished. I just hate shipping stuff so it's taking forever to get them in the mail. Apologies.