These last few months have been some of my most productive. I have made the conscious effort to focus my work in a limited number of directions so that the work will be considered cohesive when being viewed by future possible graduate programs.

I am planning on taking one year off between my graduation time and graduate school to rest and to prepare work. I am presently researching schools and have been considering one in Savannah, Georgia, one in Tampa, Florida and trying to find information about schools in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is my first choice as I feel it will push me to explore what I am working on through another culture’s eyes. This will also force me to learn another language and I can’t help but wonder how this will affect work that is already so steeped in a language that I am fluent in.

The pieces I am currently working on speak to being poor and undereducated. I want my work to reach people from all walks of life. There is a universal suffering and celebration that I wish to share. The times when my works are beautifully rendered reveal the celebration of human ingenuity and the ability to overcome great obstacles. The messages that I share are not always apparent upon first observation, sometimes even to me. This double meaning of the symbols and figures brings me great joy. I like making the leap between what is, what could be and what was. Memory plays a large part and I realize that as time passes these memories are being filtered through my own current experiences and are therefore altered bit by bit like the telephone game.

A recent example of how these meanings come to me was this epiphany I had when I was driving the hour and then some it takes me to get back home each day to Sierra Vista. I was listening to a song that I hadn’t heard in several years. Some of the lyrics speak of a child whose father has passed away, but somehow this child missed it because he didn’t realize that it was his real father. The song had meant so much to me because my father had just died and the lyrics sing “oh, I’m still alive” and it seemed a rebellious celebration in the face of a man I had once thought invincible and godlike. I was thinking about his death, he drowned, I was thinking about my favorite poem: “Not Waving, But Drowning” and a photograph that I recently learned about in one of my other classes that stood out as a favorite. The photograph is of and by Hippolyte Bayard who was angry that he had not been given credit for a photographic technique invention so he posed himself as a drowned man. These things all came together so loudly they clanged like a church bell. This is where the work I make comes from. I have a thought factory in my head constantly making connections between all of the things that have happened in my life and all of the things I know to be true.

Here is a picture of Mr. Bayard and a copy of the poem, the lyrics and the images these all brought forth for me.

Not Waving But Drowning
by Stevie Smith
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.