March 7, 2007
My artwork always evolves from the strangest little minute thoughts...like a perpetual relay race...
Like I was entertaining the fantasy the other day that I could be like the Sufjan Stevens of the art world...I could travel aboud and make art about the places I go. Isn't that a lovely notion? So then I had to listen to Sufjan Stevens, and the song All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands with all its overlapping layers of sounds inspired the work below. I cut out strips of paper (snowflake-style) for each sound I heard in the song and then picked some of them to trace onto the page here. The pastels colors are much prettier than this picture implies...
So the last book i just finished (The Stone Diaries) was about this fictional woman's ordinary life...and I felt sad for her because in her life she lacked any real passion. She never thought she could be more than what she was. (A mindset I also see in the women here in Ghana) There are obvious paths we can take with our lives, paths which I myself have taken and was led back again and again to the same junction. Faced with the same unfitting choices. But no one ever told me that you can simply avoid those set paths altogether...
It's official. Africa is the land of melted clocks. There is no concept of time here, which is strange for a tick-tock-away-girl like me. They call it running on "Africa time" when someone runs hours late. I call it a silly cultural accepted excuse.
Oh, the color in this next photo looks so washed out in comparison to the painting! Egads! Anyway, it's an abstract piece inspired by the flags and crowds of people yesterday all decked out in red, yellow, and green for the big jubilee. Ghana gained its independance from the British on March 6th 1957, so yesterday marked Ghana's 50th birthday! Pretty cool.
So...I fly home in just 3 weeks.
Weird.
Currently Listening: Transistor Radio...by M. Ward.
No comments:
Post a Comment