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"Blank pages, crowded lenses"
08/10/2002 Entry
As an academic, I face a blank page often enough. Recalling my most intimidating blank page experience takes me back to a painting studio at the Geneva Fine Arts School where I took a class with Aldo Guarnera, a Genevese artist in 1994 during my junior year in Geneva. The first day we were told to take a blank piece of paper, tape it to the wall, and start painting. I dutifully detached a sheet from the roll - about two by three feet in dimension - and posted it on the board all the while thinking that I was quite daring with the size. The professor immediately instructed me that I needed to work on a larger surface. He could tell that any attempt on my part would lead to a sheet too small so he rolled off a piece about four by six feet in size. He helped me put it on the wall and he instructed me to go at it. That was intimidating. The sheet was larger than me and it was completely empty. I stared at my brush and my tubes of paint.. I glanced at all the whiteness in front of me. I was overwhelmed. But eventually I got into it and had a great time that year covering numerous blank sheets of paper with acrylic paint. You can see some of the results from that year in the studio here. (The piece labelled "First one" is what I came up with that first morning.)
Photography, in some ways, is a very different type of art. It seems that you go at it from the opposite direction. You start out with a camera lens filled with objects, landscapes, people, skyscrapers, animals, machines crowding your view. The goal is to find a composition that will make some sense in some way. I have no training in photography, I consider myself a recreational photographer (even calling myself an "amateur" sounds too professional). I take pictures at events of which I want to have reminders.
I broke that streak this week when I took out my camera to take some pictures around the office. And here are the results. Just something to have fun with as a break from writing the diss.
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