A Chance To Create

Good news. Wait no. Great fuck­ing news.

I met with Frédéric, the own­er of the Salon, and after show­ing him a port­fo­lio of my pic­tures, he agreed to let me have an exhib­it in the next show in February.

As this was­n’t only his art gallery but his house as well, I offered to let him make the deci­sion after see­ing my com­plet­ed work. He told me there was no need, as he trust­ed me based on what he had seen in my port­fo­lio, which I felt was a very nice com­pli­ment.

As artists (and I use this in the loos­est sense of the word to describe myself), we’re very dif­fer­ent. I told him that I like to study pho­to­graph­ic tech­niques, espe­cial­ly in pho­tos that I like, and apply those tech­niques to what I want to express or show. When I look at a piece of visu­al art, I look at mean­ing and intent. When I cre­ate, I keep the same thing in mind. Frédéric, on the oth­er hand, is more of a gut-feel­ing type of artist. He does what he feels is right, and does­n’t wor­ry as much about the under­ly­ing mes­sage.

He asked if I was sin­gle, and I told him I was. “Good”, he said, “That’ll help you focus”. It made me think of a quote by Alexander Dumas:

Woman inspires us to great things, and pre­vents us from achiev­ing them.

I made a remark about how I’d have a forum to devel­op my ideas now, projects I nev­er pur­sued because I did­n’t have a way to get them to a wider audi­ence. He told me that I should­n’t wor­ry about an audi­ence, and gave me an exam­ple to demon­strate his point: if you cre­ate the most beau­ti­ful thing you’ve ever done and you keep it in your base­ment, it isn’t art because no one sees it1, but to get caught up in that dilem­ma, and to not cre­ate sim­ply because of that, is a tragedy.

So now I can pur­sue and devel­op one of my pho­to project ideas. I have to decide on a theme. I have see how much enlarge­ment I can do to my pho­tos with­out too much loss of qual­i­ty. I have to decide on the size of the final prints. I have to decide on the frame size and shape. I have to get the final prints framed.

I’ve always want­ed to cre­ate acces­si­ble art2.

Perhaps this will be my chance.

  1. An inter­pre­tive answer to the Zen kōan of the sound a tree makes falling down in the for­est, I’m sure []
  2. As opposed to some­thing such as poet­ry, which is less acces­si­ble to the com­mon per­son. As a medi­um, film, pho­tog­ra­phy, and music (with lyrics) are more eas­i­ly digestible. []

11 comments

  1. well, con­grats! now go get those pic­tures! :)

  2. Hey that’s cool that you’ll have your own exhib­it! You’ll have to take pic­tures of your pic­tures.

  3. jeff man con-fuckin-grats man this is awsome news!!!!!!!
    you have all­ways been an artists to me i love ur pics this is just the first step man next we get u an exib­it in Palais du Louvre in Paris
    im so hap­py 4 u man get me some dates i will try my ass off to be there

    good job bro!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  4. @ana — Oh, I’m already on it. :)

    @Sophia — Yeah, I was already plan­ning on ask­ing Pat to bring his cam­era to take pic­tures. Cause I’ll be, you know, min­gling and try­ing to sell my stuff to pay for all my cam­era gear. ;)

    @Rob Mayer — Thanks, man! You’ve always been one of my biggest sup­port­ers. I know it’s a long dri­ve, but I hope you can make it to the exhib­it in February.

  5. Congrats! I’d been wait­ing for some­thing like this to hap­pen to you.
    Dumas’ quote is so true.

  6. Great! Should be a fun process fram­ing your ideas.

    (When it has show dates, pro­mo your­self. Might even go back to face­book and cre­ate an event?)

  7. Congrats! That’s awe­some!

  8. @Uncle Joe — Thank you! Published nov­el maybe, record­ed album maybe, but I nev­er thought I’d be an exhib­it­ed pho­tog­ra­ph­er

    @Pearl — Actually, I think fram­ing will be the least fun part, although when that’s done it’ll feel good nice to see the final prod­uct. Thanks for the sug­ges­tion about pro­mot­ing myself.

    @Jason — Thanks!

  9. I meant a fram­ing in a more metaphor­i­cal sense, the process of cre­at­ing, decid­ing sub­ject and com­po­si­tion.

  10. Simply amaz­ing. Would love to see.

  11. @Pearl — Ah, my mis­take!

    @Maeko — Hopefully some­one will be there to take pic­tures so I can post them.

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