The Transitional Image

Inspiration From Others

I consider quitting this blog, but I'm having so much fun participating in the information stream that it's worth that constant concern I have about exposing myself.

Here are two links I found on blogs that are inspiring me today and I'm grateful to have found them:

http://www.manon-gignoux.com/index_english.html A fashion designer/artist/photographer all mixed up into one odd niche.

http://www.portraitsofthehumanspirit.com/ A psychiatrist creates interesting and sensitive photo essays of his patients. ___________________________________________________________________________________ This Image "Strong Tao". Blue Tao symbol and Chinese characters meaning: "Strong", "Health" and "Longevity" Elena Ray 2006. My paintings I realize truly lack sophistication. I'm often dancing around and practicing handstands while I paint. I feel exuberant with tubes of paint and beautiful papers. I'm trying to tone it down-maybe someday...

Self Taught

As an unschooled photographer I don't consider myself self taught. I worked for and was trained by a lot of great photographers. It is this training I wrestle with. I approach photography as: problems requiring solutions. This especially as a result of working years in advertising, a very muscular venue for image making. You can really get off on it. But something essential was transmuted in the process. Maybe this is how some people feel about school. You're grateful because it made you strong and gets you accepted, but for what, if the process isn't yours?

As a painter, I am self taught, or self teaching. Most of the work is simple abstractions, mixed with photography or collage, and mostly a study of textures and tone. Paint is magic. No matter how I feel, I can always paint.

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"You Will Soon Meet A Dark Stranger". Mixed Medium collage with fortune. 14" x 11".

Krishnamurti

I thought I'd write something, but feel reserved. So I'll quote Krishnamurti...

"When there is love, there is no duty".

"To resist, to dominate, to do battle with a problem, or build a defence against it is only to create further conflict. Whereas if we can understand fear, go into it fully step by step, explore the whole content of it, then fear will never return in any form."

"Living safely generally means living in imitation and therefore in fear".

"The moment we want to be something we are no longer free."

Jiddu Krishnamurti

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This Image Still Life 2. Magnolia leaf, rough scallop, and thistles on painted surfaces. Poster. Copyright Elena Ray 2004

American Clay Test

I have not been doing much photography lately. My opportunity to become a great landscape photographer has passed-the Joshua Tree bloom is almost over. Instead, I have been inside my unfinished studio making samples with American Clay, a natural earth plaster. I plan to finish some of the walls in my home with it, so am producing small 3 x 4' examples that will also work as backdrops for still life photography. I threw together my first photo test of them today and was in heaven-the clay is photogenic!

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This Image Untitled Still Life, Magenta Flowers. Copyright Elena Ray 2007 The clay colors are Chimayo and Austin Blush with the Porcelena finish.

Leaf

A terrifying night. I woke up in a (sexually) disturbed state and had this sense of myself as a leaf quivering on the ground, alive, but disconnected, breathing and disconnected.

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"The Clay Pot Is Praying, Waiting to Be Formed" Elena Ray 1999 17 x 22 Giclee.

Art Masoleum

Years ago my two girlfriends and I met at the Salt Lake airport for some fabricated journalistic work on the Bonneville Salt Flats Land Speed Time Trials. On the track we met this beautiful rockabilly boy from Oklahoma who had driven his hopped up street racer all the way there hoping to give the salt a run. We were completely taken with him. As our media passes gave us full access to the entire flat, he attached himself to us and our trinity of fem became the perfect quaternity. He was an artist and worked at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, as a grunt he made clear. He called it the "art mausoleum", so when I read this passage by Baudrillard it reminded me of him...

"The collector is possessive. He seeks exclusive rights over the dead object with which he appeases his fetishist passion. Reclusion and confinement: beyond all else he is collecting himself. And he is not to be distracted from his madness, since his love of the object, the amorous stratagems with which he surrounds it, display a hatred and fear of seduction."

Jean Baudrillard "Seduction".

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Bonneville starting line. Elena Ray 1999. This image demonstrates my then new love of digital imaging circa Photoshop 3 or 4. I couldn't resist putting people into photos where they didn't belong. Though the truth is, everywhere I go in North America I see Indians.

Oscillations

In my life I can see that the more yin, or receptive, I become, the more the masculine energy rains through me. I can feel it, oscillations occuring simultaneously; the principal of Shiva-form and unformed.

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Untitled Mixed Medium Collage of Leaf and Abstract. Pigment ink print of leaf on Kinwashi, handmade papers, and acrylics. 7. 5" x 11". Elena Ray 2007

"Seduction"

I wasn't sure at first if this book was going to be readable but it's turning out to be a delight.

From Jean Baudrillard "Seduction"

"Everything that can be revealed lies outside the secret"

The hidden or the repressed has a tendency to manifest itself, whereas the secret does not. It is an initiatory and implosive form: one enters into a secret, but cannot exit. The secret is never revealed, never communicated, never even "secreted".

Jean Baudrillard
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Nude and hawk beneath a flowering Palo Verde Tree. Elena Ray 2002. This image has been sitting around on my hard drive for years. I've never done anything with it. Like most photographers, I have hundreds or thousands of unfulfilled images.

Demoralizing Dream

I return to my studio to discover that in my absence the landlords have done some "gardening" in my yard. All the cactus has been ripped out and all the mesquite trees have been cut down to a nub. I see the landlord driving past with some workers on the back road. I flag him down but he ignores the gesture and just waves while continuing away. It's obvious to me that he doesn't want to discuss the yard. I am so confused and saddened by it all.

(From my journal October 2000)
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"Yucca Ribbons". Solarized Silver Gelatin print 8.5" x 11". Elena Ray 2000

March 12, 2007

The theory is manifest.
The philosophy is realized.

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"Origins of Taboo". Unique print 16" x 20": pigment ink on acrylic primed water color substrate. Nude and Hawk. Copyright Elena Ray 2007

I can keep a secret.

Happiness

I was happy when the other day my friend Annie, who does the Chinese calligraphy, came over and immediately glommed onto this piece. I had just finished it and was feeling really good about it. It took me two years to finish it! It has been part of, or taken parts from, many other finished pieces which ultimately got ripped apart and turned into something else. It's been through a multitude of "relationships" and come away with unique elements from them all, so much like a person.

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"Happiness". Mixed Medium collage. 11' x 16". The large Chinese character means happiness. Elena Ray 2007

i lack confidence.

1. i lack confidence. i never feel as if anything i do is of any importance-considering what is going on in the world...

2. I get bored. I can't stick to a style, theme, or medium.

Are these problems? Is it possible they are assets?...? Is it important to do important things, and who defines what is actually important?

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"Fake UFO Photograph" Copyright Elena Ray 1997