The Transitional Image

impenetrable being

How do you manage external stimulation with the activity of withdrawal and immersion in inner processes? For me their is a profound tear in that yin and yang of being. At times I feel as if a large part of my brain is simply blank and unusable...as though it had somehow petrified. I scatter my search around this monument, not even really sure what it is I am trying to find. There seems to be a million secular activities available to keep myself busy at this. But it's that immovable impenetrable interior structure that obsesses me.

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This Image "Empty Jar On The Work Table" Elena Ray Copyright 2007 Tea Stained Kozo print-mounted in my personal journal.

Chinese Brush And Seal

I'm having some nice insights working with the Chinese brush. It's astonishing how one simple tool is used in such a complex way. The tiny little moves you make with it have such import. To be able to tone down and center my energy enough to become aware of this is a huge success for me. I feel that as a westerner I live so externally. The Chinese personality seems much more subtle.
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This Image 'Chinese Brush and Seal". Elena Ray Copyright 2007. With this image I really wanted it to be a black and white. I worked it for multiple files (I save working files in sequential order so that I can always revert back to a previous version if needed.) in black and white, really working the tones in a quest to balance this somewhat teetering composition. I printed it multiple times on Kozo but was never satisfied with the result. Can't seem to get where I want to go with black and white-(I'm love sick for the old chemical stained scratched negative light leak Holga camera qualities the Eastern European photographers are getting with their work). Finally, with this image, I laid a blended layer of the original file in as just a color over the black and white layer. Then I laid another normal original color layer in at 50%. It's interesting to me to see how creating a black and white "mask" beneath the color layer allows one so much control in producing a color photograph...This discovery will be very useful to me I think. I'm pleased with this finished file as a straight color photograph; it's clean and simple. I'm not pleased that I seem unable to master my own direction! The traditional Chinese colors are so wonderful though-so what was my thinking?

Tasya

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This Image "The Sash Of Nike". Elena Ray Copyright 2007. A protracted labor of love attempting to create a true color photograph. Ultimately, converting this image to black and white transformed it from pretty girl holding a Pelican wing for no particular reason, into maiden imbued with metaphysical poetry. "Nike was the winged goddess or spirit (daimon) of victory, both in battle and peaceful competition." During the process I spent so much time studying Tasya I feel far more tuned into her unique beauty. Then she wrote me...:

"Wind", in Ayurveda, is directly related to touch.
Wings are a way of touching the air so closely that it can hold us up.

and pelicans are ancient . . . they are prehistoric dinosaur birds...they are our link to the collective spirit consciousness first "taking wing" . . . believing that it could be weightless. and yet, the pelican is still a part of the sea. Still a part of our most primal beginnings, our deepest mother. I have always been fascinated with diving water birds. there is no realm that is not open to them. their consciousness, in a sense, is everywhere.

"I was a wing, in heaven blue,
soared over the ocean,
soared over Spain,
and i was free, needed nobody
it was beautiful, it was beautiful

and if there's one thing, could do for you
you'd be a wing, in heaven blue"
(Patti Smith)

Tasya

Abandoned Figure

I had a little blast of inspiration this morning and finished up the file of this image I've titled "Abandoned Figure". It is very much informed by the dark Polish style seen on the Alt.com site, which seems deeply rooted in traditional photography; sepia tones, old chemical, processes, and film cameras. I'm a bit wobbly though as to the challenge of printing this tragic nude...the physical manifestation of the image is so important to me now, but what paper will it go on, or altered substrate...? Tasya was here yesterday afternoon briefly and fell in love with the Kinwashi prints of her as the "Imprinted Woman". I gave her the best print I had I was so grateful for her praise. She made me really laugh too, she's such a nut. I suppose that's probably why I was able to work this morning-just illuminated by her.

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This image "Abandoned Figure". Elena Ray Copyright 2007. Photograph of Tasya in my studio against a white wall. Printed on Kinwashi and stained. Print was scanned in a Microtek 9800xl flatbed scanner and then desaturated in Photoshop. Then a color tone sampled from one of the Polish photographer's images was overlaid in layers. The are too many adjustments to truly relay, but that was the essence of the process.

The Maverick Queen

One of the things I've done while not creating images is work on creating connections. For quite awhile now I've been wanting to do something with Lakey Kolb who owns this fabulous shop in old town Yucca called "The Maverick Queen". Talk about a shift in consciousness-she's like my own private Salvador Dali! Yesterday I did some shooting around her place. All I had to do was operate my camera, her surreal stories tell themselves.
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This Image "Scenes From The Maverick Queen (1)". Elena Ray Copyright 2007

Brain Shift

My off the grid friend Win encouraged me to continue on NOT working (creating images), and to allow myself to become immersed in learning Chinese calligraphy. Although I may actually begin some meditative photo studies against my now finished clay wall, they will not be the stuff of imagination. I've come to realize I hold imagination above all else. I think that is why Abigaill Berenika's work destroyed me so completely. And it's not as if I didn't want or warrant destruction. It was over. The last few weeks I have been organizing all my images and I just feel so bored by it all. I don't want to invest my energy in that work anymore. I just want to shake loose of it. I don't care to produce imagery from that place of consciousness anymore-I've delved there long enough. Win suggested that the calligraphy practice might shift my brain enough to free me up and I think he is right. As far as the still life studies go, if I do find them useful, it will be aligned with the calligraphy in that they will simply be a practice of studying form and smoothing out my own being. I will continue to familiarize myself with Berenika's imagination. I feel great hope in these liberating acts. I'm not afraid!

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This image "Beginning Calligraphy Strokes". My first solitary practice without Annie's instruction. I decided I couldn't bear to put my awkward strokes on the beautiful white paper she gave me to use, so instead ripped out pages from an old Alan Watt's book I got from the thrift store. When I showed her my work she said that Alan would have loved it.

The Temple Of Failed Works

Strangely as I organize my unfinished, never to be finished, slated for destruction prints and paintings I am just as intrigued by them, if not more, than any of my finished work, which seems in contrast, shopworn. Their fatal artlessness imbues them with a quality that makes them feel suddenly holy in my hands. These are the efforts of mine that will be cast into the fire being born only for my eyes. I feel a profound intimacy handling them.

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This Image "Mystical Mudra". Elena Ray Copyright 2005

Buddhist Magazines

I am still not working, however been very busy. One of the things I am doing is cleaning up and organizing my hard drives-what a mess. Normally I don't take time to keep up with it. This is a big job and I am in the mood to do it. Also think I'm going to take down all my unfinished paintings and lay them flat in a dark place-tired of looking at them. Mostly though, I am going through a big stack of Buddhist magazines my friend Annie loaned me. Shambhala Sun has the best art...I wonder if reading Buddhist literature is the equivalent of meditating-because I feel pretty good!
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This Image "The Gourd Garden (3). Copyright Elena Ray 2002. As I was going through my drives I found this old montage series I made from photographs I took of Tim's gourd garden when we lived in Arizona. I photographed the garden regularly throughout it's growth, then photographed the gourds when they were dried, as simple still lifes against a plain background. Then I montaged the location images with the still life images in Photoshop, laying an additional painted wood texture in it. 17 x22 Giclee.

Yin

If there is something in me transforming, it is active without my participation, and all I have to do is be aware and be. There is energy at work. Energy is the great wealth to cultivate-not material wealth. I'm curious about this dormancy as part of the cycle of energy cultivation. I really don't think my days as a photographer are over, but for the time being, they might as well be. I'm not going to force productivity. I'm not what I did; it was just one way my energy formed. All those images are like seashells now...there for someone else to gather.
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This Image "Chinese Energy Hand". Mixed medium collage on paper. Elena Ray copyright 2006.

Gone Hiking

...and doing yoga...Anything but photography.

For awhile I thought it was the heat and humidity confusing me; I felt tired and blank every time I sat down to process images. I've finally realized it's Berenika. Her profound imagination blew my fuses out. I simply feel I have nothing more to add. At first, realizing this, I felt depressed. But then-liberated! I'm not the slave to this work. And what's the point of just churning stuff out just to keep churning stuff out?? What good does that do for expanding consciousness-what I feel is our most important responsibility as human beings anyway. I can work on that just as well without a camera. Berenika has freed me from my past! I'm at a new place. Maybe I'll never do photography again. Now I can do anything I want. I'm free!

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This Image "Yoga Essence (4)".
Copyright Elena Ray 2006