IN THE ORDINARY LIES THE EXTRAORDINARY!
As we move through our world the myriad of images we see on the way to work, or the way to get groceries or run all our mundane but necessary errands, or to get the kids from school, or one of those miserable rainy slick days when we get stuck behind a slow moving school bus can be really astonishing. It is part of our everyday world, and just in the repetition it becomes ordinary and not exceptional in our minds. I think as artists we are trained to have heightened observation skills and be highly sensitive individuals. Most people think think art must be pretty, refined, in focus, and elevated beyond our everyday world. But is in the everyday artists often find their muse. If you look at these photo's below with me I will take you through my thinking as an artist.
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| Photo's by Elizabeth Gordon Asheville North Carolina Newfound Rd |
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| Photo's by Elizabeth Gordon Out of focus road and farm fences |
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| Monet Garden's |
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Looking through the window shield wipers at the farm at the bottom of my mountain road.
He is not the neatest farmer in the world and I get to observe his farm daily. Look at how the yellow
trailer jumps out at you.
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| Photo's by Elzabeth Gordon
School buses fascinate me for a variety of reasons. As an art teacher of 37 years, they were a part of my daily life. I love the colors, the bright yellows, the red and contract of black. Did you know the yellow and black are decided by government and enforced by law…there is a specific color, called school bus yellow, that made specially for the nations school buses..that was decided in the early to mid 1900's.
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And for me as a teacher and thousands of school children in the summers, it was a sight we didn't want to see, because it inhibited our freedom. Or the opposite every turn is bringing you closer to home, a hot pot of soup waiting and Grandmother's hugs waiting at the door. Her purple umbrella she holds so lovingly in the damp rain, the smell of her old fashioned soap envelops you in warmth and love as she hugs gathers you in her arms when you come home from the city school whose culture is so different from your rural mountain upbringing.
*Imagine a Tryptic of three school buses, from larger to smaller, closer to further away accompanied by three images of driving through the rain with distorted images…imagine I provide audio of the swish of tires on wet road, and the clapping of the window wipers clearing the rain away. What if I added a muted radio, echoing and the sound of small children in the car…can I create an installation of an American experience?
School buses in our experience are part of our ordinary mundane world. They are not sexy in the Madison Avenue sense of the world , they are not exciting, or beautiful in a everyday sense. But for an artists they can be all of those things and more!
*Imagine if you are a film maker the story you could weave around the photo's, they could become stills in your movie. You can add characters, plot, and imagination…it can be a horror film, a drama, a thriller, or sad reality program.
Imagine if you are a writer the plot you could enter twine with these images. A lonely shy child returning home to an abusive father and the road home looks foreboding and horrifying, each turn takes you closer to your worst fears.
* Imagine if you are a musician, and you hear the clap, clap, clap of the window wipers, and you take the beat and write a score from it. Or you add the sense of moving in sound or score, the feel of transformation. And then you add mood to the music. What would it sound like, would it be happy, sad, moving, dramatic, quite, foot tapping..what would you create?
*Imagine you are a painter and you want to capture the motion and the light…you want the blur…you want it to feel impressionistic-just a sense of what you are seeking and feeling-then what would you paint. If you were Van Gogh would you tie yourself to a tree as the wind moved the tree in the brisk fall winds, would you paint day after day repeating the same painting in different light and different times of day and seasons? If you were Picasso would you focus on the movement by making all sides being seen at the same time to make it as real as possible, that is becomes abstract?
* Imagine you are a dancer or choreographer, how would you interpret the movement of a school bus in wind and rain, how would you move you body or a group of dances to recreate the mood of this school bus moving through time…what would Martha Graham Dancers do?
Imagine You are a nature sculptor or environmental sculptor, like Andy Goldsworthy,
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| Andy Goldsworthy |
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| photo's by Elizabeth Gordon Hayes Cove |
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