Come back, come back and save us, Dr. Land

I haven't even known what to say about the recent announcements regarding the demise of Polaroid film...upon the news, like an idiot I had a knee-jerk reaction and blew $185 to snag 2 boxes of Type 79 from B&H. At least Brad is understanding, and encouraged me to get more if I wanted.

Today, my order arrived and I opened it to see the dreaded "yellow sticker of death" in the upper right corner.

I'm not taking this well.

Polaroid film is just so personal to me. Next to hand coloring, it's what started my fascination with alternative photographic processes. In fact, it was while researching hand coloring years ago that I kept bumping into references to Polaroid image transfers (which accept hand coloring nicely) and emulsion lifts. Whether Edwin Land liked it or not, his film emulsion formulas could produce wonderfully unique things.

Fascinated, I allowed myself to be become sidetracked, and wanted to learn more, culminating in a 6-week course on the various techniques using Polaroid film. My teacher was very encouraging. Eventually, I began entering juried art festivals just for fun. My second time out, I was astonished to be awarded the overall "2nd Place, Best in Show" prize, due mainly because of my Polaroid work. This was as encouraging as it was validating - and it's been a part of me ever since.

So no - I'm not taking it well and it pisses me off that it's all due to the massive, negative impact of the digital revolution. It's a bitter pill to swallow, knowing these corporations I've supported couldn't care less about today's small artist in this new competitive, digitalized, everything-in-a-second world. 90 seconds from shutter click to imagery is no longer fast enough. Call me a luddite, call me backwards - it's probably all true and I don't care. Something special is gone from the world and no one is screaming from the rooftops. I can only sit back and hope some manufacturer "out there" will have the bucks to snag the rights, freely offered up by Polaroid, to produce this film. While they're at it, they can bring back my sacred Time Zero film. I sound like a drug addict when I say I'll pay the price to get what I want.... but I really mean it. I put off trying Type 55 positive/negative film, until the magic hour arrived that I could get out of the rat race and devote more time to my art, and now it's gone and I feel like I've been robbed.

I thought I accepted the recent demise of Kodak's HIE fairly well.....but this one's killing me.

The above image was done with Time Zero film, hand colored. Time Zero....the first to be eliminated. But not the last, as it turns out.

Goodbye, my lovelies. Your passing deserved more respect than it has received.

Remember to vote!

Vote your conscience, vote your heart....whatever you like to call it - just do it!

He is the one to make me cry

Have you listened to the new Crowded House record yet? If not....do.

Of course, the title of this post is a play on words of track #13, which might be the best song I've heard in...well, in a long, long time. Not too many musicians get to me like Neil Finn. He draws the slow sighs from me.

I think of Neil Finn as one of those miracle musicians. The kind that seem easy to dismiss at first, but once your mind and ears have settled in, you discover yourself having an ohmygod moment. There are a couple of songs off this new record that are giving me those, and part of me lives to experience them. They're damn rare. When I was driving home through the thick, rare Georgia snowfall a few weeks ago, track #8 began to play....as ethereal, light and, for me, as full of wonderment as the snow. The odd chords swirled about me as the wind blew the snow around my car, and I was moving as certainly through the music as I was the snowfall. I could have stayed suspended in that moment forever.

This is the magic that Neil Finn gives. As long as he's around, putting out songs like this, I know there's hope for music, after all. Finn's voice, so immediately identifiable, is in fine form throughout the record, sometimes full, sometimes raspy - and always on target with his strange melancholy chords that still manage to lift the listener.

Ah, Neil. Sing to me, baby!

snowflakes...

....are falling in my back yard. Without a sound.

This makes me very happy.

InsOmNIa! $#@&*

...it's been kicking me about a little bit. I know why, it's wintertime and I'm more cooped up. A passage I read long ago (from a now-forgotten novel) has stayed with me: "My stomach is empty and my mind is full. And when your stomach is empty and your mind is full, it's always hard to sleep." Okay, that might explain the banana and peanut butter snack at 2:00 AM last week, shivering barefoot in the kitchen, which did seem to send me happily back to bed and 4 hours of blissful sleep before the next workday. But the times when my brain feels blank and the belly well sated belies the easy banana-trick.

Ah, well. It passes.

Today is another birthday. I have celebrated by chopping off my long hair. A new bio-photo will eventually follow, but since photos of me are scarce it may be awhile. For now, I'm still enjoying reaching for the back of my neck and encountering the blunted ends.

Happy birthday to me. I like growing old. I like feeling the passage of time, looking back, looking forward. One nice thing about having a January birthday is that it goes so well with looking ahead - planning the year, planning my life.

My favorite piece from last year:





This year, I want to continue the trend of reading more. Reading, and spending more time in the darkroom - I've missed it terribly over the holidays, which were screamingly busy between work and home. The above lith print reminds me how much I love this technique - another reason to go play in the darkroom!

Over the past several years, I've put myself out there quite a lot - both personally and professionally. 2008 is the year I am pulling in. I've been doing it almost unconsciously for the last several months, and have noticed how happy it makes me - contracting my life into a little circle between home, work, with only a few excursions on the side involving close friends or family. It feels really good.

Note to self: hang in there, old girl. It wasn't nearly as important as you thought it was. You know?? You're doing just fine!

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had some time off from work, school, or whatever it is that keeps you from play-time.... ;)

Here's to a wonderful 2008! (I was going to say, an interesting 2008...but interesting doesn't always = wonderful, so I skipped it.) heh!

all moved in, and feeling tingly....

So, as long as I have to work at a "serious" kind of day job, it's nice to have pleasant surroundings in which to do so. My new office is not only the largest one I've ever had as a manager, it's also the only one I've been able to design. Well, re-design, as it was more than a little bit used when I first walked through it several months ago. I walked through and started a list of everything I wanted to see done to it, and plotted the course. This kind of thing is entertaining for me. I liked knocking out walls (on paper of course), picking out floor tiles and carpet and paint schemes. It's all come together quite beautifully and my own office, as I've said, is BIG - with 2 windows that actually open, with old-style hand cranks! yowza. So I've lined the faux marble windowsills with plants and unabashedly hung eight of my own pieces of framed artwork along the walls. (Some of my stuff that's not straightforward photography confuses people - another source of entertainment. I explain my processes much more thoroughly than the inquirer really wants me to.)

Work is work, and I really do yearn for the day when the alarm clock goes off only because I have an early class or maybe an early flight to someplace fun. But as long as it goes off every morning, forcing me out the door to work in health care management, I can think of worse places I've hung my coat. I like it here. No, really.

Busy, crazy times - on more levels than work, of course. Life is suddenly interesting in many new ways. I'm digging it, along with some of the new people I've met.