Come Spring
The Ballad of Mulan
by Kef
Kef, She Leaves at Dawn, From The Ballad of Mulan series, 2021, Inkjet print, 30 x 24 inches
We traveled together for twelve years, but we never suspected Mulan was a woman! Influenced by the Chinese folk song of the same name, Ballad of Mulan explores performativity as it relates to my own identity as a Chinese and trans artist. In re-interpreting passages from the original work into my own perspective, the images examine my personal relationships to gender and family. K
View more of Kef’s work here.
Transitions in Life and Film
Rob Schulz, Visual Storyteller
Transitions
This is a poem about the transitions in life and the emotions, sensations and physical responses I have as I move through them. They are accompanied by the natural and urban worlds around me. Rob Schulz
Rob Schulz is a recent graduate of the immersive Visual Storytelling program at Maine Media Workshops + College. After many years as an experiential educator, you could say, he jumped in with both feet with the decision to transition to photography and video work. Emerging as a visual storyteller, Rob clearly draws on his experience teaching and connecting with his subjects with genuine warmth and humor. Working with him on a recent video project, felt like a fun and friendly conversation rather than a production. Here, Rob shares some insights on his path in the world of visual storytelling. See more about Rob’s work on his site, Resonant Photography.
- Deb Dawson
DD: How did you find your way into visual storytelling with videography?
RS: As I was making the decision to leave teaching and make a go at being a photographer, I started doing research on places I could take a workshop, a short course, etc. During that search I found Maine Media Workshops + College and was really taken with their course offerings and location. I wasn’t aware of the school and was excited to have such a highly regarded resource close to home. As I reviewed the course offering I discovered their Professional Certification in Visual Storytelling and knew in that moment that I needed to commit to a full year with them and build the skill set I saw as essential to my work. Part of that intensive year in the program is a multimedia course that exposed me to a medium I was not intending to pursue professionally. The short documentary work just called out to me. I feel more connected to the work because it involves conversation, planning, and input from the subject. I get to know them and come to understand a little more about their world and what is important to them.
DD: This is a little different from your documentary work. What inspired you to create this piece?
RS: It is very different! It actually started as an assignment at Maine Media. Tom Ryan, the instructor wanted us to work on something a little more conceptual and I knew that it was going to be an uncomfortable project for me. It was going to push me a bit to experiment and let go. I originally made a piece that went with a poem from a well established poet, but I only had permission to use the poem for education purposes. I knew after I finished at Maine Media that I wanted to write a piece myself and use the footage to create a new piece. As I changed careers and hit middle age, I felt I needed to share some of those feelings and experiences I was having. Writing the poem was a wonderful exercise in self-awareness and I helped me see the footage in a new light. I have continued to do a lot of work in nature since then and that is a positive influence on my work.
DD: There are some wonderful visual metaphors that align with the poetic narration. Can you describe your relationship to the natural world?
RS: We spend a lot of time outdoors! We are fortunate that we have access to a large piece of land that gives us space to wander among the hills, streams and wildlife in all seasons. That space allows me to walk without direction, notice changes, and think. My wife is an eco-therapist with a practice in Freeport and because she does her psychotherapy out in the natural world, the two of us have had the opportunity to work together on pieces for her practice and experience nature in different ways. It has become natural for me to experience the things around me in the woods as metaphors for my personal experiences and as reminders that I am not separate from the natural world.
DD: Do you think this piece will inform your future documentary work with a new direction or perspective?
RS: I believe it has already influenced a few pieces I am working on right now. My newest project has offered me a chance to think about time and space along with personal pace. I think learning to adjust to what nature has for you in the moment has influenced my creativity and problem solving. When I am able to schedule ahead and wait for the right weather, snow fall, perfect light or fall leaves the planning provides me with an opportunity to watch nature and take note of the changes and how it will be reflected in my work.
View more of Rob’s work at Resonant Photography.
Touchstones
Two women, one road, two thousand miles and less than a minute.
The transcendent collaboration between Sal Taylor Kydd and Dawn Surratt
Sal Taylor Kydd + Dawn Surratt, What We Know, 2020
What We Know
Knowledge, is a stubborn thing,
it holds fast in the shadows
and even, as perspective shifts,
still shimmers in the witchy light
of falsehood.
Stories buried deep, are told
in the lore of a family’s choosing,
a narrative thread,
from mother to daughter,
then daughter to child,
writ large upon a lifetime.
In stony ground we grow slant.
Even the most tender,
emerging with such vigor,
devoid of sunlight,
will wilt, turn sallow.
Illumination then.
I’ll hold those roots, but
seek the sun,
unfaltering in my telling.
I’ll lay my secrets in the grass,
like a bird drying its wings
after the rain.
Connection through isolation… Photographers, of all species seem to always find a way. When there’s that spark of creativity through common interests and ideas, it can transcend boundaries and leap thousands of miles to make something truly special happen. The long thin ribbon of Route 1 connects Maine artist, Sal Taylor Kydd and Dawn Surratt of North Carolina. Sal and Dawn share how their collaborative project, Touchstones came to be and how it continues to foster their creativity and friendship through a difficult and isolating year. You can witness this journey of collaboration through their blog, touch-stones.
- Deb Dawson
DD: How did you meet?
We were aware of each other’s work through Instagram as well as mutual friends, and we finally had the opportunity to meet and work together during the Kindred show in Savannah in 2019. We instantly felt a connection and talked during that time about collaborating on a project to stay connected to each other. A few months later, the pandemic hit and the idea of our project crystallized. It has been an important lifeline for us both as we sort out all the difficult feelings that have arisen during this past year.
DD: Your bodies of work are so complementary to one another. What do you find most compelling about the other’s work?
Dawn: I adore Sal’s incorporation of the mystery of everyday life. It’s very lyrical and feminine and it speaks to the deepest parts of us. Her use of light is superb. When I look at Sal’s work, I know exactly what is meaningful to her. She is so pure in her intention through her art.
Sal: I find Dawn’s work to be effortlessly tender and true, she doesn’t hold back in being authentic about the issues she is exploring through her art practice. I’ve also been fortunate to learn so much from Dawn, she is always pushing the boundaries in developing new mediums in which to present her work, through her object-making and books.
DD: How did the project begin and has it evolved in any unexpected ways?
Dawn: When we began, we knew we wanted to use both text and imagery. Sal is a masterful writer and it’s something that I was interested in challenging myself with and I knew I would learn a lot from Sal which I have. She is so generous and wise in her abilities to guide me through writing roadblocks when I have them and I have had quite a few.
Sal: I think the blog format allowed us to note down impressions in a way that didn’t feel too precious. It has allowed us to experiment and allow the project to develop at its own pace. Recently we have loosened up the format even more, introducing fragments and more impressionistic writing that express that sense of suspension and timelessness we have all been feeling during this strange moment of time.
DD: Can you describe your process of creation in this call and response scenario?
We each take turns sending the other a new photograph every week or so, the other person then pairs it with an image of their own and writes something to accompany the diptych. We are always looking for the writing to amplify the imagery, avoiding it being too illustrative. The images should always be able to stand alone, the imagery is where the inspiration lies.
DD: Do you think this visual communication will inform and affect your future work?
Sal: I always find the nature of collaboration to be very rewarding. Feeling part of a community of artists has always fed my work and my practice, inspiring me creatively and motivating me too. I have always loved using text and images together in my work and definitely see that continuing.
Dawn: This project has further cemented my love of both collaboration and the use of text and image and I see how the things I have learned from this project have already begun to shape my work in new ways. I am a better artist when I have the opportunity to learn from my peers and people that inspire me and Sal has certainly been that. Plus, I’ve made a lifelong friend. What a gift.
Sal Taylor Kydd + Dawn Surratt, Uncomfortable, 2020
View the entire Touchstones project here.
Serendipity Finds Brendan Bullock
I just came across some work by photographer Brendan Bullock that I wanted to know more about. He had recently taking a trip to Newfoundland which resulted in this wonderful series of images. I asked Brendan to tell us about how he came to travel to this remote place and to give us some information about his process as well.
-Jan Pieter van Voorst van Beest
Overlooking the town of Grole and what it looked like in 1940’s
The genesis of these pictures began with a serendipitous discovery online - a crude, handmade drawing of a town named Grole in Newfoundland, made by an older woman who was recalling what this town had looked like when she was a young girl, before Newfoundland’s great Resettlement. Between 1954 and 1975, remote fishing villages and their inhabitants were asked (and paid) by the government to relocate to more central locations on the island, in order to more efficiently deliver goods and services.
In the woman’s drawing, the town’s main streets could be seen as well as the crosses of the gravestones in the town cemetery. A good friend and I, both history buffs, read more about the Resettlement in Newfoundland and were intrigued by the fact that the southern coast of the island was dotted with ghost towns. We hastily made plans to try and get to them with only five days for the round trip. We left Maine, drove up to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, arriving at Sydney where we queued up at the ferry boat that would take us to Newfoundland. We arrived at Port aux Basque after a seven hour ferry trip and traveled North. Eventually we came to Bishop Falls where you can turn onto Rt 360 south , the only main road that will take you to the southern coast of Newfoundland. There were signs warning of moose and lack of gas stations for the next 200 km. We drove south through the night in thick, pea soup fog, seemingly coming out of nowhere and eventually reaching the southern coast. We headed out in search of the ghost town Grole. We drove the car as far as we could go, passing villages until the road turned into a dirt track with branches scraping the sides of the vehicle. Reaching the streambed, we parked, unloaded, and started hiking in. Within a half hour we crested a hill and saw a valley laid out below us, sloping down to the sea. The sunlight glinted off white crosses on head stones- the very grave sites pictured in the old woman’s drawing. We got goosebumps. We had arrived.
We camped on the site next to the ocean and went on to explore more ghost towns, returned to the northern coast of the island and drove through the small towns there as well. As this was a historically based trip and not a photography trip per se, I was mostly interested in making some iphone images along the way that captured the mood of the place, figuring I would work with them at a later date. I have finally begun to do so, some eight years later, converting the images into digital negatives and printing them with the ziatype palladium process. I also made a small book that chronologically captured what we saw there.
My feeling on various photographic processes, including cell phone captures, is that an image that can create a beautiful print is a successful and worthy process. Now that I am seeing these images anew by printing them as gold- toned ziatypes, I feel like they perfectly capture the mood of the Newfoundland that we experienced- long expanses of road, dense banks of fog, rugged rock cliffs abutting of what a less developed Maine would have looked like in the 18th or 19th centuries. BB
Supplemental info on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resettlement_(Newfoundland)
Brendan Bullock, The Newfoundland ghost town book, 1/2, 2021, hard bound inkjet prints, 8 x 8 inches
View more of Brendan’s work here.
Interview with Jocelyn Lee
Jan Pieter van Voorst van Beest, Jocelyn Lee, 2021, Inkjet print, 24 x 24 inches
J.P: Congratulations on your new book “Sovereign”. It is a beautiful book, unusual in that your subject matter is not easy. All through the book you match your subjects with landscape and still life. Are your choices of landscape as an environment to place your subjects in as well as those of the natural still lives on the opposite pages, intuitive or premeditated? Can you tell us how you make your choices?
Jocelyn: The choice of landscape is both intuitive and pre-meditated. In terms of where I photograph my subjects, I will often go out and look for landscapes that appeal to me. Have ideas beforehand about what I want, but that only leads me so far. I often have to location scout. Once I rented a house in Deer Isle for a week and brought 5 models there to photograph. I knew there was incredible moss nearby (Barred Island Preserve) and I knew I wanted a kind of primordial space- untouched and primitive feeling. So I brought the models there, but once on location there is a lot of moving around and a lot of spontaneity. The light might be wrong (sun coming from a different direction or too bright etc.) and we have to move, or there are bugs, or the quality of the ground is too difficult to work with- so there is often a lot of adjustment once I arrive at a location. That’s when I have to be really open. It is never as I imagine it to be.
J.P: Coming from Brooklyn to Maine, how has the change in environment and landscape influenced your work?
Jocelyn: Coming to Maine, from Brooklyn, has created a wonderful change in my process. I’ve always been drawn to the landscape, but in Brooklyn you can go six months and not really notice or look at the sky. You may not see a star, or the quality of the moon. Now that I’m in Maine, and I live on two acres of land, I am always looking at the landscape and the sky. It changes daily in very subtle ways. My husband is a gardener and plants 500 to 1000 bulbs in the ground every year. We have evergreen trees and perennials that we watch change with every season. Yesterday 20+ robin redbreasts sat on a tree outside my bedroom. It felt like a sign, I don’t know what kind of sign but it felt significant. We have an apple tree that is over 100 years old and we call it “the grandmother apple”. She is like a family member and I photograph her regularly. My children have climbed her since they were little and every year she yields an enormous number of apples that all fall around her trunk like babies. My husband prunes her with a great deal of love and care. We will be devastated when she dies. I also view the landscape as a metaphor and think about the way it reflects states of mind or being. I was just out photographing in the ice storm. The trees are beautiful, fragile, jewel- like, and frozen simultaneously. They will crack and break if you touch them, but in the spring the limbs are subtle and flexible, full of new growth and possibility.
J.P: Two years ago we had an exhibit of portraiture at the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts. Two of your photographs, one of a seascape with an iceberg (Newfoundland, 2008) and one with a woman in a bath with her red hair hanging over the edge (The Bath, 2016)were included in the show. It may be odd but after looking at the two photographs I may have seen a connection. Was I right?
Jocelyn: I showed those two images side by side at the exhibition at the CMCA titled: The Appearance of Things, which was about making the materiality of physical world: finding a continuum between animal, plants, human beings etc. I do think there is a formal and conceptual connection: first there is the quality of blue in both, second the presence of water in both, and third the importance of the horizon line in both. Color and texture are paramount in both and there is a “body” in both images- one the girl, the other the iceberg. Formally they are not so different, and because the palette is similar in both, it asks the viewer to make connections, if any, between those two “ bodies”, both are submerged in water, both floating, both ephemeral.
J.P: You are an artist, a teacher, and currently, a gallerist. As a teacher does your own artistic vision become subject matter and is it difficult to remain objective?
Jocelyn: I try to meet the students where they are, in their practice, with an awareness also of what is happening in the contemporary art world. It feels important for me to reflect that back to students. You can’t work in a vacuum unless you’re an “outsider artist” and anyone in art school is by definition not an outsider artist. Ultimately I can’t teach a student anything really. I can share what I know, from my own path and journey, and also what I know of the art world, but I can’t really direct their vision. That’s the challenge of teaching. You can make suggestions but you can’t know how or when or if your feedback has meaning. The art world is ever evolving. I certainly don’t know what is going to be meaningful or important in 10 years, or now for that matter. I am at my best as a teacher when I guise students to be as authentic to their expression as possible. And also remember that photography is a craft (technical) so they do need to know that. But of course they can always break the rules once they know them.
J.P: The “Speedwell Projects” gallery has shown many interesting, cutting edge exhibits. Do you feel the shows have been well received in Maine and can you tell us a bit about what you expect the future holds for the “Speedwell Projects”?
Jocelyn: I think SPEEDWELL has been very well received by the truly great art community in Portland. We are hiring a new Managing Director now, which is very exiting, and my hope is that this person will lend their vision to where we go in the future. SPEEDWELL was an idea borne out of a need to give women, BIPOC and LGBTQ + artists greater exposure. I have been in the art world long enough to know that many great artist’s work is not being seen. The mission is a starting point. The gallery is now secure, the space is great, and the future is yet to be known. Our new board and our new Managing Director will define how this mission plays out in the years to come.
J.P: On the roof of the gallery is this wonderful sign: ”Hope”. In these times a sign like that seems to have a very functional meaning. Do you see this period (Covid, unprecedented political turmoil and increasing calls for racial justice) leaving a permanent change in the way that art can be shared by artists and appreciated by the public?
Jocelyn: I can’t speak for Covid but I can speak for SPEEDWELL. I am excited by the grassroots energy around SPEEDWELL, and the desire to give power back to artists (or to an artist run experimental space like SPEEDWELL). I enthusiastically support any space that seeks to launch museum quality shows for artists whose work is under represented. That is our mission and I think we are achieving it. The museum world is not democratic. It is not doing the best job of showing truly exceptional experimental work. I’m glad to know that SPEEDWELL is trying to make that connection. While we don’t have a lot of money, we have a lot of desire to show as much truly deserving work as we can. Museums and galleries have financial and (other) restrictions we don’t have. We have a lot more freedom at the end of the day and that’s very empowering.
Visual Musings
“The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it!”
– Ansel Adams
“I refuse to be in this world by myself. I want an open commitment from the rest of the people.
“
– Robert Rauschenberg
“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.”
– Robert Frank
SPONSORED BY THE CENTER FOR COMPASSION/ THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MAINE
TAOISM
by Sonam Ngodup,
Tibetan Home School, Mussourie. India 1999
In a tiny zone in the Milky Way
a unique planet where two corners
of an attitude
survive together.
In a world of cruelty and violence,
there exists a ray of truth.
And in a world of kindness and mercy
there exists a wave of pain and destruction.
One couldn’t be described
by seeing the surface.
Some are kind in disguise!
When you open the cover in grief
your heart will crack.
break down into pieces.
like a sack of crushed ice
when someone
suddenly
pours it down.