visions of paradise

"A garden is the best alternative therapy."  -- Germaine Greer

I've been spending the past two hours pouring over slides that span the past 23 years of my creative production in preparation for a lecture I am giving at the Bead Society of Greater Chicago.  It is so funny to see work I made in high school.  Was my mother's rear end really that big?  (Sorry Mom! I appreciate all those hours you modeled for me!  Really I do!)   Then there is looking at what I call the first work, the work created my final year of undergraduate studies - Visions of Paradise.  I still love that work. 

I realized while looking at the slides that I have a chapter of blogging to do.  Should I call it "What makes Lindsay tick?"  or "The story behind the artist statement?"  Maybe something simplistic - the lecture.  I don't know, so I think I will just plunk it all under ART.  Though my art is based on my life, so maybe I should categorize it under life.  Oh, heck....

The early years.......
You may be surprised to learn that my early years were spent in a holography lab.  That's right, I was making pretty pictures using a helium neon laser.  I love light.  The physics of light.  The way light illuminates the leaf of a rose.  Light in all forms.  You can't get much purer than with a laser. 

A holography lab is dark.  Your set up table is surrounded by a weighted curtain to prevent any currents in the air from disrupting the light waves.  Hold your breath and count - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.... until your shot is made.  I quickly went insane.  It seemed counter productive to love light if one spent all that time in the dark. 

I moved onto the loom.  Math.  I love math.  Weaving is a binary system of overs and unders which eventually translated from the Jacquard loom into zero's and one's, the underpinning of computer systems.  I began weaving with mylar, a reflective medium like Christmas tinsel. 

My third year of study was spent in York, England within a stone's throw of Monkgate.  York is a small city, a medieval city surrounded by a wall.  I could walk everywhere at any hour of the night.  So you can imagine the counter culture shock upon my return to Chicago.  The day I moved into my apartment a dozen or so police were on the streets looking for a young teenager who had just shot another teenager.  Chicago is a fantastic city, but you certainly can't walk anywhere and everywhere at all hours of the day and night. 

I couldn't change my environment, but I could change my view of it.  A fellow neighbor and I started a small garden in our building's courtyard.  The El (short for elevated train) thundered over our heads as we planted those first seeds.  Call them seeds of hope, they were my first visions of paradise.

....... to be continued....... 

Comments

[katie]

enjoying this! what an interesting picture so far - glad you had a chance to be in York, its a wonderful place! looking forward to the next installment

[Michael Harrison]

Neat. If you ever decide to try holography again give us a shout. It hasn't changed too much unless you've got some $ in which case pulse holography might interest you.

[Sherry Scheitel]

I remember seeing my first hologram at college in 1976 or '77. It was of a woman blowing a kiss and you could walk around it and she would move her hand in and out. We were all amazed at the time.
Love the quotes from your last post. I had to put them in my quote file.
Sherry