DAYDREAM: 2009

Recently my blog has left something to be desired and I apologize giving only the excuse that things got a little intense this past week or so, real life is starting to take hold and we are now in overdrive. And much like life, my project has taken a few jerky unexpected turns so bear with me as I try to explain this the way it happened and came together in my head.

In the past few weeks I’ve strayed from the book and experiences have seemed to find me. Aproxoximately three weeks ago I found a pair of broken sunglasses in the middle of the intersection of MLK and Old Bradenton with one lens cracked but still in tact. Now, as a recovering pack rat this project has been a bit difficult for me because it tells me to do things I used to do out of a habit that I forced myself out of. So I glanced down and immediately thought “I could use those for something!” then “Stop it, you have enough garbage in your room” then a tentative “wait, I could actually use that for one of my monoprints”(by the way, I have a series of really cool monoprints I did but haven't posted yet, I'll work on posting those this week). Of course by the time I rationalized keeping them I’d walked considerably far on and had to look a little crazy as I walked back to collect them. They were aviator-esque with a faux gold finish. A few days later on my way to class I found another pair, this time with no lenses, in the CJ parking lot. Again, the same back-and-forth-ing in my head, again, looking crazy and going back to pick them up. This pair was funny, a camouflage plastic frame that looked like hillbilly Oakleys. That weekend, due to a string of bad judgment calls and a missing chunk of awareness that can only be attributed to too much tequila, I lost my glasses. A pair of glasses that I’d held on to for three years, and really it was the first pair I’d ever lost. And even with my firm belief that there are no coincidences, ever, I hadn’t noticed the connection between the three occurrences. A week goes by, the two pairs of glasses are buried in separate forgotten places in my room, and I’m taking pictures for my found type experience. I stopped at subway and as I left to go downtown on my bike in the mulch in front I spotted a pair of bent crushed aviators very similar to the first pair I found also with one lens still in place. I kept going as I had the same sequence of thoughts, then realized that this was an absurd string of coincidences and that I had to look ridiculous once more, and return to pick up the glasses. These were the most interesting, they were crumpled up in a ball. Last week I found the fourth, and what seems to be the final, pair on Old Bradenton near the Hatian Church. They had one lens next to them that I popped back in. They were orange and looked like Oakley knock offs just like the second pair. The connection really didn’t occur to me until the fourth pair, it was like the mundane was reaching out to get my attention, which is usually at the mercy of the shiniest thing in the vicinity. I don’t want to say that I believe in fate, that’s much too specific, I more believe in the law of attraction:

“The phrase ‘Law of Attraction’, although used widely by New Thought writers, has a variety of definitions. Turn-of-the-century references conceptualized the law of attraction as relating to physical structure and to how matter develops.
A more modern consensus among New Thought thinkers is that the Law of Attraction says people's thoughts (both conscious and unconscious) dictate the reality of their lives, whether or not they're aware of it. Essentially "if you really want something and truly believe it's possible, you'll get it", but putting a lot of attention and thought onto something you don't want means you'll probably get that too.”

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Attraction]

My immediate conclusion was that glasses could represent perception, then I considered the thought that all of them, including mine, were lost and were once an integral part of someone. And anything that dictates vision and how one takes the world in is a big deal. They’re like little peaks into other peoples souls, the eyes being the windows, the glasses being the frames. It sparked a connection that ran through my project. The book as a whole is a second-hand view, as if through a lens, of the things that inspire me and, in part, why I design the way I do, but there’s no way it could be a crystal clear view of how I see things. I’m in the process of scanning my collection of polaroids, most of which are portraits of friends, and I was worried about putting pictures of people in a book that’s going to be published without their consent. And the few I’ve mentioned it to said something along the lines of “well don’t put mine in there” or “just blur my face out”. This was consistent with the attitudes I had to deal with in my people watching experiments, hands hitting the camera away, hands over faces, strings of obscenities directed towards our class and my project. It got me thinking about censorship and how sunglasses withhold and refract information, especially when they’re cracked, much like my friends have done all year to my “senior year documentation” (which is separate from this class, but still a huge influence on what I’m doing). So maybe my library of inspiration is censored in various ways, maybe I do blur all of their faces out, or better yet, break their faces down to basic elements and rearrange and mix and match them in a way that makes them unrecognizable. It was interesting to me that in my quest for the most inspiring visuals, the unexpected and unattractive collection of glasses proved to be the most inspiring.

Last week I was a little sleep deprived and really out of it and I was just staring at the chaos of my room, and all my stuff and wondering why I needed all of it so bad. And I thought “oh wow, I’m completely materialistic”. I got a sick ‘oh no I’m just like the rest of them’ feeling in my stomach, but stopped myself, because I need stuff, but not for iphone Paris Hilton reasons, most of the things I hoarded I did so for really outlandish sentimental reasons. Not to say I’m not materialistic, because I am, but the overflow of stuff seems to be attributed more to emotional attachment. Everything has a memory, a person, or idea connected to it. I think it’s because I’m a kinetic learner, and also a bit of an up-in-the-clouds dreamer and tangible things with smells and textures help me recall memories easier. This just reinforces the direction I want to take with hacking up the things that carry meaning and inspire me into new, aesthetically pleasing inspirational works with this new context.

There's more that I've done that I either don't have scanned or I'm halfway through with, I'll try and post a few things this week.

Document lettering you find out in the world. Take notes about where you found the samples.

My book is going to display, document, categorize and dismantle my collection of found images, found type is just as important so I figured this would be a useful exploration. I’ve collected junk for as long as I can remember, I come from a family of pack rats. I’ve hoarded action figures, dvd stickers, pens that no longer write, buttons, cuff links, paper scraps, plastic animals, those flattened pennies you get at theme parks, road signs, beer caps, fabric strips, twenty-five cent machine toys, etc. My most prized endeavor is my found image collection. Clips from a 1970’s National Geographic, old worn animal books, yellowed music sheets, religious monument postcards, several maps and map books, any neglected print out left in the labs, old paper, medical illustrations, rocks and gems, dinosaurs, airplane emergency pamphlets, etc. It saves so much time when I sit down to work, whether I use any of the images or not, it’s hard not to get inspired while looking through them because they were kept for their inspiration abilities in the first place.

I considered taking pictures solely of mailbox numbers as a branch off of this. While I was documenting I noticed how the numbers are what set them apart, what characterize them, because on most streets the mailboxes were all the same shape and size in black and white.

CARDS
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“It’s a place where someone might accidentally discover some other things, things that seem to have nothing to do with design” - Michael Beirut

That statement seemed to me to describe perfectly the world of commercial typography that I'd stumbled through with my camera. And by accident, although my original intent was to photograph aesthetically pleasing type, the more outlandish nonsensical bad type drew me in just as much. It's like graphic design outsider art.
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[the images are divided by location]

SCHOOL
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