Thank you so much Maggie Meiners and LENSCRATCH for featuring my latest project "The Tension of Flow." It is such a gift to have a project reach others who find a spark in it.

This project is a long time coming. I started listening to it about four years ago. While I struggled to manifest its voice I tried to create other projects in the meantime but they couldn't evolve until this one project came to light and resolved for me. It had been waiting it's turn for a long time.

Initially I was carrying words like drowning, sinking, fear, buried, tethered, empty, drifting, confusion, chaos, sinking, dark, trapped, and lost. Then I wrote down what I was also needing in my life: freedom, flow, uplift, to be held, to be open, expanding, connection, boundaries, healing, mending, sustainability, abundance, harmony, and light.

I used these words to create imagery that felt like both to achieve immediate balance. When I made the images and printed them I knew there was more to be communicated. A flat print was not enough. It's a deeper subject than this. The vessel idea had been there all along. Something about women as vessels holding everyone else rang very clear to me for years.

Knowing I wanted to make vessels I began folding two sided photographs into bowls, vases, and boxes. The folding process really hit home. I love the physical touch and feedback I received. It felt like being a mother folding and shaping her family while some of the folds were immediately necessary to make the final shape and others existed temporarily to support the other folds.

Still the folding did not completely express what I was feeling. I had been working on my sailboat at the same time and was sewing a 40 x 60 foot sail in my home on my sailmaker's sewing machine. It was that physicalness of it again that felt authentic for me. I had to use my entire body to push the sail through the machine. I suddenly realized I needed to sew my prints into form.

So I began sewing prints together and letting the frustrating, tenuous process guide me. I didn't try to force anything or control any part of the process. I let it speak to me as I went through it. If the paper didn't want to go where I wanted it to I let go of my preconceived notions of what the piece should look like, and followed the form. I had to be like a mother and trust that it would be okay. I had to believe that my guidance not my control over it would allow it to be what it wanted it to be. I am going through the exact same process with my teenagers right now. This hands on process allowed me some grace and love about my being in relationship with the work. It was the first time I was allowing myself to let go and trust the process in the presentation of my work.

The mending part came naturally too. I would tear the paper in spots as I was crumpling it and turning it inside out after sewing to create the shape it was meant to be. But it always needed more support, some mending, and the embellishments are meant to highlight their organic shape not cover it. The thread, rope, yarn, rocks, driftwood, and brass rings came from an attachment to the sailboat and to the ocean itself. The driftwood and rocks have been shaped by the flow of the ocean just as I was being shaped by the flow of my life’s interactions with family members. The thread, rope, yarn, and rings are elements found on a sailboat and used to mend, create attachments, and reinforce. They too act as chafe protection, support, and modifications to make things work better. Everything in my process plays an important role. I don’t do anything just to do it. Everything is a metaphor or symbolic for something I am trying to communicate. Every piece contributes to the overall story.

I had already been doing this intuitive process in creating photographs - both in my personal work and in my commercial work. It is very difficult to find clients who allow for this type of play, trust, and flow in the process of creating images for their campaign. Commercial clients want guarantees so it’s very rare to work in the advertising world with intuitive, playful, innovative, and truly creative work. I have been very fortunate to find these types of creatives to work with and am so grateful to be able to apply this technique in a commercial application in my water photography. Thus my commercial work has informed my personal work and my personal life has informed my career. It is a fabulous opportunity to realize this and to have this harmony in my life.

THE TENSION OF FLOW

SALT LIFE