From: Katharine Thayer (kthayer@pacifier.com)
Date: 08/13/02-09:13:14 AM Z
Kris Erickson wrote:
>
>
> Not sure that people trying to link your interests with your art would be
> 'barking up the wrong tree'... scratching up the wrong post perhaps... ;-)
> But even then, only half-scratching. While I would strongly doubt that any
> specific interest could tie directly and summarily to a single image, I
> think one would be hard-pressed to argue that that specific interest could
> not, in some way, be related to the impulse and drive that created that
> image in the first place; among a tangle of other interests, often more
> relevant of course, but AMONG that tangle nonetheless.
>
I can't seem to occupy myself productively today, it being 94 degrees
with a hot wind, (absolutely unheard of weather on Pacific Northwest
coast) and of course no air conditioning because who ever needs it here?
Since I can't seem to settle down to anything useful, why not go on
about this a while longer. Don't we veer off on a tangent for a while
almost every August? I remember one of the tangents being about jam; at
least this one has something to do with art, if not alt-photo.
Hard-pressed or not, I'll continue to argue the point: my art has
nothing to do with my intellectual interests. This reminds me in a way
of when my academic advisor was trying to get me to choose one interest
in psychology to focus on rather than being interested in a lot of
different things. He said, "There is no place that all those interests
come together." He meant there was no PhD program in psychology where
all my interests could be pursued at once. But one of my friends,
listening in, said "But there *is* a place where all those interests
come together, in Katharine!" I found a way around the problem by
getting my PhD in statistics, which allowed me to pursue not only a
number of interests in psychology but in other fields as well, including
national educational policy and medical research. From the standpoint
that both statistics and art exist in the same person, sure, there's a
connection, but the place where they connect is supra-intellectual
(that's the only way I can think of to say what I mean) and any attempt
to intellectualize it, verbalize it, analyze it, would definitely be
scratching up the wrong post.
My intellectual interests employ the analytical, verbal, generally left
side functions of the brain like logic and reasoning; my art employs the
holistic, nonverbal, abstract right side of the brain. And while these
distinctions are oversimplified (for example the abstract and symbolic
functions of higher mathematics are quintessential right brain
functions, and of course the technical aspects of alt-photo require some
analytical skills) the point remains that for me the creation of art is
essentially nonverbal, nonintellectual, nonanalytical, probably
spiritual, and comes out of a very different place than my intellectual
interests.
There. The breeze seems to be shifting to the northwest where it belongs
in the summertime; maybe now I can get something done. Over and out,
kt
.
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