In May of 2002 my wife Terry was diagnosed with Stage 3 Ovarian Cancer. She fought bravely for two and a half years, passing away peacefully at home on October 18, 2004. My recent work layers photographs and digital cyanotypes with text. Through experimentation and manipulation these images are combined into larger visual constructions. Removing pictures from their original context, transforms, and re-invents them. The images focus on my wife from childhood to her passing in 2004.
DARKNESS FALLS:
Hartford Art School Graduate Seminar Professor Dr. Justin Good’s exercise in perception titled the “Blindness Project” required me to blindfold myself for a minimum of four hours. During this experiment I soon realized that sensory and emotional losses are equally devastating. Loss is loss. Without warning, anything in our lives can suddenly and painfully change, or be completely taken away.
Since my wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in May 2002, our lives were never the same. She fought for two and a half years, passing away peacefully at home on October 18, 2004. Though her suffering was over, mine was just beginning. I was forced to confront the emotional pain of grief, loss, and survivor’s guilt without falling victim to self-destruction. I immersed myself in a regimen of constant work, which helped to relieve some of the stress. I never understood what insomnia was until I began making pictures, practicing the drums, and working out at all hours of the day and night. Francisco Goya’s “The Sleep of Reason Produces Nightmares” illustrates exactly how I felt: exhausted, afraid to dream and terrified that I would not wake up.
As a result I entered into psychotherapy, which has helped me to reconnect the broken pathways in my brain. My pictures are a depiction of our lives together. Objects and imagery we were surrounded by infiltrate the work connecting us both as one.
“The ordinary person seeks security by numbing his perceptions against the impact of new experience, the artist delights in this novelty and instinctively creates situations that both reveal it and compensate for it.” Marshall McLuhan
DIGITAL CYANOYPES AND THE COLOR BLUE:
Through the transformative powers of Art, I have discovered ways of combining, image, color, and meaning, in new and original ways. It has helped me on my journey of becoming whole again. Making pictures is personal therapy; Making the connection between the work and my own emotional healing. The color blue stands as a primal symbol, (water and sky), as well as signifying purity in religious icons, such as the Virgin Mary. In author William Gass’ book “On Being Blue” he describes the “blues” as associated with depression and sadness. Blue is the conceptual core of my work. The cyanotype process references many aspects of photography’s past. This palette reflects a recent contextual symbolism.
Cyanotypes reference many aspects of the English language, blue may refer to the feeling of sadness. "He was feeling blue". This is because blue was related to rain, or storms, and in Greek mythology, the god Zeus would make rain when he was sad (crying), and a storm when he was angry. The phrase, “feeling blue" is also linked to a custom among many old deepwater sailing ships. If the ship lost its captain or any of the officers during the voyage, she would fly blue flags and have a blue band painted along her entire hull when returning to port. Blues music is the aural counterpart, referencing sadness and melancholy. It evolved from Negro spirituals and work songs sung by slaves toiling in southern cotton fields. African roots are evident in call and response field hollers carried with them from Africa. Blues embodied real sadness and longing for a return to their native lands.
The traditional cyanotype produces a prussian blue ground, leaving the image outlined in a lighter, softer version of the color. It was invented in 1842 by Sir John Herschel when he discovered the light sensitivity of iron salts. Anna Atkins first used the process at the dawn of photography for her early botanical studies. The cyanotype is a non-silver alternative process that is camera-less. It uses the contact print-as-image (much like a photogram). Moving beyond the traditional, I create digital images that resemble cyanotypes. By utilizing the four-color CMYK printing process I can remove both Magenta and Yellow. The emotional content of the photographs is enhanced using numerous variations of process Cyan.
MEDIA INFLUENCES:
Attempting to create a vintage look to my work, I began a closer examination of the papers used in the printing process from 1940 to the 1960’s. Comic books were printed on highly acidic newsprint and faded quickly from white to yellow to brown if not properly stored. Movie posters, lobby cards and sheet music from the World War Two era were not always printed on the best available paper due to wartime shortages. Many lobby cards were also printed in just one color; in many instances various shade s of cyan. I have used some of these examples as the catalyst for my images. Using cream or gray papers together with layers of cyan and black has created a simulated visual contemporary counterpart. As a result, my work references vintage movie posters, lobby cards, sheet music and comic books. Varying the tone, opacity and layers creates tension between the images. Eliminating all colors but blue and black focuses the viewer on the individual components in each image. Furthermore, the use of blue as the central color emphasizes the mood within the imagery itself. “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.” (Diane Arbus)
THERESA BARSALOU:
Terry fought bravely against the disease, refusing to give up. Her motto was “Keep charging the enemy as long as there is life”. She found this inside a fortune cookie soon after her first chemo treatment. It became her rallying cry for life. Determined not to give in to cancer, she scheduled Chemo every other Friday. This gave her the entire weekend to recover. Terry retained as much of a normal life as possible. Refusing to accept the realities of the disease, she lived her life as if nothing was wrong. Getting up and going to work everyday was her normal routine. She also continued to work on her Doctorate in Social Work at Smith College, never acknowledging that anything was wrong. Many people did not even know she was sick. Only her closest friends and colleagues knew of her illness. It was a shock to many when she died. The endless receiving lines at the funeral home where I listened to endless testimonies about my wife are still overwhelming. The following day the church was filled to capacity. I never knew until then, how very many lives my Terry had touched, in her fifty two years of life. I know she is watching over me; I feel and sense her presence every day. Too many strange and wonderful things have happened for me not to believe that she is here somewhere. Clearly, there is some divine intervention at work which I cannot explain.
“There are people you make your miracle with. It’s strange the way the dead remain among us” Bruce Springsteen
