GETTING IT OUT THERE

This week I have been redoing my website in a new – and supposedly easier – software program incorporating images of my latest work. Sometimes this feels like something outside of my “real work” although it is documentation that allows my work to be known by a wider audience through exhibits, galleries, teaching, etc.

When I first started documenting my work back in high school, the process began with having slides and sometimes prints shot by a professional photographer. Each piece would have full shot and at least one detail. For sculpture, alternate views were necessary. Dupes were expensive and often of lower quality so I would have as many copies shot as I could imagine ever using. Then all these slides had to be labeled and organized into sheets or slide boxes.

Now I still get my work photographed by a professional but he gives me digital images all loaded onto one disk and just a few slides. The slides might not even be necessary but I’m not ready to trust the record of my work to digital media alone.

I love having a website. It is one of the easiest ways to let people see images of my work - simple for me and simple for the viewers.

But of course the site only contains reproductions and reproductions are not the real thing. For a few years, I was part of a program through Seamark Community Arts to introduce K-5 students to famous works of art (the program still goes on just with different volunteers). It was some time before I realized I had to explain how the poster representing the painting was different from the actual painting and how many copies of the poster could exist but only one original. I think most of the kids really didn’t understand why this distinction was so important to me. We are so used to seeing reproductions everywhere from high-end giclée prints to mouse pads.

Reproductions are not only influenced by the quality of the image but also by the method of viewing. I’ll tweak the images on my computer to represent the actual pieces accurately only to have them seem washed out on another monitor or in another program. I tell myself that this is not unlike poorly printed reproductions in books or magazines or slides projected in a light-filled room or merely held up to a window but I still don’t like it.

And there are other compromises. I can choose to build each element of the site myself and have more graphic options or to use the fonts and spacing that my web design software supports. It is similar with this blog - graphic options are limited to certain templates but it is very easy to use.

So I try to tread the path between attention to detail and obsession, to put my time into the aspects that matter the most to me. I try to remember all the wonderful art I know only through reproduction and the joy of seeing it person when I can. We have a wonderful ability to discern the essence of even poorly reproduced images.

So visit my updated website, love my new work and find a way to see it in the flesh someday.