I bought a film camera couple weeks ago and have no idea what I am doing but I am having fun. It’s takes me a while to set up a shot, I squint and check with both eyes to see if subjects are in focus, I get the aperture and the shutter speed rings confused and my photos will either be too bright or too dark. I hit click on the shutter and don’t know if I actually advanced to a new slide of film.
I pull the metal camera out of my bag, all 2.5 kilograms makes it’s presence feel less casual than just snapping a photo on my phone. Its a declaration of power. Here comes a photographer taking photos. But it feels silly to have brought my camera along and chicken out just because I don’t know what I am doing. Art is an interruption of a pattern and I am interrupting the pattern of brunch to make art.
I stand on the sidewalk directing friends to move closer into the sun. People walk around me apologizing for getting “in the shot”. I reach my hands up to remind all people on the street I have “no idea what I am doing”. I am not an photographer I am mearly a simple human women. I beg with the people of the sidewalk, there is no authority to be found with my camera slung around my neck, I am different, I am a mortal.
I whisper right before I hit the shutter to a crowd of people watching me press the shutter
I am safe when I create. It is safe more me to be seen. And even more so, it is safe for me to try.
All artists want to do is make our art. Take the photo, paint a picture, teach a class, have the thing inside us that begs, screams and kicks down the doors to get out. “Wouldn’t it be nice to take photos of my friends in front of the rose bushes”. Our vision of a new world a “woudln’t it be cool if”’s and the ideas that keep us awake right as we are about to fall asleep.
I often think about the “consequences” of our actions. As in – when we get what we want. We advance the film, press click, put our work up on walls and galleries and tell the people we are open for business. We get exactly what we asked for. But still the desire to shrink and shirk it off is there.
The never ending balance between the artists wanting to hide in their hole and never come out again but then I wonder why we paited in the first place if we didn’t want some part of us to be seen. Understood.
A small thread of us to be woven into the eyes of the people that pass it by on our ways to work and the thing we think about in traffic. “wouldn’t it be nice to take photos of my friends in front of the rose bushes”.
It is safe to try.
MY SUMMER SABBATICAL begins this week! I will be less online this summer as I work on finishing my first book of essays. Think non-finction sci-fi fantasy memoir about grief, intergeneral trauma and neuro-divergence and (I am genre-less baby! 💃🏻)
I will be releasing current drafts of essays to paid subscribers throughout the summer. Having folks pay for access to my art allows me to show up and feel SO SAFE to be seen knowing the tender pieces of my heart are not being cast into random corners of the internet but into inboxes that can hold me + in + ourselves together. 💕
I deeply believe in paying artists for their work and the work art/content we consume. To be cohesive with my values I allow readers to pay for the work I create here 🤸♀️ If you love my writing, get value and resource from it consider becoming a paid subscriber!
FINDINGS
On the pod this week! MY favourite conversation we are NOT having 🔥🌎🔥
In The Roots members are popping up in our digital studio space this summer. Lisa Pfau is kicking it off with Poetry in the Park July 29th @ 1pm PWYC 💕
waiting for the yucca in my yard to bloom
Watching the folks from this co-horts How To Make Art/Biz bring their ideas to life and hit publish
1:1 Rates are going up in July $150 —> $200 After a years of working with clients 1:1 and witnessing their incredible results unfold (like watching them stick that price tag on with CONFIDENCE, articulate their worth and bring their ideas to life), I have decided to raise my 1:1 rates. In July my rate is going to $200/hr, if you buy a session between now and June 30th you can reserve a session at $150/hr (if you have and q’s hit “reply” on this email 💕)
big love
Phoebe 💕🌸