New Project (tentatively titled): American Dreaming

Actually, I guess this is a new evolution of a project that I was working on a couple of years ago. It needed to evolve, and still needs to do a bit more before it is working the way I truly want it to. This is a process of discovery, as most of my work is, and I'm loving it.

Speaking of loving it, after graduating college, I took a year and a half off of any serious photo work and completely avoided the business side of it, like making blog updates, creating a website, any in-depth series work, etc, so I could get back to what I loved to do. Art school is a great way to find new and different things to experience and experiment with. You discover things about yourself as an artist that you had never known before, but you can lose a bit of yourself in the melee as well. For me, it was important to take all that I had learned, mix it with what I already possessed, let it quietly simmer for a while, then get back to work when the stew was fully cooked. More simply put, I needed to find my center again. There had been a constant nagging feeling telling me I had to keep up the momentum, had to keep pushing to try to create great things, and after that was gone, it was time to get back to some serious photography work.

Here is the (also tentative) statement for this project:

I have always been attracted to older homes. There is something in the decor and features of them that speaks to my desire to create a happy and healthy past to replace moments in my life that have been neither happy nor healthy. From an early age I started to develop notions of what a good home should be where the family living inside was content. These notions probably came from old television shows, films, and advertisements that were promoting or selling the American Dream. Although ultimately fantasies, they were views into a happy and stable life that I longed for.

Though these reasons may be personal ones for me, I am not alone in my desire to be in touch with these bits of home life and femininity from past eras. There is a trend here in the US toward buying older homes and keeping some of the features, such as old furniture and vintage decor, in the homes when renovating. This trend has even made its way into women's fashion with vintage-style clothing and fabrics. I cannot help but wonder why we, as women, are attracted to these eras that were not particularly friendly to us. In the past, we were expected to stay at home, clean the house, take care of the kids, and place our husbands' needs above our own--the antithesis of the strong, assertive, modern woman. Did we walk away from something valuable to us while attaining some equality with our male counterparts, or are we simply becoming more comfortable in our own skins and are attempting reconcile who we are now with who we were in the past?

Since I cannot live in a house where every room is a staged view into a past era that I would like to experience and even play in, I have created small, dollhouse rooms that I can interact with in some imaginary or dreamlike manner. These vignettes are created solely for the purpose of being photographed so that I can preserve the moment.