Time Still
Time = Tempus (Latin) ➝ Temporary = Ephemeral (slight and perishable)
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
...
Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness…
(T.S. Eliott, Four Quartets: Burnt Norton, I & IV)
'Time Still' speaks of that unattainable fictional point of stillness, or the present, around which Time hinges.
Even in perceived stillness, the present Time is fragmented, ephemeral, and often obscured.
As in 'Letters Between the (Coast) Lines', the medium of artwork - fragmented assembly of photographs printed on airmail paper - attempts to convey these qualities of fragmentation, ephemerality and obfuscation, even as we behold the most life-reaffirming and persistent forms of life.
P.S. 'Tempo' in 'Temporary' has a reference to music - as it relates to the rhythm of the split and reassembled images (a kind of "musical notation") - is something I may like to work into this statement..
Letters Between the (Coast) Lines
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
(Pablo Neruda, Poem # 20, Twenty Love Poems: And a Song of Despair)
…I am what is trying to be that tree, looking for gravity, permanence, home, with my feet planted in the sand as if giving roots, while all around me moves and alters - the air, the sand and the water - eveloping and weighing me ever more, with the passing of time.
This series started evolving as part of a group art exhibit, HERE, in Northampton, MA in 2010.
For me, the meaning of Here is hinged around my experiences as of someone who lives far away from her homeland and from many people close to her, and who has adopted a language she learned well into her 20s. I have, through the years, kept exchanging letters with those I left behind. These handwritten letters kept carrying stories about our lives to one another across the ocean, and became the bond that has kept us close, and nurtured our relationships over time.
This series consists of photographs printed, in fragments, on airmail paper and assembled into collages. Both the content of the images, and the method of their presentation refer to the ephemeral, fragile and sometimes hidden quality of our existence, our relationships and of the ever evolving sense of self, while representing a kind of a bridge between the different lives I have lived, on three different continents, a bridge to "here".
With its lightness and functionality, airmail paper becomes a fragmented canvas for the stories of our lives, the snippets from which we learn about one another. The air and the water in the images become the carriers of life, potent pregnant messengers and sustainers of life itself, while the feet pin my existence to the 'here and the now'.
Daudz mīļu buču! (Many Loving Kisses!)
The title of the sub-series, 'Many Loving Kisses!', alludes to the repetitive - and sometimes banal - language of letters.
Inevitably, at the end of each of my letters to my family and friends in Latvia i will write one version or another of "Daudz mīļu buču!" - Many loving kisses! And every time that banal but loaded sentence will acquire a different tone and weight, depending on the story contained in the letter above it.