Stretching the truth

With Photoshop Elements, all of my images can be put on layers that can be handled independently. I can remove backgrounds, re-size, change location, or manipulate their appearance in any number of ways. Usually, I start by removing everything from a photo that I know I don't want. Then I might separate the photo into separate parts. Below are two versions having different layers visible. 

In this version, I 've enlarged the background structure and brought it a little bit forward. I've put some bank safe doors into the structures to see how that looks, along with the row of safes. I'm pleased with how the forms of these structures relate to each other.

Now in this version, I added a transparent layer of the man. Maybe he is a ghost? Could I make that happen with fabric? Possibly, but I wouldn't want to use a technique that would call undo attention to one area. Have to keep this in mind. I put in a bigger safe behind the man, trying it out as a monument. I can eliminate this, just doesn't make any sense. 

I want to have everything look as if it belongs where it is. Believable realism relies on how humans typically perceive their world. We expect a certain consistency. For example, if you are looking at a scene from above, you can't put in an item that shows it being seen from below - it just wouldn't make sense. If a scene occurs during a dull cloudy day, it wouldn't make sense to have a gleaming highlight or intense shadow. If something doesn't look right, it will ruin the atmosphere. The truth can be stretched, but only so far. 

How about the people?

How do you remember people? I want people in my quilt going about different ways of remembering - photographs, stories, thinking. Maybe groups of people; people interacting.

This is a pose I think would work well. Two seated people looking at a photo album. Their faces are not important. One person holds an album in their lap while the other cranes their neck to see.

                                                           

I love this group, especially the woman with her head thrown back in laughter. The body posture will be important to convey a dynamic conversation going on.

Another group, casually seated together, celebrating during Dios de Los Muertos.  Their postures are relaxed, and again a figure has their head thrown back, with what I imagine to be laughter.

I've started to remove the background from  my husband's photo of a Oaxacan  father and his kids. I'd really like to use the pose of the man.  He seems to be quietly resigned to his thoughts.  The folded hands and slight slouch help to give that feeling.  Something about him - his  weight, his posture,  something - reminds me of my brother also, so that would be good to put in this quilt.

Now that I've selected a lot of reference images, 

how are they going to look together?

set decorating

I've found some interesting photos and I've been playing around with them to see if any ideas gel.
This photo shows the colorful flags that I think will be good for adding the bright, festive tone. They also would be very useful for perspective. I could have them draping from foreground to background, with an extreme size difference. That would help describe the space that the figures are in, how close or how far back they are.

The structure of the building is a bit too block-y - the dark ached doorway is intriguing - but the rest would read only as a solid mass. (Guess I should expect mass from church!)

How about the shapes below for structures? They're quite complicated. I do want to keep in mind
that I will be constructing this from fabric.

Looking back at the photo I posted the other day, I see a part that captures my eye. I like the simplicity of the structures in the background, and they remind me of the church structure above. The attached crosses I could take out: what if I replaced them with keys, maybe the old fashioned skeleton keys? I like the color palette that is in this area also - have to keep this in mind.

The cemetery
Hari Polansky, 2008


 

Googling around, I found some pictures of bank safes.  I have in my head that it's a visual I want to use, but just how will they fit in? They're symbolically interesting, but not too visually dynamic. They have to "read" as a safe and not just some clunky boxes, otherwise the symbolism won't work. Substituting a bank safe for cemetery vault is what I'm after. 

One of my favorite tools

My Wacom Tablet

As long as I'm finding images, maybe I'll photoshop a composition together. I use Photoshop Elements; it's more user friendly than the full Photoshop and has everything I need to do photo compositions and edits. I use a Wacom Drawing Tablet that I absolutely love! It has a pen type of tool that is way easier to control than clicking a mouse, although it does have a mouse too. I can easily change backgrounds or colors, merge parts of photos together, and do all kinds of fun stuff. It's easy to get lost in image manipulation and get sidetracked by what I started out to do!

Interesting visuals

Father and children, Oaxaca, Mexico

Hari Polansky, 2008

I need certain elements in the picture to portray my theme, and they have to be depicted accurately. If proportions are off or the perspective isn't consistent, it will affect the believability factor of the atmosphere I want to create. So I need reference images.

I've taken photos in Oaxaca, Mexico during their October Dios de La Muertes Festival. Amazing to be amongst the parades, decorations, and festivities meant to celebrate and honor deceased loved ones. The local cemeteries are crowded with friends and families who picnic, play music, or quietly reminisce, surrounded by flowers and bits of color. I want this feeling of joyous rememberance. I'll have to put in groups of people, and color; lots of color.

Mexican flags

Susan Polansky, 2008

Back to the idea of keeping things and memories, I've got ideas for this: keys and bank safes. Keys fit in so nicely with the theme. So important to us, and yet meaningless by themselves. And the bank safes - a personal image, but fitting with the theme also, if I can figure in a way to make them work. My dear brother, who passed away three years ago, had over a hundred safes (locked, without combinations)  in his horde of machinery and tools.  But more on that another day.

The cemetary

Hari Polansky, 2008

I do a lot of searching for pictures that interest me,  using Google Images and my own photos. And I start drawing...

I'm back and I'm ready

I'm ready to commit to an idea. That's a big step, knowing that I will be involved with this project for quite a long time. My last quilt was three years in the making! But that's not exactly fair, as I had little time or focus for creative work. During the dark period of losing eleven people through unrelated events, I was fortified by the hope that I would one day return to my art with more insight and resolve.

Barometer of Excuses
Susan V. Polansky,  2012

I was rewarded for my patience with the best piece that I have done. "No One but You" has been accepted into Quilt National 2013, a prestigious biennial show - sort of the Holy Grail for art quilters. The headline picture for this blog is an excerpt from that work, which I will put up on my new website.

Finishing a big piece always leaves me at loose ends.  It's a fragile period, being between projects. I battle doubts that I will never make anything worthwhile again or never come up with an interesting idea. The best cure is to focus on process, not end points. These things I make are souvenirs, it's the traveling to get where I'm going that is so fascinating. I look at the end product as a summation of how I got there, and see it as a roadmap to where I should head next. So while ideas were incubating, I completed some spontanious smaller works, and also had some fun with mixed media.

Does this mean anything?

Over the last several years I have had many occasions to ponder how and what we keep. Humans have a curious nature of collecting "stuff" and imbuing things with meaning. What becomes of all these precious possessions when the owner is no longer here? Do these things matter to any one else? Some objects are beautiful or interesting enough on their own, and there is little question to why one may have kept them. But how about the odd items? Was it a special keepsake, did it have significance? No one will know why I've kept a cracked blue marble necklace or the brick with white paint on it. Some things are just private, singular memory holders, they only work for the owner. Did my brother keep a broken lamp in a bank safe because it meant something to him? Mysterious unless someone holds the key to meaning. But sometimes a special thing becomes special to someone else, not for the same reason, but just because it was a special possession and reminds the next person of the original owner. Momentos and personal possessions can be so powerful, as if some energetic bond still existed.

I have experienced the passing away of so many people in the last few years, and gone through the awful passage of grief to remembrance. In the piece that I have started working on, I want to celebrate those lives. I've sorted, saved or discarded their physical possessions, and am left with questioning how to keep their memories alive. Do we lock things up to keep them safe or bring them out to share with others? My piece will be about life and death, celebration and reflection.
 
At least, that's what I thinking now.