PATTERNS AND TONES

The more I dig into the idea of the collective psyche , the more I realize how little we verbally discuss the issues of death and dying. We are more comfortable with visually seeing death than we are actually discussing it. Just ask yourself why we all slow down for a traffic accident... I believe this suppression of vocalizing our feelings on the subject finds a way to express itself in our fascination with fictitious characters we have conjured up to help us deal with these internal feelings. Perhaps its not just our American culture but the Modern World which has since shed their folkloric traditions, that helped to allay the fears of death, decay and denied desires, and replaced them with these fictional archetypes. The Vampire is a perfect example of how we project our fantasies on to a mythical character . Its existence in our popular culture can be seen as our way to explore the dark and repressed aspects of our personalities. Folklore on the Vampire can bee se...

The Contortionist I feel at home in the world of archetypes and hidden messages. I love puzzles and late night Mystery Theater .  Perhaps this explains why I am drawn to and photograph certain motifs over and over again. Art from as early as 3,000 BC has been imbued with symbols and allegories that helped pass down stories and customs. Romans, as seen in my earlier blog "Of Gods and Goddesses" , perfected the use of secular allegorical symbols. And even during the height of the Renaissance through the 18th century, allegorical paintings were the modus operandi. Modern Art discarded the use of iconographic objects, except in the case of my very favorite periods of creativity: Dada, Cubism and Pop Art which employed the use of modern culture to stand in for the ancient symbols that had been utilized for centuries. The Clown As a photographer, amusement parks, circuses and local carnivals are such a hot bed of cultural archetypes, its hard not to captur...

In the middle of 1999, I was catapulted down Highway 5 and ended up living in Los Angeles. How a Northern California girl moves to Southern California always contains elements of heartbreak and loss. It was true, I was looking for a new life down here in LA and all I knew was that I wanted to be warm, have my own apartment and have my own car. The choices were clearly between New York and Los Angeles. I had the same amount of friends and contacts in each city but my requirements whittled the choice down to the unthinkable, a move to the southern part of the State! Those were the years when a mass exodus was happening (at least in my view) from San Francisco. Prices were comparable and at times even surpassing New York standards. I couldn't complain. I was living in an 1887 Italianate Victorian for free, so I wasn't really feeling the pinch. When it came time to leave though, I knew I wanted to go further than I had before. I'm was born and raised in the Bay Area....

While living in San Francisco from 1987 - 1999, I had the great opportunity to photograph many, many bands in my studio as well as performing live throughout the Bay Area. I had a small but lovely studio right between the two female statues on the outside facade of the Warfield Building . I shared it with my friend, Michelle Wilson .  I shot there from 1995 until late 98. Me and Russell  Being a singer myself, my love for music spilled over into my photography and the two have been intertwined ever since. In 1985 I started hanging out in San Francisco. Karen Finley (the writer not the performance artist!) took me to my first gig: The Pandoras and Voice of America at The Mabuhay Gardens on Broadway. Seeing those bands play at The Mab changed the course of my life forever.  I was introduced to Russell Quan sometime back in 1988 through our mutual friend Christof Certik, himself a very talented musician. It was Russell's sweet and kind demeanor whic...