“When people are under a long period of chronic, unpredictable stress, they develop behavioral anhedonia,” Dr. Wehrenberg said, meaning the loss of the ability to take pleasure in their activities. “And so they get lethargic, and they show a lack of interest — and obviously that plays a huge role in productivity.” We Have All Hit a Wall, nytimes.com
Personally I've felt like I'm eye-ball deep in this season of some kind of transition. "Eye-ball deep" sounds so much more positive than "drowning," so I'll lean into that optimism for now. It's hard to describe the transition and what's on the other side, but here we are.
A wild part of the time we're in has been a general boredom and lack of interest in the imagery I'm seeing. I'm not sure I've ever dealt with something like this considering what I do for a living and how overly saturated we are with visual imagery. Again, I'm not confident in describing it, but it feels like it's easy to make beautiful images, but they feel incredibly empty. So many things look the same right now that almost nothing stands out. Things just feel so uninteresting. No question that goes for anything I've been shooting, but I'm still trying.
It's been so long since normal that even getting back to some kind of familiar feels off. My first instinct is to mention how long it's been since I've worked, but the reality is that I've been working this whole time. I'm shooting a lot less than I'd like, I'm not behind a camera on as many projects as I'd want, but it seems like that energy has gone into other outlets. The last few months have certainly felt like I've been grasping at straws or simply throwing things at the wall and moving on with what sticks.
Thankfully public and university libraries in my area have started opening up again and I've gone out of my way to get lost in the stacks when I can. The last couple weeks in libraries have pulled double duty with the usual hopes of serendipity plus research into my rubber stamp documentary project. So far I've not found a ton of content around rubber stamps, but that's led me into other avenues of printmaking (linocuts, Japanese woodblock, etc.).
The University of Oklahoma Fine Arts Library is one of my favorite places at the moment considering all the out there nonsense I find and the ideas they lead to. I'd mentioned the Trapped in Oklahoma Instagram account of old Oklahoma underground music ephemera to one of the OU Fine Arts librarians and they directed me to Ephemeral Art. By all means check into Andy Goldsworthy and his natural sculptures.
I keep coming back to this idea of a documentary about rubber stamps. The wall behind my desk is slowly being covered in Post-it notes with ideas and directions all in hopes of getting somewhat organized. I've reached out and connected with multiple artists online and that's led to even more questions to ask and people to meet. What's great is that the more I'm looking, the more I'm finding. The hard part at this point is trying to sift through and figure out what I'll do with all I've come across.
One of the more interesting rubber stamp pockets I've found on the internet is StampZine, "an international rubber stamp assembling zine in the Sanizdat tradition compiled by Picasso Gaglione." Over the weekend I got incredibly uncomfortable and made 20 original rubber stamp prints to submit to an upcoming edition.
I'm just hoping the practice of process will help me during this transitional season. It's not like I have a map.
