Magdalene

On Most Recent Work:

Seamstress Studio

 

Even though she spent her days as a housewife and seamstress for the neighboring women, she always upheld class and poise.  There was not one breakfast that she would serve without her red coral lipstick on.  That was my grandmother’s “role,” her place in the world.  Zofia was a wife, a grandmother, a cook, a housekeeper, a child’s hero, but most importantly, a woman.  These days, our roles are not so clearly defined (and we are fortunate for that).  We establish ourselves as employees, lovers, students, artists and even role models.  We often become seekers as well.  We try to find a new definition, a sense of establishment.  We built our own persona in a world that has dissolved strict expectancy.  Who are we as women?  What is it that unites us?  What lessons can we take from our past?

I chose to work with the old and new, juxtapose the traditional housewife with the modern woman.  I acknowledge the fact that we never abandoned personal anxiety created by a need to define ourselves. This series of art is dedicated to that search.  I used kitchen cabinet doors, remnants of my grandmother’s seamstress workshop, as well as my own insecurities, to try and find a definition for myself.  By no means am I trying to provide answers, rather I have  found this process an investigation into my past, my tradition, and my current circumstances.    

 

Mystic Garden

Magdalene Gorecki

 

Early Morning

Botanical Gardens

September

 

Its early morning, the sun has just begun another journey, up toward the heavens.  The senses awaken with its journey.  Colors begin to grow in intensity, yet each flower keeps its secrets hidden. The petal allows colorful brilliance to radiate privately.  Dew drops refresh and stimulate the leaf upon which they lye.  This is a magical and mystical moment before life amplifies, a moment of organic meditation.  It’s perfect calmness.  It’s that moment where nature awakens.  It’s at that fragile and fleeting moment that this garden shines, literally.  The aroma of innocence crates a filter of marvel and wonder.  The untouched and chaste vegetation awaits its daily work of survival.  And I, the photographer, without disturbing this delicate state, witness and document early morning’s splendor. 

Bare
India Ink Painting

I find myself conflicted as an artist. I am both a photographer and a painter. As a photographer, I have always preferred black and white to color. The sheer elegance that a black and white image produces reflects both purity and boldness. The sharp contrast maintains a softness in gray, while it fills with tension. I have also found myself, in recent years, seeking similar dynamics and juxtaposition in painting. I experimented with analogous and monochromatic paintings, but they never provided the intensity I saw in black and white. I decided to simplify my pallet, as a painter, to pure black. As I began to work, I rediscovered the emotion captured in a photograph. Paint, however, has a quality of momentum and fluidity that a photograph often lacks. While I am still passionate about photography, I have found sheer joy in painting with India ink, and other media as long as my pallet was restricted to the color of shadow, Black on a white surface just screams tension, irony, and struggle. It also provides a burst of energy.

Black and White

Simplicity in elegance, complexity in spectrum. Black and white struggle against each other, creating visual tension. Black is noise, white is silence. Black is chaos, white is clarity. With color, one can achieve tranquility. But by simply mimicking color of the natural world, I loose my artistic sensibility. Duality, however, is natural. Duality is black and white. While I elude from color, I retain a parallel to nature nonetheless. My palette is in solitude, as is my figure. Each figure exists alone. I strip her from color, I strip her from context. She exists in complex solitude, in complex reduction of color, only to provide us with contrast, conflict, and potential energy. She is strong, bold, and ready to be seen.

Metamorphosis

Photography/ Alternate Process

1. A transformation, as by magic or sorcery.
2. A marked change in appearance, character, condition, or function.
3. Biology. A change in the form and often habits of an animal during normal development after the embryonic stage. Metamorphosis includes, in insects, the transformation of a maggot into an adult fly and a caterpillar into a butterfly and, in amphibians, the changing of a tadpole into a frog.

Metamorphosis, simply put, is change, transformation.  It can be physical, emotional, or spiritual.  Often times, there is no personal motive for the transformation, but an uncontrolled, organic condition.  The concept is applicable to science, myth, fantasy and the human spirit.  What forces act upon the human’s ability to change, to want to change, to accept change?  As an artist, I control the change, in process, and I photograph the one material that seems to almost exist purely due to the fact that it can constantly change.  I, therefore, apply the concept of metamorphosis in two ways:  subject matter and process. The subject:  plastic.  I photographed storefronts displaying plastic figures made into various toys, mannequins and commodities.  The flexibility, tolerance and indifference of plastic’s properties creates a welcoming foundation for metamorphosis.  The process: photo transfers.  I photograph the subject, decontextualizing it, isolating it, and preserving its status in time.  In my photo the subject’s shape can no longer transform.  The medium, however, can.  I take the image and transfer it onto watercolor paper.  Same image, but I have altered the visual effect.  Now the once photo is morphed into a painting.The process and plastic: transforming, reinventing, and being reborn into something more elite, perhaps, or simply something different.