I had planned to document the stress and strain of what happened with my first solo show. Sadly, I sucked at that; I also sucked at pretty much everything else in my life up until the opening. Bills? Who needs to pay those? I HAVE MATS TO CUT.

I’ve spent the time since the opening first crashing, then scrambling to catch up with all the things I neglected. First on the list of ignored items was myself. In the weeks leading up to the opening, I stopped going to the gym, stopped caring what I was eating (or sometimes if I was eating), and could barely sleep without chemical aid.

I learned a lot about the process of putting together a show, and a lot about the work I’m doing. I put myself through a bit of hell (and next time I will do certain things differently), but I feel as though it was a huge stepping stone. I proved a lot of things to myself; namely, that when it comes down to it, I can get the shit done.

And I did get those 30×30 inch prints after all.

Yesterday I hit a serious snafu when I got some bad news about the big prints I’m having done for the show. I wanted three images printed extra large, at around 30 by 30 inches. Unfortunately, because I live in a small town on an island at the end of the world, sometimes things don’t work out as planned. My printer notified me that he couldn’t get his hands on the media needed to do prints that big for another 4 to 6 weeks, and the biggest paper he has available is 24″ wide. So the oversize prints I’d carefully planned for would shrink to 20×20″.

This sent me into a tailspin for the entire morning and caused me to rethink the show. Ultimately, though, I decided that it would be far too stressful, not to mention too expensive, at this point to make any big changes. So it seems that I’ll be digging up an extra image or two to go in, and doing four or five 20×20″ prints rather than the 3 extra large ones. It’s disappointing, but really the only practical option with less than 3 weeks to go.

Unfortunately, this incident paired with attending a friend’s opening on Monday night during which I watched him scrambling to finish hanging his show during the opening has brought a lot of stress right out of the woodworks. And nowhere does stress become more prominent than in my sleep, where I have a restless night of anxious dreams and awake at 4am to get out of bed and order another set of inks, just in case.

These are 3 of the images I’ve shot for this as-yet-untitled project so far. I have no idea if I’ll continue it after I do my 9th shoot (I’ve got two possible models, here’s hoping one of them works out). I think I need to let it sit with me for a while and see if I feel the need to carry on. I could also just really use some feedback to help me pin it down. My feeling currently, is that it’s a short-term project — a study. I have a couple of other series ideas pecking away at my brain, so my guess is that I’ll move on but maybe add a few more images over time.

The idea for this series just sort of arrived and announced its presence in my head one day. It kept nagging at me, and since my show was coming up, I thought I’d see if I could round up enough people to work with. It’s been a really fun project — I got to meet some great people, and it’s been interesting to do a project that’s so minimal. I have to admit that though I intended it them to be very simple to make it about the gestures, I still hem and haw over just how simple they are. (But I’m the kind of girl who loves a vivid picture.) This is also the first personal project I’ve shot digitally, which I had mixed feelings about, but ultimately it ended up being a good fit.

Generally, this is an experiment in portrait-making, and I wanted to explore a bit with the body language of a person hiding all or part of their face with their hands. I like how even though they’re obscuring some part of their identity from the camera, they somehow (at least to me) seem more vulnerable to it.

Nine images from this series will be included in my solo show, New Moon, which opens on 19 April here in Nelson at Gallery 203.

My opening is one month from today, and I am some combination of panicked and excited. It may not be a big show in New York or L.A. or even Auckland, but this is still a big deal for me. I’m pushing my own buttons and challenging my tendency to shy away from things that necessitate self-promotion. I’m lighting a fire under my own ass, forcing myself to work really hard to pull this thing together. And in the end, even if I don’t sell a single piece, I know the pay off will be huge on a personal level.

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Want.

I love my Hasselblad and have no plans to stop using it. It is one of my most cherished possessions on this planet. Lately, though, I’ve started feeling oddly limited by shooting only square format, and I’m aching to add a camera that shoots 6×7 to my arsenal. My eye is on this baby — the classic Pentax 6×7 camera. She’s a looker. Meow!