EMBODIMENT-An Exhibit

These are the images that are being exhibited in this show.....all of the black and whites were scanned from negative film shot over the past 20 or so years.

Mannequin & Mask


Fear of Commitment


Death Walks Among Us


Mortality Dance


Bird Mask


Camillia & Mask



The Sage/Papper Hand Puppets

Toy Camera

The last few weeks have been hard to pin down as to where my head's been. I've hardly picked up a camera since returning from the road trip productions in Pennsylvania...that just doesn't happen. I think my very cells are rearranging, readjusting, regrouping from the experience of revisiting those homes of my past. I'm not going to post any more of the images from this new series; the two previous posts are all that I can do for now. The rest of the files are in the hard drive (+ 2 backups)....and there shall they remain, sweet little pixels, until I decide it's time to view them with the fresh eye of objectiveness, which now is impossible.

So, in the meantime.. I was going through some toy camera images to gather a submission for an upcoming juried exhibition in Vermont with the subject of the show being "Dreams and Fantasies." By way of explanation, a toy camera is really just that; it's plastic, including the lens. The body doesn't fit tightly to the back, so it has light leaks. I love mine; some people tape their cameras but I don't. Also known as "crappy cameras" they have names like Holgas, Diana, Banner. Mine is a Banner and I've had it forever. it uses 2-1/4 film. It has a little lever that goes "click" and there ya go....

Los Angeles - Deep Muck Cultural Concerns

Tearing scabs off the cultural landscape
reveals bloody layers of previously picked
and poked layers of man-made icons,
celebrity bandages, and billboard gauze
barely covering the oozing yellow infection
of our self-inflicted wounds.

Forever recycling endless pretty impostors
not truly believing the lines written for them,
A hint of understanding lurks too deeply behind the surface
of dissassociated denial
to take anything at face value.
The face has been cosmetically altered
anyway,
sabatoging the wisdom of age from celebrating
anything remotely substantial.

Irony splashs shiny glossy over
neo-reality, post-realism, nilism and hip-hop.
A new paint job hurriedly washes the slick
oily walls of current ideas,
leaving barely a moment of fresh, if not quiet,
rectangles of silence, before a new multiplicity of
one sheets, TV sweeps, .coms, or yet unpublished
graffitti take fleeting residence.

Poets move words around each other
searching for new turns and embraces
to end
the pain of separation.
Few can describe the eternity of their recurrent
anguish.

Artists rehash history, reinvent conceptual redundancy
then beat themselves to death for not communicating
their deepest struggle for transformation and ascension .


How many can break thru barriers of their own forgotten making
into realms of the invisible, unspeakable fullness?
Some actions take the courage of outrage
Some, the strength of a whisper
Whatever the form, faith is the master.

Some true mad souls keep reaching
Thru the quicksands of culture.
Not clinging to the seeking,
they struggle.
Not clinging to the struggle,
they seek.

- Ellen Giamportone
1999