Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Witness with Blue Hair (1984)

When I first tried to upload the images for today, I got this message: Safari can’t open the page “http://www2.blogger.com/upload-image.do”. The error was: “bad server response” (NSURLErrorDomain:-1011) 

 After trying a few things, I noticed that I was trying to upload a TIFF image instead of a JPEG image. Once I converted the image to JPEG, there was no problem. What a relief to be able to figure that out! 

Visual art forms bear witness, as do the written word and the spoken word and song. This witness is singing. The second image above no longer exists except as a reproduction. The first image is a cropped version (created using iPhoto) of the reproduction. 

After I had thought this pastel drawing was complete and after I had photographed it sometime in 1984, the red and black bars on the left side of the drawing began to bother me. They seemed to limit and inhibit this witness, so I got out my scissors and removed the left side of the drawing but failed to photograph the cropped version. 

Sometime later, I was showing photographs to a man who was interested in buying one of my drawings. He asked about the uncropped photograph of "Witness with Blue Hair." When I told him that I had cropped it, he said that if I would reattach the cropped part, he would buy the drawing. I refused, but he bought another drawing instead. A short time later, another man bought the cropped version.

2 comments:

Loren said...

I can't figure out why, but I prefer the original version, too.

Perhaps it's merely that it comes closer to the traditional shape of a negative.

Perhaps it's because the bars add another dimension to the witness.

Perhaps our own arbitrary decisions about our art tell as much about us as the subject of the art.

am said...

Yes, the original image is the one I would choose today.