Honing Ubiquity
I silently congratulated myself for waiting until we got to the lobby of our hotel on Calle Sol in Viejo San Juan before snapping my first photograph. It’s not unusual for me to start documenting a trip to a new city at the airport or on the cab ride to the hotel; finding myself this deep into the vacation without a picture was a feat. When traveling I’ve learned to stow my mobile phone in the most accessible places as I can easily add to the camera roll at the rate of 50+ photos per day. While I started a little slow, this trip would be no different.
The camera plays a major role in the early stages of my making process. Not because I want to reproduce exactly what I see, but because I want to discover the essence of the place through observation. Photography helps me find the intersection of what interests me and what the place I’m visiting is all about. I’m compelled to photograph the new or exotic, to the point of ubiquitousness. The primary subjects I am drawn to emerge from the shadows, and color palettes are coaxed into being.
I began to get a little discouraged (and embarrassed) when 300 photos in I still couldn’t imagine how I would make a statement about my Puerto Rico experience through my art. The island was colorful, not at all flamboyant (with the exception of the iconic El Flamboyán tree). It was a tropical vacation spot, but frills were not flaunted, rather they seemed to be ordered from a secret menu, if ordered at all. Shellers wouldn’t have much to carry home, but the shoreline sparkled in multi-colored sea glass and the warm water glowed at night in camera shy bioluminescent bays. Tropical flowers had to be hunted down while chickens roamed the streets and beaches in packs. Puerto Rico wasn’t what I had expected it to be, and I was blinded by this incongruence.
As atonement for the excessive amount of data center storage space my digital photos were consuming, I challenged myself to ensure every image counted by making a thumbnail sketch of each, focusing on whatever it was about the subject that made me want to memorialize it in the first place. These tiny drawings require compositions to be simplified, scenes distilled to one or two meaningful elements to get the point across. What emerged once I weeded out true duplicates, were twelve pages of sketches. I learned that most of the photos made for beautiful line drawings that would never progress any further, and a few were living their best lives as photographs to be uploaded to the digital picture frame. There were ten that seemed truly promising for watercolor collage. I was happy to be swimming in such abundance.
Fast-forward to me back on the mainland, in my studio, focused on those ten, making charcoal and watercolor sketches to further narrow the field, and painting after painting of collage materials in my chosen palette. The finished series captures the brilliance of my experience and wouldn’t be possible without all those photographs and the translation to thumbnail sketches. My finished work is often compilations of many views, embellished to play up the focus of my fascination. I chose compositions that show the land from the water and the water from the land. The pieces hone in on what made the trip truly sparkle for me: dots of color against vibrant solids carving the lush organic lines of mountainsides, shore and water, whether it be brightly colored houses nestled in the hills in “La Costa de Fajardo” or a shoreline and big sky full of sea glass in “Sea Glass, Playa Doña Lala”. The patterned lighthouse towering atop the water in “El Faro de Rincón”. And, of course, the chickens; I just couldn’t resist “El Pollo de Dorado”. They really were everywhere.
