Fire in the Water, Rodeo Beach | Mark Lindsay
By the time my new website was up my mind was thrashed. I asked myself; is this about HTML and CSS coding or is it about art? I often ask a similar question when physically installing a show. There are so many details that seem unrelated to the art itself. Hanging nails aren't really that different than an HTML tag. The stuff can be annoyingly finicky but if we want our art out in the world, we have to learn to present it properly and with the same care with which we initially made it. And that is as demanding as making the work in the first place.
The trap is that we neglect or are too weary to make new work after an exhausting installation. Not only is installing art (or installing a web site) physically taxing, the emotion of sending forth our work into the world is an emotional drain. We kick the fledgling out of its nest, hoping that it can damn well fly. There aren't a lot of safety nets in art. And if the art isn't working when it's up on the wall (or the web) the feeling deep in the gut burns like fire.
Yesterday, I needed to get away from all of it. So, I took my sorry butt to the Marin Headlands—the camera and I on an outing. I went up to the old bunkers to continue my work on the Relic of Fear project, the beginnings of which you can find on my home page. After a half hour I got sick of old bunkers and muttered to myself that I needed to lighten up and breathe. I needed a beach and some sun and some air. And I needed to focus my eyes on—to borrow a photography term—infinity. Luckily, when in the Headlands, a beach is never far away.
Sometimes the best images are found when you focus on nothing (aka, infinity). Coming back from the beach, ready to go home, a dozen potential images came into view. They were the most compelling perspectives I'd seen all day. There there were, dancing fire on the water, shadows, reflections, life in motion. Today's image is one of the photos I made. Refocusing is like taking the first breath all over again.