Something's Been Bugging Me

Something’s Been Bugging Me

I'm missing something. It's a small and insignificant thing. I've been looking for it for months now.

I think maybe it’s bugs. Or dust? A seed. A smallish little something.

I've got this collection of cyanotypes I did over the summer where I was trying to capture what summer feels like. The grass is a little long and going to seed. The big round circle of a sun cutting through the translucent green canopy overhead. The work is so close, and yet it's missing something. I can't quite put my finger on it. Like a sandwich that just needed a little mustard but didn't get any.

This is a cyanotype. The image is already made. I can't go back and expose some bugs onto it. It's like a Polaroid. One shot and its done. And yet. it needs some mustard.

So I've been making bugs. Ink bugs. Gold leaf bugs. Bleach bugs. Paint bugs. Bugs sewn with thread. Months of bugs. None of them are right.

I could do this if I was a real artist. I could do this if I'd gone to art school. I could do this if I had any innate talent. I could do this if I wasn't just playing. Pretending.

I think maybe it's not the bugs. I think there is something else missing. I don't think I will find it in the images.

Part of me want's to add something. Something to finish it. To mark it as Art, done. Indisputable.

Another part of me is remembering standing outside making these images. The wind shifting the grass. The vastness of the pale blue sky spreading out overhead. The space. I don't remember bugs. I remember standing outside, away from my kids, and my news feed, and my bills, and all the rushing I'm always doing, and just being in this big, bright, empty space.

In that moment I wasn't worried if I belonged there. I didn't ask if I was allowed to be making art or if I was doing it wrong. I was taking the light from the sun, the shadows of the grass and leaves that were growing around me, and using them to record this one moment in space and time.

If art making is an attempt to capture the truth of an experience then I've done what I came to do. Art, made.

It's me that isn't finished. The bugs, there but missing, are what these need. To remain unfinished.

Maybe the bugs are there, but under the leaves where you can't see them. Maybe if I stand here staring for long enough they'll come out.