Daily Nourishment for November 25, 2024: You Communicate a Lot by the Objects You Choose with Guidance from Lauren Winner
Daily Nourishment Read Time: 60 seconds
Pause/Prompt/Practice Time: 15 minutes
A Note from Lauren: This week’s invitations will each consider a writer or visual artist with a late November birthday. Today is the birthday of photographer Jo Ann Callis (1940).
Pause.
Allowing your breath to slow, take a moment to look:
Untitled, [Hand and Honey] from Early Color Portfolio, Circa 1976
Untitled, [man in window] from the Early Black and White Portfolio, Circa Early 1970's
How did your body feel when gazing at these images?
Which did you wish to longer over? Which move quickly away from?
Prompt.
Callis, who characteristically explores domestic space — or studio space staged to look like domestic space, has spoken about her work in lectures and interviews:
“The images are more about the routine of life, the actions in which we partake every day. I set my photos in a home because having a home is something for which I’m so grateful and consider a backbone to my life. It is the stage for so many crucial things that occur in a lifetime.”
“[Home] is a place of comfort and discomfort. There is a parallel between the two in most everything. I wanted to make work that represented that dichotomy.”
She aims to do “anything to disrupt the normal, a little bit.”
“You communicate a lot by the objects you choose. Picture the house you grew up in. All the places I’ve lived, I remember them, the feelings I had about them. I looked at those rooms and I thought, ‘There’s my life.’“
“If you set the stage well enough, you will communicate something.”
“We come and we go,” Callis has said, “but our things last.” (This seems to me mistaken. Our things break, decay, rust, crumble.)
Practice.
In several of the quotations above, Callis speaks about objects: “You communicate a lot by the objects you choose” and “If you set the stage well enough, you will communicate something” and “our things last.”
Recall the most interesting thing that happened to you yesterday. Then brainstorm eight objects that were part and parcel of that happening. Then decide which two or three of the eight communicate the most about the happening. Then, for five minutes, in a paragraph or poem, write the interesting happening, including those two or three objects and allowing them to communicate whatever about the happening most urgently needs to be communicated.
Or
Write a poem or paragraph set in your home, communicating both comfort and discomfort.
An additional practice to carry with you into the day, or week:
When asked by an interviewer about her “process,” Callis said “It is hard to explain what my creative process is. The process of getting ideas is the most important part of the process for me, and it is often elusive. Where do ideas come from? When I am in the creative mode, I try to become especially sensitive and aware of life and relationships around me. I become attuned to visual and intellectual stimuli, and I try to see how my art can reflect those observations and feelings.” As you go through the day or week," be especially sensitive and aware of life and relationships around” yourself, and “attuned to visual and intellectual stimuli.” If ideas for future writing come, jot them down or voice-memo them. Perhaps find a 20- or 30-minute window to follow one of the ideas.
Want More?
Jo Ann Callis at the Museum of Modern Art
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Today’s Daily Nourishment was provided by Lauren Winner. Lauren Winner is a writer, professor, Episcopal Priest, & spiritual director.
Read Lauren’s full bio here.
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