Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Nne (number 4 in Kiswahili)!

That's right! I started painting number 4!!! Frank (below) is almost finished, but I decided to start painting number 4, Beatrice, while he is drying, waiting for his next (hopefully final) coat of paint!






Wednesday, June 6, 2012

For Those of You Wondering...

Why is it called Even Me?
The phrase "even me" is one of those idioms of Tanzanian English. It's used the way Americans would say, "Me too," but coming from a child it sounds so sweet and touching. Always responding with a "Yes, even you," not only verifies that child's statement, but also confirms his or her essential human dignity.

When will you finish all 24 paintings?
Originally, I thought I would finish all 24 paintings by 2014, but I don't want to compromise the quality of the work to reach a certain deadline. With that being said, I hope to finish in a timely mannerI am 100% dedicated to this project.

Where will the paintings end up?
Ultimately, I'm not sure. However, I want to show the 24 piece collection anywhere that's big enough: airports, galleries, warehouses, banks, you name it. I am currently networking and making connections for venues now (so if you have any recommendations, let me know). 

I want to go big. The bigger I go, the more value each painting will hold, which will ultimately increase the price. Increasing the sales is crucial, as all proceeds will go to the child via Rafiki Foundation.

Why don't the paintings have eyes?
“This makes no sense at all. Why would you paint portraits without eyes? The portrait isn’t complete, it’s unfinished – something is missing!”

When this statement was directed towards me regarding my even me project, I couldn’t clearly explain why I was, indeed, leaving the eyes out of twenty-four portraits. The faces are large, and it’s quite noticeable that the eyes are missing. In fact, when I showed the first finished painting to Glory, the subject, the initial response from her sisters was, “Glory! Where are her eyes?” Nonetheless, I still hadn’t come up with an eloquent, genuine answer. Instead, I responded: it’s a new type of portrait; I’m exploring with artistic elements such as composition, negative space, and shape. Pre-verbally, it was more, but I couldn’t muster up the words without sounding hostile in my explanation. However, now I am ready to tell you why I am not painting the eyes.

In today’s society, we have access to anything, everything, all the time. On my way to work, I heard an advertisement for a smart phone. A small, curious boy asks his father a question, “Daddy, what are batteries made out of?” He didn’t know the answer off the top of his head, so the father quickly takes out his phone and, with a sigh of relief, types or speaks his son’s question. Within seconds, he explains, “Batteries are made out of five basic components: a resilient plastic container, positive and negative internal plates made of lead, plate separators made of porous synthetic material, electrolyte, a dilute solution of sulfuric acid and water, better known as battery acid, and lead terminals, the connection point between the batter and whatever it powers.” He is happy, his son is informed, and we are convinced to buy a smart phone. Convenient, immediate, accurate: the world is at our fingertips.



Not only has technology given us the ability to know all the answers, but it has made every corner of the world virtually accessible to anyone. I can see the Northern Lights, the ancient pyramids, the Taj Mahal, or the Petrified Forest with a few clicks. I can see whatever I want. This availability makes me wonder: if I’ve seen the images, have I experienced it? I know what it looks like, and my imagination can only take it from there. 

Imagine this situation: my friend recounts in great detail her trip to Zion National Park, and I respond with an unimpressed, “Oh, cool, well, I’ve seen pictures, I know.” Or, “Did you make it to Watchman trail, the one that takes about two hours? Hopefully you didn’t hike it during mid-day, because it gets pretty hot. The best time to hike it is either in the early morning or late afternoon. I’ve read all about it. I know.” We can Google Maps any remote spot in the world and speak as though we’ve been there, experienced it.



What if all this access and availability is tricking us? Have we truly experienced by solely seeing? What about the other four senses?  What about the emotion and spirituality that come with these? Honestly, I haven’t lived Zion National Park – I don’t know what the canyons smell like, what the wind feels like, what the dust tastes like, or what the desert echoes sound like.



So what happens when we see commercials about starving children in Tanzania? We see the white man holding the sickliest, most frail-looking child in an effort to convince us to get involved, to give money, or at least to reconsider tossing our leftovers in the wastebasket. This overplayed commercial has turned into a cliché. In a multitude of settings, school cafeterias, five star restaurants, at our own dinner tables, we hear: “(Child’s name), there are (adjective) kids in (country).”  This is followed by, “So eat your food.” Has the starving child only convinced us to clean our plates? Surely, that wasn’t the objective of the commercial.



On the other hand, because we’ve seen the images of the Tanzanian child’s big eyes, her jigger-eaten toes, pointy ribs, and sorrowful face, we have visually experienced her situation. Because we’ve seen it, maybe we can imagine what it would be like, to some extent. But for the most part, we continue on with our normal day-to-day, guilt-free lives: after all, we’re here, they’re there.


The reality is, the Tanzanian girl has seen. But she has also smelled, tasted, heard, and touched without needing to use her imagination. Those eyes may have seen her father kill his wife, and then himself. That nose may have smelled the fumes of alcohol that accompany physical abuse. Those lips may have tasted blood after being beaten by a jealous and contemptuous stepfather. Those ears may have heard her mother, in an effort to support her family, moan as a stranger forces himself into her. And perhaps those fingers have held the paper with her national exam scores, while her heart felt the utter hopelessness caused by an impossiblecorrupted test for which the schools cannot prepare their students, and which dictates an unfavorable future. And we think we’ve experienced something by seeing a photograph.

Something is missing. Something is not quite right. And that is exactly what I want people to feel when they look at a wall of eyeless portraits: dissatisfaction. I hope that this emotion will evoke questions, “Why are the eyes missing?  What has this child seen?” I don’t want to tell the whole story, because we don’t know the whole story. Not one of us, me included, has any idea what these children have enduredIf I give the impression that the whole story is told, like it appears to be in the starving children commercial, we leave unchanged. We feel as though we’ve experienced, and thus, can relate. If the eyes, the windows to one’s soul, remain unseen, we feel cheated. We feel wronged, like there is something more, but we can’t know it.


Even Me is funded through 
kickstarter.