Geneve Journal: The Kickstarter Campaign

Here it is. I've launched my kickstarter project. The details are, of course, in the video and on the kickstarter project page.
 

Here it is.

I've launched my Kickstarter project.  Details about the project are in the video above and the accompanying narrative over on the Geneve Journal Kickstarter Page .....and added history and reflections on aspects that are at the core of this project can be found in Geneva related posts on this blog.

So I knew I had to return this year -- and make a project of it.  I don't have the liberty of time as I did back then, but the gesture of a return, accompanied with a broader comparative look between the creative response to place and moment of the 20 year old artist and the 40 year old artist might be interesting.  Of course, It would be interesting to me - that's core driver to all my work, but the challenge would be to address the more universal aspects of revisiting a past and tracing the tracks of paths taken.  

I make my work for myself, without regard to whatever audience might exist (this is only partially true as my work develops, not in a vacuum, but in environment shaped by my interactions with the world.  Of course, I hope and expect that someone, somewhere might share a vision similar to mine - and may well react to it positively.  I bring things into being that I would like to see.  When I develop a project, it's done in a similar manner, intimately scaled and certainly dependent on the resources at hand. 

With this Geneva return, I thought I'd try opening up the process.  Put the project on kickstarter and see if it might be possible to scale beyond my own limitations, just a bit.  I'm seeking to raise $5000 which will help fund the airfare, accommodations, material expenses - both for those incurred on the trip and those that are part of the cycle of everyday expenses back at home.   The Kickstarter route is a challenge because it is an all or nothing bid:  Reach $5000 and get funded.  Don't reach $5000 and NADA.  Now I'll be going to Geneva either way, but, if successful, this Kickstarter campaign will, in the end, buy me additional time for delving more deeply into this project and distilling that reflection into new work.   

Is this a simply an indulgent submersion into nostalgic impulses?  Well, sure, to an extent, but only about this (-) much.  But that's what I do; indulge impulses of all sorts, reflect on them objectively, then critically then tweak them by way of responding visually.  This kind of "indulgence" is what I've generally tried to center my life around, and it is the life blood of my work.  In this case, I'm seeking a little help to see what can be realized in the process.

I think it's well worth indulging a nostalgic stirring now and then just to see what poking around in there might draw out.  

I've always looked at this endeavor as a self-engineered residency, however, Bettina Edelstein, through a conversation I had with her, got me thinking of this as a means of creating a memoir.  Bettina was in residency with me on Norton Island earlier this month and she herself is working on a memoir that follows her rediscovery of her love of flying. This rekindled flame has just recently led to change her career and relocate so as to transform this passion into a vocation.   

A multi-media memoir.  That's truly what it this is.  My objective in this memoir is to focus on this location of Geneva, Switzerland and the folks I encountered and will encounter soon, through the filter of my memories and my artistic sensibilities.  And I hope, ultimately, to produce a body of work that responds personally, but also universally as an address to the notion of aging, remembering and returning.

But much of this, I've said in the video and accompanying narrative on the Kickstarter page.

Fortuitously, my Summer reading has included two memoirs, which even before I considered regarding as my undertaking as one, have certainly informed my thinking about returning to the past and conveying meaning through the telling of a personally experienced account.  The two works are, our current Art Book Club selection, Just Kids by Patti Smith and Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov.   I expect you'll hear more of these books from me soon.

In the meantime, I invite you to come along with me on this adventure and partake in some of the spoils I seek to unearth.  But, if you want a ticket to ride, don't wait too long - August 25th is the final day of Judgement.  Either the goal is reached and we share an experience, or else......Choose your reward!

Thanks.