It is the six month anniversary of my last rejection for a grant from the Rasmuson Foundation. I am a firm believer that art like gold is where you find it. But I continue to mine this hole regardless.
Anyway...here is my idea for this terms bi-annual rejection...here cruel world:
Title: Barista!
Project Type: photographic essay
The coffee ritual in Alaska has transcended the mundane and become art. It may be because we have longer and shorter days or perhaps more emotional vampires than other locales, but, I believe truth is because the under-class, composed primarily of young single woman who have chosen this profession, have made it “full of art”.
Not so dissimilar to the mythical geisha of Japan, though success is based on raw talent rather than elaborate training and tradition, the Alaskan Barista fills a social and cultural need without which I truly believe Alaskan society would stumble. Obviously, it is not the coffee, a staple available in one’s home, nor the curious and quaint huts and shops, perhaps artistic and worthy of study like the “Doors of San Francisco”, but like those doors, if they could be opened and blossom, would allow the flowing fragrant souls behind them to be seen. We would have a truly valuable insight into the ceremony of daily life. It is the same with the trailers of joe: the enacted sacrament.
We know that the art is no more the java than to a Japanese tea, rather, it is the control and gift of the interaction between patron and patroness. In this project I capture that moment of emotion that our danzarina has tailored for that particular client that leaps across the bar or out the sliding window and fills the brief encounter, much as Mozart fills a measure or Gauguin fills a brush.
As a photographer, my art is indeed secondary, but like grand Henri, to chronicle artistically the artistic interaction (and I have chosen M. de Toulouse Lautrec specifically because the subjects and issues are so related and the faces nearly of the same family!) that a meta-art of intertwining beauty is created.
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