ethnography | portfoliolongo

Got a long way to go in so many ways, especially technique wise! Fortunately, it’s all practice…and, as others have pointed out, there are marketing opportunities all along the way, a new concept for me. I’d been so focused on getting, renting, somehow finding a work space, a studio if you will, in which to sculpt, carve, or otherwise get muddy, that I was never getting around to doing or making anything! That’s a conundrum and a half! A wise acquaintance came along and suggested that I simply start drawing, illustrating in the meantime. Then, Ann turned me on to Fifty Three Paper, and I haven’t been the same since, literally. As I slowly move forward toward a studio and back to plastic or three-dimensional art, I’m learning new and related things thanks to this iPad drawing app.

There has been a fascinating, transformative, and genuinely ontological learning progression along this trajectory through the zone of proximal development (any Vygotsky fans out there?). As my focus morphed from finding the external space to locating and activating the internal space in which to express myself, I’ve noticed the beginnings of a parallel but counter shift from an internal to an external orientation that is opening me up to questions along the lines of ‘what might be of interest or usefulness to others?’ I’m calling this Marketing 101 for the time being. I’m starting to raise my periscope enough to consider who might be interested in what.

It’s a parallel and reflexive path, and it challenges my ethnographic vocation in more ways than one. You have a role to play. Check back for further details.

Here I am in the Firestone waiting room again, and it’s an expensive wait. I brought my iPad and just started drawing one the ideas that I have listed on my Evernote list of drawing ideas. The item on the list was this: an anthropologist saying, I’d like to talk to you about your familiarity. The great Gary Larson has done some funny cartoons about anthropologists in tribal contexts. So, I knew I wanted to underscore the relative absurdity by using a contemporary, family, living room setting.

Half way through the drawing my stylus had a flat. This is, as they say, a whole nother story, this topic of styluses. I’m using some pretty basic styluses, nothing battery operated or fancy. They’re built in such a way that the tip isn’t really a tip; it’s a bulbus nubby kind of tip-ish sort of thing made of some sort of special material and meant to impersonate the finger…a small finger. At any rate, my rounded, bulb of a nub kinda went flat.

Now I know I need to carry a back up, especially when I’m in a waiting room.

Behind the scenes here is the notion of “familiarity.” I’m not knocking anthropologists. Familiarity is a tricky concept. There is something to be said of the unique role that anthropologists play in facilitating the familiarization of familiarity, not unlike the role of a midwife in some respects.

This time, because of the flat stylus, I spent very little digital attention on the faces. I kinda’ like that effect. I’ll try that again on purpose.