Responding to Art: Language and Place on the Edge



Image by Mark R. Knox, KnoxworX Multimedia

I looked to her for definition. The artificial. The perfect. She redefined delicacy when she found her place in nature, in images around my home. She held my own rough image, magnified, enlivened, so that I only wanted to close my eyes in front of the mirror, hoping for smoother lines. Fragile, younger then, I looked to her, to art, to the place of light. I look still. And sometimes the light peeks out, around the trees, above the moist and fragrant ground. It begs reflection, tells me to seek other forms of beauty. Look to the whole, it says, redefine.

This image is one of my father's "Mannequin Series". Each piece within the series stars the same mannequin--sometimes pieces of her. She is often photographed in natural scenes or against gritty backgrounds. She creates smooth, gentle lines, always in contrast to the enviornment. In this piece, I like the juxtaposition between the artificial perfection of her hands as they hold up a fragile, mirrored orb and the dark, textural beauty of the forest. I wrote this to examine the juxtaposition as well as my own definition of beauty in art.


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