My Inspiration

My very first inspiration to even pick up a camera came from my family. My dad is a woodworker, and a lot of the furniture in the house was made by him. My grandmother is a painter and there are various paintings of my brother and I hanging in my mom's house. Various other relatives have (or have had) a profession involving art; graphic design, ballet, and music. One of my cousins graduated from MassArt a few years ago, and another cousin is graduating this semester. Both of my parents have always encouraged my brother and I to do the things that make us happy, all within reason, of course. Having constant exposure to artists, and constant support for my own art, has been a true inspiration to even want to pursue a career in photography.

As far as creating artwork goes, I feel that art is very theraputic and one of the things that inspires me is the things that I don't want to talk about. I find that my artwork is more true to my emotions, in the respect that I am not always willing to let people see on my face and in my actions the things I feel. One specific thing that inspired me to create art as my parent's divorce two years ago. I found that I wasn't willing to let it show that it was something that was on my mind and bothering me. So a lot of my art began to reflect what I was feeling, just to get the emotions out so that I could move on. Which is a long winded way of saying I'm inspired by my emotions to my life experiences.

When it comes to my photography, I'm inspired by life's minor details. My english professor wears black shoes with blue shoelaces. The first time I noticed, I obsessed over it until I got a chance to write it down. I think that it's because of this, my pictures are "documentations of objects" as I was told last semester. I write a lot, just the things I see and whatnot, and I treat photography as a quicker way to jot down my observations. I just like having a documentation of things I've, and I'm not sure why.

A third inspiration comes from my longtime fascination with foreign cultures and languages - primarily those from Asia. For as long as I can remember I have been curious to know how people in other parts of the world live. My high school offered Khmer as one of their language courses, and I took that for three years. One of my friends is Indian and a couple summers ago she went to visit her family in Tamil, India. She brought back a lot of pictures, clothing, and jewelry, and all I could think about looking through the pictures and whatnot was, "I have to go there." Some day I really hope I can go to Cambodia and/or India, or any foreign country for that matter, and photograph the things I see.