Sangre y Huesos (My Blood and My Bones)

A gallery installation of photographs, paintings, drawings, writing, and sketchbooks. By Dianna Chrysler.

Hey there! Thanks for taking the time to look at my Kickstarter page!

My project, which will be an installation of photographs, paintings, drawings, notes, and sketchbooks, is being created as an examination of my reality, and will work through the problems of calling any one person's perception and memory a "reallity." I say this because humans are inherently one step removed from absolute truth in the manner we view and remember things; our recollection of an event can be skewed by our temporary emotions, knowledge, and beliefs. The result is that our mental timeline of events becomes a narrative filled with meaning  which may or may not have actually existed within those events.

One of the most powerful tools I have come across in the process of making my work thus far is language. I see words as being more objective than anything else, because their meaning depends on the arrangement of words that already have assigned meaning. Last year, I started working on making word paintings: writing words out in paint on cardboard, canvas, and paper. They began with paragraphs from advertisements and books, and then I became interested in taking words from television and films I was watching for class. For a lot of what I had to watch, I would turn on closed captioning because I found seeing the words was made more of an impression on me than only hearing them. I have recently begun to superimpose closed captions on my photographs from old journal entries or freewriting, and I plan on presenting several of these photos in my show.

Much of the work I do in drawing and painting is on found materials like cardboard and wood I find, so the cost to make those things is relatively low. The printing cost of my photos, however, will be upwards of $300, which will cover test and full-sized prints on a large format Epson printer. I'd like to be able to print as many photos as possible at 2'x3', because much of the power of my work results in sheer volume, but my goal accounts for printing 15 photos. I find that having the photos is a necessary part of my work, because the paintings and photos are created with each other in mind; together they make a stronger body of work than they could do as separate pieces. I've come to think of the paintings as expressions of my inner monologue, while the photos depict my visual perception of reality.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my Kickstarter page! It means a lot to me that you've taken the time to read this, and your support means more than I can possibly tell you. I'm hoping to make this my most comprehensive series so far, and I wouldn't be able to do it without you.

Much love,
Dianna