About Myself

Hello everyone my name is Micki McClain. I am an art major at the U of O currently trying to graduate at the end of the school year. I'm originally from The Dalles, OR, a small town located in the Columbia Gorge. I'm interest and both terrified in the idea of color in my photographs. My main goal is just to create successful images that have harmonious color flow in them.

Assignment 1

This is a piece of work that belongs to a series of self-portraits I did in spring of 2011 for my large format class. This series of work was highly personal and I had named it “Art as Therapy”. It’s hard to explain some of the concepts behind the work without first divulging some personal information. For a long time I have suffered from depression and often suicidal thoughts. This was a part of my life that I didn’t tell anyone about. Around a year ago I finally hit a turning point and sought out some professional help. I began to open up, and to also question why I felt that I could tell no one about my mental state. It’s those questions that really became the inspiration for my series. If a person have a mental illness does that make them crazy? Why are other emotions socially expectable while sadness must be kept hidden? I tried to really capture myself at very vulnerable moments. It was important to me to include moments that I felt were decisive in my time of pain, but also try to express the main emotions that were so poignant. I feel like this work was really my first time having a major concept. It was also the first time I felt really satisfied with what I did. This prompted me to expand my portraits to other people. The idea was that I would photograph other people that also had mental illnesses and create art as therapy for them. I was able to do this with one other person who had body image problems. During a critique of these images, the group felt that the person had suffered from sexual abuse rather than from body dysmorphic disorder. For me this was interesting because the dynamics of the work had slightly changed, (the pieces had become less personal for myself), and I wondered if the change had altered what was being expressed in the portraits.

This is a self-portrait from a body of work called “Take Care of Yourself” by Sophie Calle. I simply love this photograph. The way the image is cropped, the unexpected way of presenting text with the photo, and the personal story behind what it says is my main reasons for loving this photo so much. After seeing the photo, I looked into what it was about. The photo was essentially the title piece for the rest of the body of work. “Take Care of Yourself” was created after Calle received a parting letter from her ex-lover. After reading the letter, she wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. She then dispersed the letter to 107 women in different professions and asked them to help her with a response. The result was revised letters, videos, reading material, graphic representations, and portraits of the women reading the letter. I loved the whole concept. It exhibited emotion while at the same time responding in an unlikely manner. In this way I would like to continue on with my work. I enjoy the posed theatrics while at the same time playing with emotion. I would still like to incorporate the ideas of therapy and transmitting vulnerability through the photograph, but also toying with it in ways one is not expecting. I also find that I like the idea of focusing more on women, and how women express themselves.