Introduction
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Interviewer: Okay. So in the interview we are interested in asking you to tell us about an artwork that you created.
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Interviewer: I will ask you to describe this experience in detail. I'll be reading from a script, so I'll be reading prompts for you to respond to and although I won't engage like conversationally with you. I just want to let you know it doesn't mean that. No, we're not interested or engaged with what you're saying. It's just that due to the purposes of the research, we kind of need to stick to this script.
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Interviewer: okay, so have you chosen your artwork?
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Participant: Yeah.
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Interviewer: Okay.
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Interviewer: so what is it?
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Participant: It's a what I call photo drawing. It's a photo print that I
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Participant: that I drew on
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Participant: It's an image of
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Participant: two a portrait of
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Participant: the same woman, but doubled.
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Hmm.
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Participant: So it's like kind of flipped.
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and their heads are next to each other.
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Interviewer: Interesting? do you have that with you in any form would you do?
Participant: I have screen sharing?
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Interviewer: Yeah, let me set that up. Okay, yeah, You should be able to share.
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Participant: Okay.
Description
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Interviewer: ok? Great? Thank you. Could you describe it for me? so like, what are the important details?
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Participant: Well, the
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Participant: 2 headphones that I mentioned to you the 2 portraits.
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Participant: the flowers. There's
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Participant: 3 roses that you can see, and 2 other flowers between the 2 heads.
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Participant: I'm a
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crescent room at the top of the composition.
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Participant: the way that I add it color and shaded
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Participant: the the portraits kind of form a circular window like a portal. to these figures
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Participant: reality, and it's meant to convey an underwater scene like that, looking at the surface of water and gazing into water.
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Participant: and at the same time referencing
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Participant: like outer space and stars and Cosmos
Why did you choose this one? (Specialness)
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Interviewer: great, Why did you choose to talk about this artwork for this study.
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Participant: because it's this isn't an artwork that I
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Participant: most recently created.
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Participant: and I know that is kind of conveys my feeling of
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Participant: kind of channeling spirit through my art making
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and I felt like I that I had that experience with this, and I actually
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and some of the artworks that I create. I find that
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Participant: what I've
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Participant: put into the artwork
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speaks to me and tells me something about myself
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Participant: sometimes, and that was the case with this artwork as well.
Distinguishing
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Interviewer: And is there something about this medium? that is meaningful or distinguishing compared to other art forms for you?
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Participant: The the
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Participant: the image has gone through a lot of different processes.
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Participant: it started with a photograph of my knees. I did the photograph in nature
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Participant: and photographed a whole bunch of different portraits of her. And then.
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some time ago, maybe, I think, in 2019, I created
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Participant: this flipped image of her, this dual portrait
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Participant: and kind of lived like that for a while.
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Participant: and then over the summer. I just started working more with that
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Participant: that image of her, these 2 images of her creating a composition that was more layered and kind of more contextualized with this sort of
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Participant: water and Cosmos
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environment that
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Participant: these these figures are in, You know what I feel like. I'm forgetting your question. I'm sorry. Can you tell me the question again?
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Interviewer: Oh, yeah, I was asking about
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Interviewer: What about them? If there is anything about the medium, and then from any other art forms.
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Participant: Ok thank you, I was going to say, I have been working with Photoshop, how long now? Like 22 years?
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more than you know.
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Participant: More than that, really, because I've been working with photoshop and
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Participant: photo art based artists since high school. But
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Participant: I started working with Photoshop back in 2000. So
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Participant: this is a medium that is, I'm very. I feel very comfortable with and
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Participant: it's a tool that's
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Participant: easy for me to use, to translate kind of
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Participant: a sense of aesthetics, and even engaging with elements of chance in the creation of the artwork.
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Participant: But then I finally printed the composition out
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Participant: large scale on photo paper. This is this: actual print is about 30 inches
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Participant: by 44 inches.
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Participant: And so this is the new thing for me to print this large and then to invoke the
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Participant: photo drawing process with the artwork. Because I have a series of drawings photo drawings. I did that
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Participant: we're much smaller. They were mostly 16 by 16 inch square, Prints, that I drew with black ink, black ink pens
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Participant: and and then this piece I'm. Mainly using like metallic
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paint markers and color paint markers. So it's like kind of
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Participant: breaking out of the boundaries of what I what I've kind of traditionally represented in my in my artwork.
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Participant: So this combination of drawing on photo paper
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Participant: is something that has like a
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Participant: a soothing quality for me, and it also.
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Participant: The way in which I work with
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Participant: the interaction between the image and the mark making
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Participant: is such where
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Participant: it kind of becomes a process that allows for an interchange for me. I think
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Participant: spiritually. in my spiritual practice.
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Participant: and through that kind of getting lost in the art making and drawing things start to emerge from the work that I didn't that I don't even necessarily
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Participant: plan for.
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Participant: And so I appreciate
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Participant: this process of photo drawing, and how it allows me
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Participant: to
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Participant: kind of discover. Discover things in the process, you know of making
What led up to the interaction? What motivated you to explore the piece?
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Interviewer: great. Thank you. So you already talked about this a little bit. But what led up to the creation of this art work? What motivated you to create it?
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Participant: Well, you know this image, the composition, the digital collage composition that I created.
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Participant: came came to me at a time
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Participant: prior to the death of my grandmother
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Participant: and
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Participant: and I found that during the time, maybe within the week before she passed away
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Participant: I started to
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Participant: kind of feel.
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Participant: I felt different, you know. I felt like
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Participant: what might be considered like symptoms, mental health symptoms. They have a unknown diversion in
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Participant: and along the way. I just kind of started learning things and having insights that I hadn't had before.
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Participant: and I noticed things like
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Participant: butterflies and moth
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Participant: coming to my window and being around me so much more than they probably had ever noticed before, and it was just interesting because it almost felt like they were messengers to me
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Participant: of my grandmother, my grandmother's transition.
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Participant: and so this particular image that I created during that time over the summer.
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Participant: I felt very much like I wanted to print that large, and to engage with it as a photo drawing because of
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what this particular image meant to me.
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Participant: in that moment, in this firm.
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Interviewer: Great Thank you. and then could you talk a little bit about
When and where did the interaction happen? Was anyone involved
besides you?
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Interviewer: a little about when and where the work happened on this our work? and
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Interviewer: if anybody was involved in it besides you
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Participant: Well, when I printed the the artwork in the photo lab, I printed it in the photo lab on campus.
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Participant: and someone was assisting me with the
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Participant: operation of the printer.
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Participant: but in terms of the actual creation of the artwork.
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Participant: it was all me, though.
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Interviewer: Okay.
What were you thinking and feeling at different times throughout
the process of interacting with the work?
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Interviewer: and then could you talk a little bit about what you were thinking and feeling at different times throughout the process of creating this hardware.
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Participant: Yeah, I I think
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Participant: there's not a lot of
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Participant: conscious thought going on while i'm kind of in
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Participant: the moment with these a work like this
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Participant: sitting in front of the computer.
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Participant: manipulating the images, going through different stages with it. The art.
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Participant: the digital collage aspect of the process.
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Participant: it's I I I don't really start thinking thinking about things until after I've created it, and I have some time to kind of
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Participant: sit back from it and look at it and see Well, what are some of the things that are happening in the artwork. And oh, well, it looks like there are some things I had no clue I was doing
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Participant: in this process, you know
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Participant: And so that's where I feel like
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Participant: there's some information that comes through in my art sometimes
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Participant: that i'm not even
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Participant: consciously, channeling. It's like it's just happening, you know.
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Participant: for example,
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Participant: lines, the silver lines. These are still silver PIN in what looks like white here.
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Participant: and gold
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Participant: lines.
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Participant: I came to realize, after making this piece, that it represented myself and my wife.
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Participant: that even though the image itself is of my knees.
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Participant: the the representation
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Participant: came to
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Participant: stand for me and my my intimate partner. So I saw myself in the figure on the left, and I saw my wife in the figure on the right
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Participant: in terms of certain ways of representing
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Participant: the image and
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Participant: the ways in which there might be certain symbolism that I would associate with her. For example.
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Participant: you know she's a fire sign.
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Participant: and so with the gold on there
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Participant: kind of is a in a. In alchemy, for example, the sun is associated with the symbol for gold
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Participant: and and so I thought of her in the representation with the gold, and then also
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Participant: The more controlled marks are happening in her in the representation of her.
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Participant: We're kind of more erratic in
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Participant: kind of
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Participant: nonlinear kind of flows are happening in the part with me because i'm much more of a
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Participant: like what do you call it?
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Participant: type B the creative like wild person. Then my wife, she's more kind of like
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Participant: structured and controlled, and things like that.
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Participant: And then, even with I discovered that
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Participant: in this imagery here, because because I was what what i'm thinking when i'm working on a work like this digital or drawing.
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Participant: I'm thinking about
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Participant: the relationship with the parts to the whole of how can I
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Participant: bring this image together
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Participant: into a visual piece that makes sense to me, and that looks aesthetically pleasing, and so on and so forth.
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Participant: And like I said, I come back and look at it later, and i'm like, Wow! Look at these things in this artwork.
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Participant: So, for example, when I was trying to build up this face here, because in the actual print
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Participant: there wasn't a lot of detail
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Participant: left in this face. So I had to kind of construct
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Participant: a lot of details here, whereas in this image of the face there was more visible that I could kind of work from.
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Participant: But in the
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Participant: process of trying to build up the shape of the face. Here
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Participant: I started making these marks that created like this hollowed form
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Participant: here
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Participant: and then there's the flower, and then this flower here, and I realize it seems like a
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Participant: image of a Uterus. And Fallopian tubes.
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Participant: and and that has significance to some health issues that my wife has had in the past year.
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Participant: And so I found it remarkable that that would be something that
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Participant: so clearly
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Participant: is evoked in the in the artwork without
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Participant: trying. You know what I mean, like this is just something that that comes out.
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Participant: And
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So
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Participant: yeah. I hope I answered your question.
Can you describe any high points, low points or challenges, or
turning points along the way?
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Interviewer: Yeah, that was great. Thank you so much. Can you describe any high points low points or challenges or turning points in the process of creating this artwork.
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Participant: Well, you know, the days that I actually
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Participant: did the most work on this drawing
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Participant: was a day that I was
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Participant: very emotional and stressed.
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Participant: and I just
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Participant: kind of put myself into my artwork to try to
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Participant: relieve whatever tension I had, and
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Participant: those emotions that were so difficult. But yeah, so it it. I guess it kind of the artwork kind of served as
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Participant: a repository for my feelings.
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Participant: and for
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Participant: for emotions that
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Participant: can be difficult
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Participant: to sustain, not sustain, but
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Participant: difficult to deal with, you know.
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Participant: and
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Participant: so
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Participant: the art making.
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Participant: Help me transform or transmute that negative
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Participant: emotional worry and anxiety into something
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Participant: beautiful
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Participant: that I expressed myself in.
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Interviewer: Alright. Thank you. And let's talk a little bit about the impact of the artwork on yourself and others.
What did you learn from the process of interacting with the
artwork? Did you learn anything about yourself?
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Interviewer: So what did you learn from the process of creating this hard work? How did you learn anything about yourself?
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Participant: Yeah, I think I've been been kind of expressing that along the way. Right? so what am I learning about myself? Like
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Participant: as I mentioned to you earlier? I'm interested in
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Participant: and
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Participant: in my
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Participant: doctoral research, looking at
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Participant: my creative art, making practice.
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Participant: Well, one aspect of the research is looking at my creative art making practice, and how it
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Participant: how I channel Spiritual energies through the art making, and how it also has served to help heal me.
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Yeah.
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Participant: and Yeah, I'm: I'm: so sorry. I feel like I keep forgetting your questions if I get started.
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Interviewer: Yeah, that's that's fine. I know you've been talking in many of their responses about things that you've learned, and things you've learned about yourself. but yeah, that was that just a particular prom at this point was: what have you learned about yourself?
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Participant: Yeah, it's it's it. I would say, this piece teaches me that I am still connected to spirit in that way where I might get a message through the making process.
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Participant: Because and other photo drawings I've done it seems like.
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Participant: and like a really an amazing process where i'm trying to figure out
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Participant: who this person is that i'm depicting in the artwork. You know. What what am I creating? Who is this person emerging? And why are they chasing me? Why do they keep wanting to be seen through this practice process and practice?
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Participant: So what is it teach me about me. It teaches me that my artwork can
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Participant: symbolize things that relate to my personal life, you know.
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Participant: and that might bring
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Participant: the knowledge that I have already
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Participant: like, you know. I mentioned the thing about alchemy and stuff not like i'm an alchemist or something, but you know, like I've studied some of those symbols a little bit.
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Participant: and you know, so I I have an awareness, a certain awareness that that impacts my choices as i'm going about making
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Participant: the certain moves with the artwork and
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Participant: the and the materials and whatnot.
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Participant: But
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Participant: yeah, I think there is potentially potentially more that the work could reveal to me about myself that I don't even think I've even explored yet, and maybe they'll come through
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Participant: as I do more photo drawing pieces on the larger papers, because I have some prints that I actually did on canvas that are large like this.
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Participant: that I plan on doing, painting and drawing on
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Interviewer: great and then
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Interviewer: have others seen this artwork?
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Participant: Yes.
Do you think the artist intended to affect others or the world
in any particular ways?
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Interviewer: and then Could you talk a little bit, maybe, about how they received it? What were their reactions? And then, if you intended for the work to affect others or the world in any particular ways?
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Participant: Hmm.
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Participant: Well, I know my wife was was around when I was working on this, and she would stand and be like. Wow! This is so beautiful like. This is one of the most beautiful pieces you've created, you know, and I told her that it was about us, you know, as as I reflected and thought about what what I was making.
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Participant: and
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Participant: I've shown you also to some professors, because i'm using. I use this image for some of the courses
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Participant: that I was taking this semester
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Participant: and
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Participant: you know I don't recall them really seeing a whole lot about
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Participant: the image, but mainly them thinking I mean them listening to me.
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Participant: So the only like
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Participant: real feedback that I've gotten in terms of like
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Participant: how it affects someone emotionally, or any any any kind of like
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Participant: way as a viewer was. I got that from my wife.
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Interviewer: Okay, Thank you. and then
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Interviewer: has your experience
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Interviewer: affected your understanding of other people?
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Interviewer: or of the world in any ways
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Participant: you know. It helps me see
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Participant: the truth of
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Participant: that axiom as above, so below.
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Participant: you know. It took me quite some time before I understood what what that saying meant.
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Participant: But but I found
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Participant: with this particular artwork
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Participant: that the idea of as above, so below.
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Participant: comes in because of the ways in which this work speaks on multiple levels
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Participant: the way it signifies something simultaneously that's multiple.
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Participant: like being in the ocean and representing this cosmos most at the same time
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Participant: being an image of my niece, but also being
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Participant: representing myself and my wife, and then also on another level, you know, referencing
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Participant: African diaspora religions, and that cosmology and deities from there
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Participant: so
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Interviewer: great. Thank you. so this next prompt is a little bit longer.
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Interviewer: When some people think about themselves, they
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Interviewer: they see some parts of themselves as deeply true, real, or authentic.
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Interviewer: If this idea resonates with you.
Did you have any insights about your own authentic (or
inauthentic) self?
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Interviewer: did you learn anything about your true nature during this process? Did you have any insights into your own authentic or inauthentic self.
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Participant: Honestly, I I kind of shy away from
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Participant: things like statements like true authentic, is something a different different meaning to me than true.
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Participant: because for me I think of true, and it's like kind of like being in a
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Participant: like being pigeon holder or something, you know.
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Participant: I don't think that it necessarily this piece necessarily told me something about myself that I didn't already know.
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Participant: but it did
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Participant: channel in information
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Participant: that I didn't know that I was kind of in discourse with
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through the artwork.
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Participant: so
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Participant: yeah, I don't. I don't look at it as telling me something I don't already know, because I feel like the process with my research, trying to uncover
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Participant: a bigger picture of what recovery and healing and self-possession means in terms of the art making process is a whole. Another thing that's a bigger project than just this one piece, you know.
Did you learn anything about ultimate meaning during the
process?
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Interviewer: Great, Thank you. and then some people believe in ultimate meaning, and this is defined as deep underlying meaning that transcends subjective personal meaning.
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Interviewer: It is about the nature of existence and identity.
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Interviewer: and it may include ideas about the significance of suffering as well as spirituality.
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Interviewer: If this idea resonates with you, did you learn anything about ultimate meaning during the process of creating this our work.
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Participant: I think there's something about ultimate meaning that comes through in this idea that I would even have an experience
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Participant: where
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Participant: maybe I'm. Having some sort of altered states of consciousness, or some sort of experience of trans states
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Participant: while making art.
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Participant: and in that process
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Participant: coming through with
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Participant: symbolism, or motifs, or signs that
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Participant: convey something of that that idea of a universal or ultimate meaning, an idea of unity
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Participant: in the cosmos and in their larger reality.
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Participant: that's also
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Participant: related to the connection
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Participant: between my wife and I.
Perceptions of reality beyond the physical world.
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Interviewer: Alright, thank you. And then some people believe or perceive a reality beyond the physical or material world.
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Interviewer: This may include religious beliefs and experiences, such as perceived interactions with God, but may also include mystical or transcendent experiences or interactions with spirits.
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Interviewer: Did you have any of these kinds of experiences during the creation of this artwork?
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Participant: Yeah, for me, I personally
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Participant: have, I mean, even though I practice African diaspora for religions. I've I I haven't
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Participant: for then, and a witness to like possessions are being written or things like that.
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Participant: and I can't really say like for me like oh, i'm in some sort of the process of being possessed, or something like by spirits, but I do feel like they're in the conversation
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Participant: that there is an input, and there's a relationship to spirituality and to spirits disembodied spirits that
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Participant: speak through my artwork. So I definitely do do believe that.
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Participant: So the nature of that is what i'm trying to study myself.
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Interviewer: Thank you. I just have a few quick follow ups.
How old were you?
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Interviewer: I don't think you mentioned how old were you when you created this artwork?
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Participant: I created this. So the drawing I did it this semester, so i'm i'm 46 now. So I was 46
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Interviewer: and then I think I know how you will
How do you perceive the quality of the work?
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Interviewer: answer this, but how do we perceive the quality of this our work.
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Participant: I think it's a really strong artwork. It's actually in kind of intended to be like a preparatory sketch, because I do have
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Participant: the print on canvas, and I I think it's going to be
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Participant: a little bit of a different approach in on the canvas piece, because it's just. It looks different on the mat material compared to this kind of luster surface of the paper. But I I feel
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Participant: proud of what I created, and
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Participant: and I feel like it's very evocative
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Participant: of something
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Participant: deeply mystical that I seem to have access to
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Participant: through my art
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Participant: and my creativity.
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Participant: So yeah, I am proud of it.
Life Events
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Interviewer: Great. And then would you like to say anything more about what was going on in your life or on the time that you created this artwork.
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Participant: Yeah, as it what was happening. Well, when I first created the digital file that I before I output and in print. I mentioned my grandmother passing. I was
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Participant: actually also studying a Haitian Cralle class at the time, and I would kind of
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Participant: take moments to work on the images while doing the online class.
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Participant: And then when I did the drawing, you know, I there was a issue that it came up
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Participant: in a in a kind of long standing
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Participant: concern that I had related to school, and it was
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Participant: really, I guess, Help me discharge and relief some of those difficult feelings by doing the drawing part of the piece.
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Interviewer: Great Thank you. And
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Interviewer: One more follow-up that I was just kind of curious about going back to is you talked about a deeply mystical quality that you seem to have access to.
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Interviewer: Could you talk a maybe a little bit about what that experience is like, how it affects your artwork.
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Interviewer: and your
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Interviewer: your religious and spiritual beliefs, if at all.
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Participant: Yeah,
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Participant: I've this feeling. It kind of relates to this feeling of being a vessel, you know, like I remember.
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Participant: even as the undergraduate
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Participant: way back in the mid nineties
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Participant: feeling like I was a vessel for spirit when I create.
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Participant: And there was a lot of different kinds of things that I created back then.
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Participant: mixed media pieces. It's, you know, kind of object based sort of things.
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Participant: But
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Participant: and I've learned a lot about
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Participant: African diaspora religion. Since then I would go into the library when I was an undergrad, and we about Haitian vodo, and Santoria, and different spiritual traditions from from the diaspora and and then, finally, you know, I had a longing to connect with the community.
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Participant: And finally, a couple of years ago, that years ago, I was able to
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Participant: find a community of practitioners of efa that got me to another place, I guess, with my spiritual development.
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Participant: But the mystic, the mystic
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Participant: to the mystical quality.
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Participant: it's something. It's not that it's something that I have, like every piece
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Participant: I create it. It's all all about spirituality. It's all about mysticism, but there are certain pieces
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Participant: that, as I mentioned before, I create them, and I realize and learn from other people sometimes that I've
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Participant: put something in the work.
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Participant: Our spirit has channeled into me into the work something that I didn't even know like it relates to some sort of metaphysical knowledge or information that I didn't know. For example.
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Participant: when I was in undergrad.
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Participant: I did a drawing that turned into a painting, and it had an image of a nude woman's torso and a snake kind of descending from the torso.
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Participant: and somewhat from the actually from like the from the pelvic area. And someone told me that
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Participant: that
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Participant: looks like a Kundalini kind of
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Participant: experience, or like I, you know
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Participant: I forget what they call it.
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Participant: But let's just say, you know, like a Kundalini situation. That was before I knew anything about that
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Participant: and and so just the fact that there's certain things that come through that maybe come through my subconscious and come up in the art.
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Participant: It just is. It just is pretty remarkable to me. It's a remarkable experience.
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Participant: be connected to other worldly realities in such a way that there is this kind of conversation somehow, you know, through the art.
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Participant: you know, not necessarily like. I hear voices or anything. It's not the nature of my spiritual communication, but just through sort of a somatic experience. And that's where I really appreciate
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Participant: the mark, making and drawing
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Participant: as a intervention into the digital work.
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Participant: because with the mark making and the drawing.
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Participant: i'm able to.
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Participant: It's like there my body is involved. You know the the marks are kind of tracing
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Participant: the presence of my body. And so there's a connection
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Participant: to
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Participant: Okay, can a a relationship to kin aesthetics that happens with drawing that doesn't happen with the digital or photo based work. So
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Participant: so mixed media is an important
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Participant: approach for me.
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Participant: because i'm learning about
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Participant: about
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Participant: the creative process. I'm learning about the messages that spirit might have for me
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Participant: through
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Participant: 2 different mediums.
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Participant: So i'm actually interested in looking also at my poetry, and how that comes through in some of my poetry.
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Interviewer: Great. Yeah, Thank you so much. This is all great. Thank you so much for sharing all of your experiences and your thoughts.
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Interviewer: Okay. So in the interview we are interested in asking you to tell us about an artwork that you created.
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Interviewer: I will ask you to describe this experience in detail. I'll be reading from a script, so I'll be reading prompts for you to respond to and although I won't engage like conversationally with you. I just want to let you know it doesn't mean that. No, we're not interested or engaged with what you're saying. It's just that due to the purposes of the research, we kind of need to stick to this script.
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Interviewer: okay, so have you chosen your artwork?
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Participant: Yeah.
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Interviewer: Okay.
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Interviewer: so what is it?
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Participant: It's a what I call photo drawing. It's a photo print that I
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Participant: that I drew on
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Participant: It's an image of
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Participant: two a portrait of
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Participant: the same woman, but doubled.
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Hmm.
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Participant: So it's like kind of flipped.
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and their heads are next to each other.
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Interviewer: Interesting? do you have that with you in any form would you do?
Participant: I have screen sharing?
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Interviewer: Yeah, let me set that up. Okay, yeah, You should be able to share.
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Participant: Okay.
Description
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Interviewer: ok? Great? Thank you. Could you describe it for me? so like, what are the important details?
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Participant: Well, the
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Participant: 2 headphones that I mentioned to you the 2 portraits.
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Participant: the flowers. There's
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Participant: 3 roses that you can see, and 2 other flowers between the 2 heads.
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Participant: I'm a
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crescent room at the top of the composition.
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Participant: the way that I add it color and shaded
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Participant: the the portraits kind of form a circular window like a portal. to these figures
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Participant: reality, and it's meant to convey an underwater scene like that, looking at the surface of water and gazing into water.
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Participant: and at the same time referencing
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Participant: like outer space and stars and Cosmos
Why did you choose this one? (Specialness)
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Interviewer: great, Why did you choose to talk about this artwork for this study.
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Participant: because it's this isn't an artwork that I
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Participant: most recently created.
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Participant: and I know that is kind of conveys my feeling of
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Participant: kind of channeling spirit through my art making
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and I felt like I that I had that experience with this, and I actually
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and some of the artworks that I create. I find that
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Participant: what I've
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Participant: put into the artwork
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speaks to me and tells me something about myself
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Participant: sometimes, and that was the case with this artwork as well.
Distinguishing
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Interviewer: And is there something about this medium? that is meaningful or distinguishing compared to other art forms for you?
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Participant: The the
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Participant: the image has gone through a lot of different processes.
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Participant: it started with a photograph of my knees. I did the photograph in nature
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Participant: and photographed a whole bunch of different portraits of her. And then.
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some time ago, maybe, I think, in 2019, I created
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Participant: this flipped image of her, this dual portrait
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Participant: and kind of lived like that for a while.
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Participant: and then over the summer. I just started working more with that
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Participant: that image of her, these 2 images of her creating a composition that was more layered and kind of more contextualized with this sort of
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Participant: water and Cosmos
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environment that
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Participant: these these figures are in, You know what I feel like. I'm forgetting your question. I'm sorry. Can you tell me the question again?
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Interviewer: Oh, yeah, I was asking about
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Interviewer: What about them? If there is anything about the medium, and then from any other art forms.
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Participant: Ok thank you, I was going to say, I have been working with Photoshop, how long now? Like 22 years?
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more than you know.
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Participant: More than that, really, because I've been working with photoshop and
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Participant: photo art based artists since high school. But
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Participant: I started working with Photoshop back in 2000. So
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Participant: this is a medium that is, I'm very. I feel very comfortable with and
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Participant: it's a tool that's
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Participant: easy for me to use, to translate kind of
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Participant: a sense of aesthetics, and even engaging with elements of chance in the creation of the artwork.
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Participant: But then I finally printed the composition out
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Participant: large scale on photo paper. This is this: actual print is about 30 inches
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Participant: by 44 inches.
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Participant: And so this is the new thing for me to print this large and then to invoke the
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Participant: photo drawing process with the artwork. Because I have a series of drawings photo drawings. I did that
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Participant: we're much smaller. They were mostly 16 by 16 inch square, Prints, that I drew with black ink, black ink pens
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Participant: and and then this piece I'm. Mainly using like metallic
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paint markers and color paint markers. So it's like kind of
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Participant: breaking out of the boundaries of what I what I've kind of traditionally represented in my in my artwork.
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Participant: So this combination of drawing on photo paper
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Participant: is something that has like a
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Participant: a soothing quality for me, and it also.
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Participant: The way in which I work with
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Participant: the interaction between the image and the mark making
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Participant: is such where
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Participant: it kind of becomes a process that allows for an interchange for me. I think
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Participant: spiritually. in my spiritual practice.
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Participant: and through that kind of getting lost in the art making and drawing things start to emerge from the work that I didn't that I don't even necessarily
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Participant: plan for.
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Participant: And so I appreciate
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Participant: this process of photo drawing, and how it allows me
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Participant: to
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Participant: kind of discover. Discover things in the process, you know of making
What led up to the interaction? What motivated you to explore the piece?
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Interviewer: great. Thank you. So you already talked about this a little bit. But what led up to the creation of this art work? What motivated you to create it?
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Participant: Well, you know this image, the composition, the digital collage composition that I created.
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Participant: came came to me at a time
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Participant: prior to the death of my grandmother
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Participant: and
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Participant: and I found that during the time, maybe within the week before she passed away
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Participant: I started to
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Participant: kind of feel.
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Participant: I felt different, you know. I felt like
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Participant: what might be considered like symptoms, mental health symptoms. They have a unknown diversion in
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Participant: and along the way. I just kind of started learning things and having insights that I hadn't had before.
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Participant: and I noticed things like
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Participant: butterflies and moth
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Participant: coming to my window and being around me so much more than they probably had ever noticed before, and it was just interesting because it almost felt like they were messengers to me
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Participant: of my grandmother, my grandmother's transition.
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Participant: and so this particular image that I created during that time over the summer.
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Participant: I felt very much like I wanted to print that large, and to engage with it as a photo drawing because of
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what this particular image meant to me.
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Participant: in that moment, in this firm.
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Interviewer: Great Thank you. and then could you talk a little bit about
When and where did the interaction happen? Was anyone involved
besides you?
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Interviewer: a little about when and where the work happened on this our work? and
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Interviewer: if anybody was involved in it besides you
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Participant: Well, when I printed the the artwork in the photo lab, I printed it in the photo lab on campus.
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Participant: and someone was assisting me with the
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Participant: operation of the printer.
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Participant: but in terms of the actual creation of the artwork.
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Participant: it was all me, though.
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Interviewer: Okay.
What were you thinking and feeling at different times throughout
the process of interacting with the work?
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Interviewer: and then could you talk a little bit about what you were thinking and feeling at different times throughout the process of creating this hardware.
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Participant: Yeah, I I think
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Participant: there's not a lot of
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Participant: conscious thought going on while i'm kind of in
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Participant: the moment with these a work like this
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Participant: sitting in front of the computer.
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Participant: manipulating the images, going through different stages with it. The art.
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Participant: the digital collage aspect of the process.
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Participant: it's I I I don't really start thinking thinking about things until after I've created it, and I have some time to kind of
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Participant: sit back from it and look at it and see Well, what are some of the things that are happening in the artwork. And oh, well, it looks like there are some things I had no clue I was doing
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Participant: in this process, you know
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Participant: And so that's where I feel like
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Participant: there's some information that comes through in my art sometimes
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Participant: that i'm not even
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Participant: consciously, channeling. It's like it's just happening, you know.
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Participant: for example,
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Participant: lines, the silver lines. These are still silver PIN in what looks like white here.
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Participant: and gold
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Participant: lines.
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Participant: I came to realize, after making this piece, that it represented myself and my wife.
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Participant: that even though the image itself is of my knees.
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Participant: the the representation
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Participant: came to
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Participant: stand for me and my my intimate partner. So I saw myself in the figure on the left, and I saw my wife in the figure on the right
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Participant: in terms of certain ways of representing
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Participant: the image and
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Participant: the ways in which there might be certain symbolism that I would associate with her. For example.
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Participant: you know she's a fire sign.
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Participant: and so with the gold on there
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Participant: kind of is a in a. In alchemy, for example, the sun is associated with the symbol for gold
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Participant: and and so I thought of her in the representation with the gold, and then also
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Participant: The more controlled marks are happening in her in the representation of her.
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Participant: We're kind of more erratic in
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Participant: kind of
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Participant: nonlinear kind of flows are happening in the part with me because i'm much more of a
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Participant: like what do you call it?
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Participant: type B the creative like wild person. Then my wife, she's more kind of like
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Participant: structured and controlled, and things like that.
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Participant: And then, even with I discovered that
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Participant: in this imagery here, because because I was what what i'm thinking when i'm working on a work like this digital or drawing.
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Participant: I'm thinking about
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Participant: the relationship with the parts to the whole of how can I
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Participant: bring this image together
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Participant: into a visual piece that makes sense to me, and that looks aesthetically pleasing, and so on and so forth.
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Participant: And like I said, I come back and look at it later, and i'm like, Wow! Look at these things in this artwork.
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Participant: So, for example, when I was trying to build up this face here, because in the actual print
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Participant: there wasn't a lot of detail
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Participant: left in this face. So I had to kind of construct
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Participant: a lot of details here, whereas in this image of the face there was more visible that I could kind of work from.
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Participant: But in the
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Participant: process of trying to build up the shape of the face. Here
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Participant: I started making these marks that created like this hollowed form
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Participant: here
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Participant: and then there's the flower, and then this flower here, and I realize it seems like a
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Participant: image of a Uterus. And Fallopian tubes.
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Participant: and and that has significance to some health issues that my wife has had in the past year.
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Participant: And so I found it remarkable that that would be something that
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Participant: so clearly
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Participant: is evoked in the in the artwork without
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Participant: trying. You know what I mean, like this is just something that that comes out.
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Participant: And
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So
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Participant: yeah. I hope I answered your question.
Can you describe any high points, low points or challenges, or
turning points along the way?
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Interviewer: Yeah, that was great. Thank you so much. Can you describe any high points low points or challenges or turning points in the process of creating this artwork.
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Participant: Well, you know, the days that I actually
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Participant: did the most work on this drawing
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Participant: was a day that I was
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Participant: very emotional and stressed.
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Participant: and I just
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Participant: kind of put myself into my artwork to try to
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Participant: relieve whatever tension I had, and
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Participant: those emotions that were so difficult. But yeah, so it it. I guess it kind of the artwork kind of served as
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Participant: a repository for my feelings.
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Participant: and for
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Participant: for emotions that
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Participant: can be difficult
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Participant: to sustain, not sustain, but
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Participant: difficult to deal with, you know.
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Participant: and
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Participant: so
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Participant: the art making.
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Participant: Help me transform or transmute that negative
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Participant: emotional worry and anxiety into something
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Participant: beautiful
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Participant: that I expressed myself in.
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Interviewer: Alright. Thank you. And let's talk a little bit about the impact of the artwork on yourself and others.
What did you learn from the process of interacting with the
artwork? Did you learn anything about yourself?
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Interviewer: So what did you learn from the process of creating this hard work? How did you learn anything about yourself?
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Participant: Yeah, I think I've been been kind of expressing that along the way. Right? so what am I learning about myself? Like
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Participant: as I mentioned to you earlier? I'm interested in
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Participant: and
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Participant: in my
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Participant: doctoral research, looking at
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Participant: my creative art, making practice.
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Participant: Well, one aspect of the research is looking at my creative art making practice, and how it
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Participant: how I channel Spiritual energies through the art making, and how it also has served to help heal me.
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Yeah.
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Participant: and Yeah, I'm: I'm: so sorry. I feel like I keep forgetting your questions if I get started.
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Interviewer: Yeah, that's that's fine. I know you've been talking in many of their responses about things that you've learned, and things you've learned about yourself. but yeah, that was that just a particular prom at this point was: what have you learned about yourself?
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Participant: Yeah, it's it's it. I would say, this piece teaches me that I am still connected to spirit in that way where I might get a message through the making process.
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Participant: Because and other photo drawings I've done it seems like.
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Participant: and like a really an amazing process where i'm trying to figure out
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Participant: who this person is that i'm depicting in the artwork. You know. What what am I creating? Who is this person emerging? And why are they chasing me? Why do they keep wanting to be seen through this practice process and practice?
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Participant: So what is it teach me about me. It teaches me that my artwork can
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Participant: symbolize things that relate to my personal life, you know.
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Participant: and that might bring
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Participant: the knowledge that I have already
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Participant: like, you know. I mentioned the thing about alchemy and stuff not like i'm an alchemist or something, but you know, like I've studied some of those symbols a little bit.
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Participant: and you know, so I I have an awareness, a certain awareness that that impacts my choices as i'm going about making
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Participant: the certain moves with the artwork and
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Participant: the and the materials and whatnot.
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Participant: But
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Participant: yeah, I think there is potentially potentially more that the work could reveal to me about myself that I don't even think I've even explored yet, and maybe they'll come through
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Participant: as I do more photo drawing pieces on the larger papers, because I have some prints that I actually did on canvas that are large like this.
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Participant: that I plan on doing, painting and drawing on
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Interviewer: great and then
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Interviewer: have others seen this artwork?
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Participant: Yes.
Do you think the artist intended to affect others or the world
in any particular ways?
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Interviewer: and then Could you talk a little bit, maybe, about how they received it? What were their reactions? And then, if you intended for the work to affect others or the world in any particular ways?
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Participant: Hmm.
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Participant: Well, I know my wife was was around when I was working on this, and she would stand and be like. Wow! This is so beautiful like. This is one of the most beautiful pieces you've created, you know, and I told her that it was about us, you know, as as I reflected and thought about what what I was making.
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Participant: and
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Participant: I've shown you also to some professors, because i'm using. I use this image for some of the courses
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Participant: that I was taking this semester
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Participant: and
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Participant: you know I don't recall them really seeing a whole lot about
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Participant: the image, but mainly them thinking I mean them listening to me.
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Participant: So the only like
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Participant: real feedback that I've gotten in terms of like
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Participant: how it affects someone emotionally, or any any any kind of like
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Participant: way as a viewer was. I got that from my wife.
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Interviewer: Okay, Thank you. and then
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Interviewer: has your experience
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Interviewer: affected your understanding of other people?
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Interviewer: or of the world in any ways
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Participant: you know. It helps me see
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Participant: the truth of
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Participant: that axiom as above, so below.
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Participant: you know. It took me quite some time before I understood what what that saying meant.
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Participant: But but I found
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Participant: with this particular artwork
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Participant: that the idea of as above, so below.
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Participant: comes in because of the ways in which this work speaks on multiple levels
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Participant: the way it signifies something simultaneously that's multiple.
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Participant: like being in the ocean and representing this cosmos most at the same time
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Participant: being an image of my niece, but also being
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Participant: representing myself and my wife, and then also on another level, you know, referencing
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Participant: African diaspora religions, and that cosmology and deities from there
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Participant: so
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Interviewer: great. Thank you. so this next prompt is a little bit longer.
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Interviewer: When some people think about themselves, they
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Interviewer: they see some parts of themselves as deeply true, real, or authentic.
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Interviewer: If this idea resonates with you.
Did you have any insights about your own authentic (or
inauthentic) self?
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Interviewer: did you learn anything about your true nature during this process? Did you have any insights into your own authentic or inauthentic self.
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Participant: Honestly, I I kind of shy away from
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Participant: things like statements like true authentic, is something a different different meaning to me than true.
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Participant: because for me I think of true, and it's like kind of like being in a
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Participant: like being pigeon holder or something, you know.
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Participant: I don't think that it necessarily this piece necessarily told me something about myself that I didn't already know.
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Participant: but it did
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Participant: channel in information
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Participant: that I didn't know that I was kind of in discourse with
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through the artwork.
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Participant: so
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Participant: yeah, I don't. I don't look at it as telling me something I don't already know, because I feel like the process with my research, trying to uncover
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Participant: a bigger picture of what recovery and healing and self-possession means in terms of the art making process is a whole. Another thing that's a bigger project than just this one piece, you know.
Did you learn anything about ultimate meaning during the
process?
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Interviewer: Great, Thank you. and then some people believe in ultimate meaning, and this is defined as deep underlying meaning that transcends subjective personal meaning.
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Interviewer: It is about the nature of existence and identity.
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Interviewer: and it may include ideas about the significance of suffering as well as spirituality.
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Interviewer: If this idea resonates with you, did you learn anything about ultimate meaning during the process of creating this our work.
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Participant: I think there's something about ultimate meaning that comes through in this idea that I would even have an experience
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Participant: where
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Participant: maybe I'm. Having some sort of altered states of consciousness, or some sort of experience of trans states
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Participant: while making art.
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Participant: and in that process
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Participant: coming through with
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Participant: symbolism, or motifs, or signs that
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Participant: convey something of that that idea of a universal or ultimate meaning, an idea of unity
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Participant: in the cosmos and in their larger reality.
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Participant: that's also
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Participant: related to the connection
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Participant: between my wife and I.
Perceptions of reality beyond the physical world.
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Interviewer: Alright, thank you. And then some people believe or perceive a reality beyond the physical or material world.
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Interviewer: This may include religious beliefs and experiences, such as perceived interactions with God, but may also include mystical or transcendent experiences or interactions with spirits.
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Interviewer: Did you have any of these kinds of experiences during the creation of this artwork?
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Participant: Yeah, for me, I personally
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Participant: have, I mean, even though I practice African diaspora for religions. I've I I haven't
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Participant: for then, and a witness to like possessions are being written or things like that.
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Participant: and I can't really say like for me like oh, i'm in some sort of the process of being possessed, or something like by spirits, but I do feel like they're in the conversation
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Participant: that there is an input, and there's a relationship to spirituality and to spirits disembodied spirits that
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Participant: speak through my artwork. So I definitely do do believe that.
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Participant: So the nature of that is what i'm trying to study myself.
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Interviewer: Thank you. I just have a few quick follow ups.
How old were you?
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Interviewer: I don't think you mentioned how old were you when you created this artwork?
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Participant: I created this. So the drawing I did it this semester, so i'm i'm 46 now. So I was 46
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Interviewer: and then I think I know how you will
How do you perceive the quality of the work?
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Interviewer: answer this, but how do we perceive the quality of this our work.
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Participant: I think it's a really strong artwork. It's actually in kind of intended to be like a preparatory sketch, because I do have
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Participant: the print on canvas, and I I think it's going to be
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Participant: a little bit of a different approach in on the canvas piece, because it's just. It looks different on the mat material compared to this kind of luster surface of the paper. But I I feel
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Participant: proud of what I created, and
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Participant: and I feel like it's very evocative
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Participant: of something
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Participant: deeply mystical that I seem to have access to
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Participant: through my art
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Participant: and my creativity.
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Participant: So yeah, I am proud of it.
Life Events
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Interviewer: Great. And then would you like to say anything more about what was going on in your life or on the time that you created this artwork.
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Participant: Yeah, as it what was happening. Well, when I first created the digital file that I before I output and in print. I mentioned my grandmother passing. I was
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Participant: actually also studying a Haitian Cralle class at the time, and I would kind of
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Participant: take moments to work on the images while doing the online class.
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Participant: And then when I did the drawing, you know, I there was a issue that it came up
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Participant: in a in a kind of long standing
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Participant: concern that I had related to school, and it was
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Participant: really, I guess, Help me discharge and relief some of those difficult feelings by doing the drawing part of the piece.
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Interviewer: Great Thank you. And
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Interviewer: One more follow-up that I was just kind of curious about going back to is you talked about a deeply mystical quality that you seem to have access to.
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Interviewer: Could you talk a maybe a little bit about what that experience is like, how it affects your artwork.
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Interviewer: and your
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Interviewer: your religious and spiritual beliefs, if at all.
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Participant: Yeah,
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Participant: I've this feeling. It kind of relates to this feeling of being a vessel, you know, like I remember.
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Participant: even as the undergraduate
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Participant: way back in the mid nineties
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Participant: feeling like I was a vessel for spirit when I create.
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Participant: And there was a lot of different kinds of things that I created back then.
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Participant: mixed media pieces. It's, you know, kind of object based sort of things.
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Participant: But
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Participant: and I've learned a lot about
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Participant: African diaspora religion. Since then I would go into the library when I was an undergrad, and we about Haitian vodo, and Santoria, and different spiritual traditions from from the diaspora and and then, finally, you know, I had a longing to connect with the community.
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Participant: And finally, a couple of years ago, that years ago, I was able to
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Participant: find a community of practitioners of efa that got me to another place, I guess, with my spiritual development.
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Participant: But the mystic, the mystic
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Participant: to the mystical quality.
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Participant: it's something. It's not that it's something that I have, like every piece
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Participant: I create it. It's all all about spirituality. It's all about mysticism, but there are certain pieces
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Participant: that, as I mentioned before, I create them, and I realize and learn from other people sometimes that I've
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Participant: put something in the work.
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Participant: Our spirit has channeled into me into the work something that I didn't even know like it relates to some sort of metaphysical knowledge or information that I didn't know. For example.
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Participant: when I was in undergrad.
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Participant: I did a drawing that turned into a painting, and it had an image of a nude woman's torso and a snake kind of descending from the torso.
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Participant: and somewhat from the actually from like the from the pelvic area. And someone told me that
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Participant: that
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Participant: looks like a Kundalini kind of
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Participant: experience, or like I, you know
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Participant: I forget what they call it.
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Participant: But let's just say, you know, like a Kundalini situation. That was before I knew anything about that
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Participant: and and so just the fact that there's certain things that come through that maybe come through my subconscious and come up in the art.
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Participant: It just is. It just is pretty remarkable to me. It's a remarkable experience.
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Participant: be connected to other worldly realities in such a way that there is this kind of conversation somehow, you know, through the art.
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Participant: you know, not necessarily like. I hear voices or anything. It's not the nature of my spiritual communication, but just through sort of a somatic experience. And that's where I really appreciate
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Participant: the mark, making and drawing
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Participant: as a intervention into the digital work.
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Participant: because with the mark making and the drawing.
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Participant: i'm able to.
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Participant: It's like there my body is involved. You know the the marks are kind of tracing
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Participant: the presence of my body. And so there's a connection
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Participant: to
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Participant: Okay, can a a relationship to kin aesthetics that happens with drawing that doesn't happen with the digital or photo based work. So
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Participant: so mixed media is an important
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Participant: approach for me.
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Participant: because i'm learning about
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Participant: about
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Participant: the creative process. I'm learning about the messages that spirit might have for me
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Participant: through
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Participant: 2 different mediums.
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Participant: So i'm actually interested in looking also at my poetry, and how that comes through in some of my poetry.
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Interviewer: Great. Yeah, Thank you so much. This is all great. Thank you so much for sharing all of your experiences and your thoughts.
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