Inspiration

Sometimes inspiration can be as hard to tease out as extracting a splinter from your finger! And for an artist, it’s not just finding a concept or theme for a piece of art but how to execute it. No matter what medium is used, an artist still needs to physically engage with the material in order to achieve the vision she has in her mind!
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Here is what our current exhibiting artist, Leona M Seufert, has to say about the process as she discusses her series “When Memories Fade Away”, from inspiration to realization:
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“For me the concept always comes first. Whether it’s descriptive sentences or an image in my mind, that is where the process starts. Then I ask myself ‘what is the story I want to tell.’ I always create a ‘series’ so the ‘story’ will develop over the various pieces.
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With the 22^nd anniversary of 9/11 series I knew I had to deal with the sad part that not much is happening viz a vie 9/11. Yes, the names of the people lost on 9/11 are still read and there is the ongoing story of people dieing from the Ground Zero induced illness. However, it was this seeming absence of remembering back to that day that inspired me to focus on the fading away of memories, yes, as all do over time.
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But how does one give form to an idea? I couldn’t just ‘fade away’ photographs. My usual next step in the process is to go through images I have or do a Google search on keywords, to start my mind narrowing in on my story’s images. I knew I wanted the Twin Towers to be part of my story but using them literally was not very creative. And what exactly was ‘fading away’?
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That’s when I realized that we all remember the Towers’ destruction; that hardly has faded away. But what about everything else at Ground Zero? The underground mall, the interior architecture of the buildings, the images that did not make it into news stories, etc. The photographs that I had stored on my hard drive held the key.
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The Towers would be 2 abstract rectangles rising up to the sky and superimposed upon them would be images of what now are the memories of things that they contained. It would be those hidden and lost images that would be faded away. Using Photoshop, my software of choice, I could manipulate those lost images to give them a dream like quality. And I would end the series’ story with an image of the new WTC1 and in front of it, faded away would be one of the hundreds of memorials that had popped up all around NYC in 2001 and, of course, no longer exist.”
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As you can see, Leona’s process is more of a dialog than a bolt of inspiration. She has a question in her mind and spins out a story while “feeding” herself images that spark ideas. Some ideas are tossed way, but others are used to develop the art works from which, in the end, she will select the best that tell her story. 

The Twin Towers Live On

Leona M Seufert is a digital artist using Photoshop to create collages that tell a story. Our current exhibit has the 6 she did around the theme of 9/11 fading from memory. For every 9/11 she writes poems and does research to write essays that talk about the year just passed and what has happened at Ground Zero. This year she was very disappointed to discover that her research turned up only one item: the rebuilding of the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church being completed. She felt that 9/11, that horrible day 22 years ago, was fading from our memories and thus proceeded to create her series “When Memories Fade Away.” She used images of what was at Ground Zero prior to the fall of the Towers and superimposed that upon abstract images of the Twin Towers. You will notice she “faded away” those images, as being out of focus to emphasizes the fact that we no longer see clearly that past time. View our current virtual exhibit to see all 6 of these stunning images
Visit her website to view other digital collage series she’s created.
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To see the history of the last 22 years since 9/11 and the rebuilding of ground Zero, visit her World Trade Center Journal website.
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Leona Seufert studio-l@att.net
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