inspiration

open studio: technology-dependent person /  by kelly heaton

Technology is changing our entire experience of reality. I grew up without email or cell phones, and only started to use a word processor in high school. Landline phones, TV, movies, and radio offered escapes from reality, but people basically lived in the real world all. of. the. time. Even when we were bored, we hung out in the real world. Now, the instant we experience boredom or social isolation, we check our email. We text instead of calling or talking in person. We search the web. We update our blog and procrastinate on social media. Our entire psychological construct is evolving from physical reality to virtual. Even our dreams replay experiences that do not exist in physical reality. What would Jung and Freud say? As we withdraw from nature and into ourselves, into fantasy and ephemera, we are ever-more vulnerable to basic realities that once occupied humans all of the time. Danger, Will Robinson.

open studio: boy meets girl /  by kelly heaton

Boy Meets Girl (2 Knobs with Variable Resistance), 2016. Colored pencil, graphite, and gouache on paper.  11" x 15"

This drawing is a study of potentiometers and their knobs as a metaphor for people and their personas. A potentiometer is a device that is used to adjust (vary) resistance in a circuit. Volume knobs are potentiometers. Or, more accurately, a volume knob is mounted into the shaft of a potentiometer to facilitate easy adjustment. In order than the entire mechanism doesn't turn when you twist the knob, potentiometers (aka "pots") are mounted into some kind of panel. Most people only see the knob mounted onto the panel, and are never privy to the pot behind -- which is the real story. 

Relationships are similar. We hide our true selves behind a rigid panel, a wall, presenting others with a knob, or persona, with which to interact. Other factors twist our knob, represented here by a bunch of thumbs in the sky. Maybe God, maybe fate, maybe spirits ... who knows. In my drawing, I included a spark gap in the foreground which will ignite if the boy's and girl's knobs are properly adusted. If they are turned on, so to speak, ;-)