Seeing underneath
With everything seen, something underneath is there, too, already present and ready to emerge.
Early in my time in Chiang Mai, I deliberately decided not to post on Instagram (and it still continues), my go-to platform for sharing what and how I see the world around me. It was liberating not to have that expectation of myself. It was revealing to admit that posting would have been driven by my ego. Instead, I chose to be more present and to scroll and search within my own experience.
Often, taking photos helps me see. It lets me look closely, focus in and compose an image, and perceive something new. In Chiang Mai, photographing became a way for me to try to understand something. In my last two blogs, I wrote about that in Unsightly / curious and Contrasts and sabai.
But now that I’m home, I wondered if there was anything I could do, or what I’d like to do, with the photos. I created an album but haven’t shared many of the images. But that’s not even it. They still intrigue me, even if Thailand feels so far away now. Maybe I need to see something more, I wondered.
It all started with a memory that came to me recently. I remember vividly riding in my friend’s car as we drove to Montreal from Southern Vermont. We were in graduate school and decided to check out the Canadian city for a few days. My feet were up on the dashboard, sketchbook in hand, as I drew quick line sketches of the scene out the front windshield, composed within two-inch squares. The landscape didn’t change much, and it wasn’t dramatic, which was perfect for capturing a kind of structure that I was seeing. Within each of the compositions, I sketched multiple variations.
This practice and process evolved into what I later termed line translations, which is about exploring the line within a structure, and how it can be expressed.
Two of my favorite line translations hang on my studio wall. They’ve been catching my attention lately, signaling that I need to remember something. Photos can offer more than just an image. They offer the possibility of seeing differently, and expressing uniquely.
A close-up of tree bark in a nearby forest (top) or a marble-tiled floor in a desert palace in India (bottom) were translated into something else. I could express line marks in varying ways by first discovering the underlying structure in a photo’s image. Some lines referenced the original photo, and some didn’t. That’s what made it compelling for me—holding to the original and also diverging from it. There was more underneath the photo’s image that allowed me to express it endlessly.
For my photos from Chiang Mai, I chose three that were taken at the Lanna Architecture Center and the Lanna Traditional House Museum.
I printed them out and cut them into two-inch squares to better focus on the details. Then I arranged them in combinations, turning them this way and that, and observing new patterns and relationships. This helped me see each two-inch square not as a photo fragment but beginning to see their lines and shapes.
Then, I chose several squares and began drawing lines to discover their structure. Using a black lithographic crayon gave the drawings a quality I remembered, with thick, bold, edgy lines. These are the ones that I settled on:
With everything seen, something underneath is there, too, already present and ready to emerge—a structure, a possibility, an expression, a story.
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Looking underneath…
LouLou
“Seeing underneath” was originally published as an exclusive post to supporters in April 2024. Now it’s public to you, too! If you’d like to support my art and writing life, please consider a one-time donation or a monthly membership ($6/month) on the creator platform, Ko-fi. I would be most grateful!
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