An artist who works visually uses their medium to express what cannot be said in words. Normally the better an artist is at putting thought and emotion to paper in a visual expression, the worse they are at putting it down in words. As I have grown older, I find the complexities and dualities of my thoughts and feelings reflected onto my surroundings. Objects become my emotional triggers, a fetish unlocking my inner self. I tend to attach more importance to items, unable to let go, transferring my feelings into them. If my favorite toy is broken, I am broken as well.

I am enamored with the 20" x 24" Polaroid camera. This six foot, 300 pound behemoth, can take trivial flotsam and jetsam and impress an importance in meaning that is lost on the smaller scale. In addition, it offers an immediacy of result that is sometimes lost in my black and white photographic work. It is like taking a picture of my soul.

The large scale Polaroid process is straightforward, much like its smaller counterpart. The positive and negative sheets are pulled from the back of the camera and peeled apart. The act of making a transfer though, is more labor intensive. This process reflects the act of pulling emotions out of the shell in which I keep them, and splashing them onto paper. The positive and negative sheets are immediately peeled apart, and the chemical filled negative is placed on a wet piece of paper. The chemistry is forced into the paper: it is pushed, squeezed and rolled into the wet material. Peeling away the negative, the image is revealed, and the excess chemistry is stripped away. This process leaves burn marks, bubble trails, and occasionally parts of the image not fully developed. It does not create a perfect image each time.

So why go to the trouble and extra effort to transfer the negative away from the Polaroid paper? Why degenerate the images by transferring them? I create these works to express myself, to transfer myself onto another surface. The chemistry of the transfer burns, runs, bubbles, tears and bleeds off the edges. It is messy, much like the inner struggle that creates these works.

I am now trying to force my image making process further. Rather than taking familiar, comfortable objects to the Polaroid studio, I am incorporating mostly locally found objects. So, not only do I respond to the emotions that I feel around me, emotions inflected on me by my surroundings, I also find these emotions in the discarded items of the city. I know that the feelings I have are the same that others have felt. Just as I struggle in my work to find a way to express myself in our image driven society, so do I struggle with myself to find my individuality in a society where everything seems to have been done before. I find solace in the used, discarded things from others' lives. I want to recycle their meaning and importance, to infuse them with the feeling and thought that this city has impressed into me. Then when I am complete, I return these objects back to the city, keeping only the image, the memory of the event and the feeling that is left inside.

BARBRA BEELER ARTS RESUME

Photos of the artist at work in Prague, and a description of the Polaroid Transfer process. See her 4" x 5" Polaroid transfer work as well.

SEE PHOTOS OF BARBRA OOSTING IN THE POLAROID STUDIO IN PRAGUE