Chaotic drips

Jackson Pollock is best known for his larger-than-life canvases covered in chaotic lines of color that collide with each other, forming a highway of paint collisions and complete disarray. Pollock moved from the conventional use of brushes and palettes onto the drip technique, which he used as a style of paint-pouring dance around canvases. His “action paintings” don’t portray any single image; he believed they have a life on their own, which evolved through his dripping and dribbling of synthetic resin-based paints.

           

I first admired “Lavender Mist: Number 1” when I was in elementary school, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. I was captivated by its size (7 ft 3 in x 9 ft 10 in), by its chaos, by its lawlessness, but I couldn’t quite understand why I found it so fascinating. I revisited it several times throughout high school; I would sit there in a state of entrancement and just stare, as the second hand would loop around my watch countless times.

           

I’ve never been a fan of museum tour guides, I never understood how they could possibly objectively tell me the meaning of a work of modern art, especially one like Pollock’s. What most fascinates me about Lavender Mist is its ability to have different meanings for different people. It took me a while to truly understand what the painting meant to me – its size is so great and its image so disorderly that the eye briskly moves all over the canvas, unsure of where to stop. But I finally got it: I saw Lavender Mist as a representation of the complexities of life, of the chaos, of the interconnectedness between us all and of our emotional ups and downs.

           

Parts of the painting are more chaotic and darker than others, just like parts of our lives are more confusing than others. Sometimes we feel overwhelmed as stressful events continuously pile on to each other, and sometimes we wonder, when will it ever get better? To me, the darker, intersecting lines represent these times – the confusion, and the deep and obscure abysses of our minds where nothing seems to make any sense.

But then there are the lighter parts of the painting, where black isn’t the ruling colors and paint is more spaced out, lines are less jarring and pronounced. To me, these sections signify the calm areas of our lives – maybe the calm before the storm, maybe merely the peaceful moments. Things aren’t as puzzling here; yellow and white are the prominent colors on the canvas. It’s as if one’s heart rate finally had the time to calm down and breathe in the midst of this disorderly darkness.

There aren’t any many calm and light areas in Lavender Midst, as if life were ruled mainly by dire chaos. But there seems to be a central yellow background, which I interpret to mean that despite all the curveball life throws at you, it’s still a beautiful learning experience.  

On the streets of LA

For quite some time, I've been wanting to talk to homeless men and women, to learn their stories, to know how they ended up living on the street, without a roof over their heads, without food, without showers or restrooms. In an online reporting class at the University of Southern California, we were told to report on a topic of our choice in a specific neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles. I saw it as the perfect opportunity to step outside of my comfort zone, outside my bubble, and explore an environment so foreign to me. 

I met Kevin Johnson, a crack cocaine addict, by pure accident. My friend and I were driving around, in the search for homeless carts and tents to photograph, and desperately looking for a homeless men or women willing to share part of their life story. Suddenly we saw a couple of men sorting trash bins, trying to find cans to recycle for a tiny bit of money. I went up to one of them, Sam. He wanted me to pay him. Then I hear someone yelling, "I'll have a story for you, come here!" And then he just started talking, so eloquently, so beautifully, but so sadly. 

This is his story. 

I asked him about homeless shelters, whether or not he found them helpful for drug rehabilitation. They're not, in his opinion. Drug addicts find ways to sneak in substances regardless of the rules, he said. So I wanted to talk to homeless shelters staff and clients to know a little bit more. And that's when I found People Helping People, a shelter who had to close down in this past January. 

After I turned in my project, my interest for the homeless community did not go away. I'm currently working on an investigative piece about police presence and alleged abuse on Skid Row.