Seeing as this seems to be the time of the year to make lists, here it is.

1. I’m lazy.
A few other items on this list will speak to this, but really, most of the time I find it hard to be bothered. My thoughts, opinions and ideas have other venues already.

2. I write down most things I would probably consider blogging about.
As a compulsive notebook purchaser, carrier, and user—most things get logged physically. I am aware that it is a huge pain in the ass to go through five different 100 page notebooks to find where I listed the fibonacci series as related to type size in scale, 1/2 scale and 1/4 scale. I would probably just make a little laminated card to toss on my desk before I would blog it (which seems to contradict reason #1).

3. I’m rarely compelled to make incomplete projects “public.”
This is not because I am particularly private about what I am working on, but rather due to my complete inconsistency I have little to no audience and what I do have I tend to talk with individually on a near daily basis. It was nice of them to humor me and add me to their feed reader, though.

4. I have ADD.
It would be really easy to make a stupid attention-span joke here.

5. The only time I really feel like blogging is when I am either on my bike,
in my car or about to fall asleep.
This is classic ADD loser/procrastinator behavior. The motivation miraculously appears when there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

6. I don’t need the validation.
Or maybe I am just pretty good at convincing myself I don’t.

7. It’s too easy to be negative.
Being acerbic and rude was my “default” for quite a while—until I realized I just don’t care.

8. I resent technology…
…but yet I love my computer. The overwhelming amount of social networking sites, applications and other nerdery that are just vehicles for advertising and zombie bites makes me sad. Even though blogs are easy to hate, they can be among the least annoying because my favorites are usually individuals without insane levels of ad-integration.

9. I always think of how I need to fix the comment formatting.
I mean, really.

10. Other people do it better.
Let’s give me the benefit of the doubt and say I have a unique, valuable opinion. In this Ross-Topia of thought, all other 9 reasons would still apply and that can be difficult to overcome. Then there are the people in the world making interesting connections and plenty of other people to blog about those people.

I wouldn’t say that I don’t see the value of blogging—for personal reasons or for an audience—but the nature of it has never really made sense for the way I process my ideas and other information. Why I am compelled to continue to try? I have no idea, but 2008 is already shaping up to be strangely different.

There is a very bloggable project I am working on. I am getting married and moving to another country. There is a fair amount of interesting things that are going to happen—that I happen to know about in advance.

Eight pages of things that could have been blogged.

Benny and Arch, ‘06 © Shelby Lee Adams

I’m going to try and kick these off with photographers I have already mentioned on this blog. So, first off, we have Shelby Lee Adams. As much as I would like to critique this and all future statements I post, I will try to refrain out of respect and fear. Don’t let that stop you, though.

Every summer, traveling through the mountains photographing, I am somehow able to renew and relive my childhood. I regain my southern, mountain accent and approach my people with openness, facination, and respect; and they treat me with respect. My psychic antennae become sharpened and acute. I love these people, perhaps that is it, plain and simple. I respond to the sensual beauty of a hardened face with many scars, the deeply etched lines and flickers of sweat containing bright spots of sunlight. The eyes of my subjects reveal a kindness and curiosity, and their acceptance of me is gratifying. For me, this is rejuvenation of the spirit of time past, and I am better for the experience each time it happens. These portraits are, in a way, self-portraits that represent a long autobiographical exploration of creativity, imagination, vision, repulsion and salvation. My greatest fear as a photographer is to look into the eyes of my subject and not see my own reflection.

My work has been an artist search for a deeper understanding of my heritage and myself, using photography as a medium and the Appalachian people as collaborators with their own desires to communicate. I hope, too, that viewers, will see in these photographs something of the abiding strength and resourcefulness and dignity of the mountain people.

Shelby Lee Adams

Shelby has a blog that is as seemingly as new and as oft-updated as my own.

The dry spot on my porch created by the New York Times - Echo Park, Calif. 2006

Being accountable totally blows. The fact that some people think you should be responsible for the things you say and do is one of the more frustrating things about not being five years old. So it’s a shame that more artists aren’t five. Instead they are often hormonally realized adult human beings. They have fully developed frontal lobes that hold them accountable for their actions, artistic or otherwise.

Some artists resist accountability, at least on paper or in interviews. Or in any public venue. Or at home. Some people might think that it is noble, or at least respectable, to claim that your work either doesn’t need or would be ill-served by being bound to a statement. I suppose that’s fair, but is operating on the assumption that people probably don’t care for any supplemental insight into the work. Which is probably also fair.

It is so easy to write a bad statement, even for a great body of work, that it is something that most people have come to expect and resent. Nobody likes to be told what to do–especially hormonally realized adult art patrons–and too often an artist’s statement will tell you how you are experiencing the work. “This blog post forces you to consider your position as a spectator in relation to an art-language-loop.” Right?

I write about my work constantly, via email with other photographers, in “actual” statements, or in notebooks when I am in the middle of a project. It literally is a different language with which to approach and consider what I am doing and I find it a very necessary component to understanding and advancing my work. I also appreciate insightful, informative and helpful statements from other artists. Even more so, I appreciate the schadenfreude experience that comes with reading a truly bad, self-important statement that is neither enlightening or useful in any way.

Starting either later today or tomorrow I am going to start posting statements as I find them. Out of respect and fear I will not comment on them. I will not point out which one made me pee my pants, or the one that originally inspired me to continually write about my work. I originally wanted to be funny about the whole thing, with a grading system that was named with a hilarious acronym. Introspection and counsel reminded me that to be respectful isn’t a bad thing.

So here’s to the glory of lobes and accountability.