“The Wind Will Not Carry You,” by Jordan Evans, is an honorable mention for the Columbia Journal’s Special Issue on Loneliness in the art category.
Author’s note:
The light on her face did not reflect, but illuminated the softening lack of its contents.
I can’t claim to have created this piece with loneliness in mind. The planning-and-producing mindset typically leads me to a sloppy, forced result that offends the eye. Instead, I empty my head and follow the little stream that remains. It leads me to where, I think, sincerity lives.
I constructed this piece with cut and torn paper mashed and smothered together with rubber cement. I selected the original images from magazines, mostly National Geographic issues from the sixties and seventies. I like the thick, powdery paper best in these issues, and the look of film photography. More modern magazine pages have a razor’s edge to them. They’re glossy, and full of photoshop. I believe that film photography captures a smaller range of colors than digital photography. I can create more cohesive color palettes when I have less to work with.
I would say loneliness was a feeling I ignored while making this, but by the time the piece was done, I held the mirror up and couldn’t ignore or argue with it any longer. Maybe it is like paleontology, I don’t know exactly what it is I’m looking for. Bones or fossils or a little mosquito gilded in the sweet sap of the Cambrian Period, but I know I need to dig, and sweep, and brush sediment away carefully, because I can’t damage what I seek, even though I’m a bit lost as to what that is.