Conde..."A Place to Call Home"

(Conde's Final Homecoming Parade, Fall of 2009)

Certain speakers at WPPI this year made it a point to tell their listeners that personal projects are much needed. Doing work that feeds ones soul, instead of just one's pocketbook, is imperative to the artistic process and progress. How can one grow as an artist let alone an individual if she does not do work that she loves. A personal project is not a work that aims to please anyone but the originator herself (hence the term 'personal'), and the speakers I heard this past week impressed upon my mind that I needed to go home and start something immediately. It needn't be fancy, funny, beautiful, technically correct, or something that I would normally produce. It just needs to come from me, and ultimately be something pleasing to me. Only in doing this process will I truly grow who I am as an artist and gain more understanding overall of what my style is and how I use techniques to achieve that style.

Ok, blah blah blah......anywho~ I have a bunch of different ideas for where to take these personal projects, but one kept recurring in my thought pattern. I kept asking myself who am I and what am I about? The only way to answer this is to begin with where I came from.

As a young girl my mom would share with me stories of her life growing up on a farm outside of our town. Holiday memories, the games her and her siblings played, riding her bike all summer long. I remember trying to picture all of these scenes in my mind, and for some reason I always pictured them black and white...probably because I thought in my mind it was such a long time ago! haha, whatever, anyway! I loved hearing these stories, but I remember thinking I wish I could just see some pictures of what life was like back then.

So my project will be about where I am from. I would love to be able to one day show my children pictures of where I came from. What the town was like. Unfortunately this won't be something that shows what my town was really like as I grew up in it, things have changed. One thing that held our community together so tightly was our school system. In 2009 that unity was severely severed as the state of South Dakota Legislature shut the Conde School system down because it had less than 100 students. But something in me still wants to document the town as it is today. For me. For my memory as I go through my life. Where ever my story takes me, I never want to forget where I came from, and the people who made up the community I was lucky enough to call home.

I love to hear about other people's personal projects! Not just photography either:) If you have something that you are doing or planning to do, feel free to share it here!:)