I guess the purpose for this thread is two-pronged. A long post, so for those who bear with me, thank you
In the real world Sessile are actual biological organisms - if you google it you'll learn clams cemented to rocks and feeding from tidal flows are sessiles. I have taken the term for my own purposes.
Firstly, I have a thought or concept, and I want to not just explore it internally but share it with others. Tell me if the thought is too odd, or arcane. I'm unable to readily communicate what I find intriguing about it in a way that interests others. In this case, actually, I have virtually stopped working on it because the work seems to land with a distant thud.
So, do you folks have these sorts of thoughts? Can you successfully share them and get others to interact with them? What sort of recommendations are there for a guy like me who wants to take a further look at his concept (In this case Sessile) and do it in a way that doesn't need a book to explain what he's doing?
Secondly, is the concept itself worth pursuing as a visual product? Is there visual imagery out there that does what I want to do, and does it better? There is a real possibility that the things I like about my Sessile are handled much more effectively by other people under another Brand Name. Or it is an old, hackneyed concept that I am oblivious to? I've recently had someone refer to this stuff as Green Man work for instance - an exciting and interesting branch of imagery and myth and legend that I may be related to but is perhaps only part of my Sessile. Is there some byway or alley I am blindly walking down that an outside viewpoint can point out for me? I would like to take more time with Sessile but as I said, for now I'm just letting it sit because I have more fruitful places I can put my time and energy.
Sessile is a concept that came to me a while back. I've gotten the feedback that it is a bit, well, too individual and internal a concept. Sometimes it seems that a project or possibility that may be exciting or involving to me is perhaps inaccessible and uninteresting to other people. A quickie blurb I put on my website (
Mark Johnson Fine Art - Wonder and Whimsy) in the Tree Dancer and Sessile gallery reads;
"Sessile are the faces I create for the special places this earth has, it’s places of power and significance where we can connect with the deeper parts of ourselves."
I think of Sessile as more than that. Indeed it is the underlying dream that finds ways to show itself here and there in a way we can see part of. In order to see this dream we put an actual face on it, tie it to a physical place in our world, experience it through our own realized senses in a way we can barely understand.
The Sessile is much more than a stationary head or face. It is also the nexus for energies and influences that we can only vaguely sense. Even then we probably misinterpret the phenomenon that we experience.
The first time I conceived of Sessile I was browsing another forum I am a member of, and someone posted their work station for fun. I was caught by the image on their monitor and kept coming back to it, finally realizing that I had to draw out what I saw even though what I saw had absolutely no relationship to the work that was shown on the monitor.
Here is the monitor shot.
Here is what I saw, what I knew was my first Sessile set of sketches;
Since then I have been thinking of Sessile and done drawings at various levels of finish, and size, and with various intents.
Actually my Tree Dancers are a direct product of Sessile. They are the result of considering what might happen if a person spent time in the transformitive aura that a Sessile Place has when in a meditative and receptive state. That would be another thread.
So, any thoughts, comments, ideas, critiques? Talk to me, people