howard_statement

I started with a word. Downlow. That led to a gesture. When I contemplated this body of work, my hands would instinctively come up to my chest about 6 inches apart then they would dive down together and gently swoop back up to an imaginary surface. I repeated this movement of going down low over and over like a mantra, but I still didn’t fully realize what this meant. It was an idea that was still eluding me, just beneath the surface. Then, while watching a movie about surfing with my girls, I discovered this same body movement. It is called a duck dive. This motion allows the surfer to dive under the waves closer to the shore without getting all torn up as he/she paddles farther out to where the really good surfing waves are. It is a beautiful, elegant movement, essential to the whole process of surfing. Without this move, this groundwork, the surfer would expend all of their energy floundering in and struggling against the surf without ever reaching the good stuff. I realized that this was the metaphor that I wanted to capture in Downlow. We all want the “good stuff”, but in the process of getting there we too often get knocked around and driven off course by some pretty rough surf. But this is an unavoidable part of life’s essential groundwork. We cannot just stand on the shore. In this body of work, my intention was to access a more elegant path by diving beneath the surface of things into the deep blue down low. I wanted to present the calm and the beauty that lies beneath, but also within, the chaos of life.