Signal
Part of Double Layers, a story told in sky and skin, code and memory.
Keywords: For So Long
Media:
5x5 archival pigment print on 7x7.5 Hahnemühle German Etching paper with hand-torn edges;
Dye-sublimation print on ChromaLuxe Matte Maple panel (7x7 on 8x10)
Image Description:
A softly blurred self portrait set against a pale, nearly white sky. The subject stands in a summer-yellow dress, red hair catching ambient light, framed by lush greenery. The dye-sub panel features this image with warmth and vibrancy. Faint overlays include the “Love” text from Threshold, barely visible in the head — a whispered thought — and the ghost of Numbers spreadsheet cells, appearing as a grid in the background and subtly across the subject’s right hand. These shapes and symbols repeat throughout the image like a visual hum. The self looks back at the viewer — direct, calm, and distant — both offering and guarding.
Statement of Intent / Artist Interpretation:
Signal was created after a long absence from self portraiture, a return sparked by both personal grief and the impulse to remember oneself. The image was made during an intentional, sacred “art affair” — a solo session at a beloved location, Anderson Farm — shortly after learning of the artist’s mother’s decline. The image is about presence after absence. A way to say: I’m still here. It holds warmth, vibrancy, and a quiet defiance. The intentional blur makes it less about perfection and more about energy. Love is on her mind, again. The Numbers cell overlays resemble both a fence and a structure — hinting at the constraints she’s outgrowing. Her right hand, touched by this grid, is beginning to let go.
Emotional Response:
There’s a quiet power in Signal. It carries the clarity of someone who’s found herself again — not in defiance of loss, but through it. There’s longing here, but not desperation. The image invites viewers to reckon with how they’ve disappeared from themselves, and what it feels like to show back up. The softness isn’t weakness — it’s earned. The print feels like a message sent not to someone else, but to the self who forgot how to speak. Or maybe, it’s a reply to that haunting lyric: “Where have you been for so long?”
Lyrics Association:
Inspired by the quote:
“Hey Me, Hey Mama. Where you been for so long?”
And the quiet grief of:
“I swear I’ve learned, I don’t take pictures of myself anymore / My camera’s in my living room.”
This image is a rebuttal. She did take the picture. She stepped out of the living room. She made the image and met herself again.
Finishing Summary / Viewer Experience:
The etching print, with its hand-torn edges, feels like a precious page from a journal — rich and vulnerable at once. Its tactile softness contrasts the digital overlays it carries, inviting the viewer to look closer. The panel is clean, luminous, and grounded. It asks to be seen — to be hung, displayed, shared — but doesn’t beg. The overall experience is one of rediscovery, offered with quiet confidence. It hopes to remind the viewer of their own strength, their own right to return.
Let’s talk about my thoughts about Signal. The panel print is of my most recent successful self portraits titled For So Long. It was titled that way based off a quote. “Hey Me, Hey, Mama. Where you been for so long.” This hit home. I’ve always enjoyed making self portraits as a way to show who I am. For So Long was created after a hiatus from portrait work. It was also created after finding out my mom had a blood clot. She would never recover. Never walk again.
Grief is complicated, often existing in multiple worlds; the old and the new, and the analog and digital.
If I reflect on this image it expresses this quote “I swear I’ve learned, I don’t take pictures of myself anymore. My camera's in my living room”.
I snuck away , to have an “Art Affair”, at a favorite photography location, Anderson Farm. I wore a summer-yellow dress and began the dance of setting and releasing the shutter. The image was intentionally blurry. The color is warm, rich, and vibrant. There is repetition in shape and colors throughout the image. A texture overlay from another image, Above My Head, was used. For the digital overlay, I’ve reused the Love text from Threshold. It only faintly shows in my head. Expressing that again, love is on my mind. The Numbers sheet cells appear in the luscious greenery, almost resembling a fence. The cells also faintly appear in the right hand.
What is clinging to my right hand figuratively?
In symbolic and somatic traditions, the right hand (and the right side of the body) is associated with:
• Action, agency, and outward expression
• The masculine principle — connected to logic, structure, protection, and doing
• The past or what has already been decided, as opposed to the left, which often represents the unknown or receptive future
So when the Numbers cells subtly cling to my right hand in Signal, they may suggest a lingering attachment to past frameworks of order, control, or expectation — maybe a way of being that used to serve me, or someone else’s architecture for my life. The “cells” might represent boundaries I inherited or accepted without question. A spreadsheet is a tool of logic, measurement, planning — and here it’s ghosting my hand, as though saying: What are you still holding that no longer serves your soft, expressive self?