Thursday, November 08, 2012

My Mother's Red Shawl - El Rebozo Colorado
Jacqueline - Model






Alex approached me for The Red Shawl Series wanting, among all the portraits, someone labelled as “Jacqueline: model,” and I nearly reconsidered the title I held to be true of myself (as I have held so many titles in my small 25 years). “I am not a model, really,” I had told him, but at the moment he had found me I was playing that role. I had become a model, stumbled upon it almost by mistake; letting the face I had always found strange (even ugly) become a face for others to see. I was at a point when I was more vulnerable and also more confident than I had ever been; I was beginning to find myself and who I am. That was only a few weeks ago. I am still learning the title I hold. I have been—at various times—an academic, a writer, a teacher, what Anne Sexton called “Her Kind,” and, most recently, a model. Alex caught me at the beginning of the last title. For him I was a model, and for him I continue to be.

In my first conversation with Alex I said that I could, at best, call myself a dabbler. I think it would be more accurate to call myself a 25 year old, searching for where I belong while overcoming pitfalls beyond my age and living to experience joys I have not yet known. I have tried on what I can to see what fits, I have been what I could be in the face of what has befallen me (and in the shadow of mistakes I have made). In my first conversation with Alex he mentioned that he knew nothing about me except that I had very large eyes, and since then I have told him perhaps more than he cared to know. He also mentioned the movie Funny Face and my own funny face lit up (he could not see this as the conversation was by phone): he was playing Richard Avedon to my Audrey (or Jo Stockton as the film would have it). I felt like a model. I felt comfortable having that title next to my name as I went to his house, wore his mother’s shawl, met his Rosemary and a cat while he showed me his books and his pictures. We began to collaborate, and continue to plan future collaborations during what he calls his “bell curve” and what I see as a linear continuation of an admirable career—he wears a few hats himself, but has done so without dabbling. I seek such focus in my own aspirations.

When I first touched his mother’s red shawl (red being my favourite colour, and my lips painted to match), I wasn’t sure what to do with it. It felt like a precious item in my hands, woven with the history of his mother’s and the people who have worn it for him now—the fabric that binds us all together. Could I do it justice? Would I wear it correctly? He told me to do what felt natural, and I wrapped it around me the way I felt it would have been worn in 1952 (the date he had given me). Immediately I was told that I had done the right thing, and I sat for him and was given the Polaroid of his “single shot.” He compared my off kilter wearing of the shawl to a Balenciaga creation, and again my face lit up: he saw what I saw, and what I had aimed to do. Since then I have believed we are of similar minds, and that is the beauty of collaboration. Our next shoot, this time in my small apartment, was meant to be inspired by Egon Schiele: a suggestion he made without knowing a poster with the artist’s name hung above my bed. When he arrived at my house he told me he was thinking of Sylvia Plath as he had been reading Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters, again unaware that the collected poems of each were on the shelf next to my bed. Out came the blonde wig, and he captured a better side of me: making me his model, and a new collaborator and friend. I am now reminded why art excites me, and the position modelling has afforded me to meet new people and to collaborate, pose, and indulge my own vanity (as most artists do, as many dabblers cannot escape doing). I am excited by what I can do, and the collaborative role I can play as I freelance model and meet photographers like Alex with whom I can share a vision and make it into reality. It is about beauty; it is about art.

A man in my life has seen many of the photos taken of me, and maintains that the quick Polaroid Alex has given me for this series is his favourite of them all. Perhaps that’s instant magic—Alex asked so little of me in this portrait, and something we both loved came out. I feel as though I owe the photographer a poem, but I model more than write these days. I offer instead a fragment of a poem by Ted Hughes from the aforementioned Birthday Letters, titled (appropriately, for its connection in fabric, in history, to the red shawl, to Plath) A Pink Wool Knitted Dress:

In that echo-gaunt, weekday chancel
In your pink wool knitted dress
And in your eye-pupils, great cut jewels
Jostling in their tear-frames, truly like big jewels
Shaken in a dice-cup and held up to me.

Cathy Marsden Psychiatrist
André De Mondo Wanderer
Colin MacDonald Saxophonist/Composer
Nina Gouveia Yoga Instructor
Stacey Hutton Excercise Physiologist
Colleen Wheeler Actor
Sarah Rodgers Actor, Director,Mother
Timothy Turner - Real Estate Agent
Kiera Hill Dancer
Johnna Wright & Sascha Director/Mother - Son/Dreamer
Decker & Nick Hunt Cat & 19th century amateur
George Bowering Poet
Celia Duthie Gallerist
Linda Lorenzo Mother
Katheryn Petersen Accordionist
Stefanie Denz Artist
Ivette Hernández Actress
Byron Chief-Moon Actor/Dancer
Colin Horricks Doctor
Ian Mulgrew Vancouver Sun Columnist
Jocelyn Morlock Composer
Corinne McConchie Librarian
Rachel Ditor Dramaturg
Patrick Reid Statesman, Flag Designer
Michael Varga CBC Cameraman
Bronwen Marsden Playwright/Actress/Director
David Baines Vancouver Sun Columnist
Alex Waterhouse-Hayward Photographer
Lauren Elizabeth Stewart Student
Sandrine Cassini Dancer/Choreographer
Meredith Kalaman Dancer/Choreographer
Juliya Kate Dominatrix