Rebecca Arnold, Blog #1: That's The Idea

Well, since this is my first blog entry, I’ll give you a rundown of what I’ve been thinking about lately.

I often find myself feeling an unrealistic expectation of perfection of everyday life. I get attached to the magic of movies and other media, the idealistic version of any situation. It’s beautiful and yet unattainable. But I am generalizing, I’ll admit that; that’s mostly because I find the older the movie, the more captivated I am. I am a child of the 20s at heart. If I could live back then, in a simpler, genuine time, I’d be the happiest girl in the world.

A lot of the work that I like to do is based on feelings of never completely growing up. I think that’s because I’m not ready to face the future’s worrisome life struggles after college. While I know I’ll

have wonderful life experiences too, I am still concerned. What if I don’t make the right decisions in life? What if I don’t get the kind of job I want? What if I’m not successful?

I buy into all of it. Movies, books, music, art in a general sense. They are all captivating and compressed versions a beautiful feeling. There aren’t roadblocks, just interesting content. It’s completely opposite of the tedious, day-to-day activities that are known as facts of life.

I even do this with celebrities. If their life stories aren’t already in the tabloids, I see them as the perfect characters they play. In fact, when I first heard Christian Bale’s reprimanding speech to another employee on the set of Terminator, I was like “But he’s Batman! He can’t say stuff like that, he’s a hero.”

We all want something exciting to happen to us. We crave important life experiences, especially when they’re unexp

ected. I need answers, and life lessons. Am I secretly a princess? Will I win a trip to an island and then have it turn out so that I have to fight for my life?

Lots of babble, but I guess to get to the point I just want my own perfected reality. My own Utopia.

Rodney Smith is a quirky artist who I find has a captivating perfection of unusual, unpredictable situations. He claims to be a Fashion Photographer, but I don't completely buy that. His content is too charming. His well dressed, beautiful models almost always look indifferent in their positions, and often his imagery/content screams illusion, or fantasy.

Rodney Smith

I’ve done a lot of unpredictable fairy-tale like photographs these past two years, but I’m ready for something a little different. I want to do something a little more realistic…but with a fabricated, false perfection quality to it.

To be quite honest, I would LOVE to build a film set, but I’m not going to straight copy Gregory Crewdson’s style. He's another idol of mine and I've done a lot of research on his work.

Gregory Crewdson

So these are my ideas so far. I'm trying to make some progress in my artistic vision, and I'm excited to have my first meeting so I can express these thoughts.