My Favorite Things

(untitled, My Favorite Things, 2008)

I once had flashbacks. I saw memories of small details of my life that served not external purpose, nothing that built a sense of character or defined my life, but these almost meaningless details of things, such as a small grocery bag on the curb, or a brickwall of the house I grew up in.

To quote Oscar Hammerstein II, from his song, My Favorite Things,

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens;
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens;
Brown paper packages tied up with strings;
These are a few of my favorite things.
Cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels;
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles;
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings;
These are a few of my favorite things.
Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes;
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes;
Silver-white winters that melt into springs;
These are a few of my favorite things.
When the dog bites,When the bee stings,
When I'm feeling sad,I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don't feel so bad.

Taking portions of my favorite things of someone, and isolating them from the world in which they exist I find a new context for them. They are no longer an assembly of items or objects to someone as a whole but identified and redefined in their separation. Presenting these concentrations in a diptych format addresses the context the person they originate from. There is a sense of timelessness in the proximity in these isolations, that the world outside of these features is faded, beyond the optic and the sense of time and place. And through the process of identifying small features of someone, there is a lost of identity, making these portions the facet of anyone, but retaining the individuality (the small details that make the individual unique).
When I think of the song, My Favorite Things, I think of one of my favorite songs in the 1965 musical film, Sound of Music, how it speaks of these small details that are seen as meaningless until we present meaning to them as individuals. We define these meanings through our history with their significance, as pure and simple they are, it is these small things that make us unique ultimately, and these small things I would like to remember about a person.