In honor of those who fought, served in the military and for Veteran’s Day (yes that was Monday but Thursdays are my day to post)
The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.
Today’s featured artist: Kate Woodman
To many, Veteran’s Day is a day of remembrance; it is a day to embrace and experience to the fullest extent the freedoms and opportunities afforded to us by the sacrifice of many. To some however, it is a day of grief and loss, a reminder of the hole that no amount of patriotic pride can fill.
I wanted to capture that grief in my project War Widow, which documents the life of a woman as she learns of and copes with the death of her husband. War Widow deals more specifically with those moments of isolation—where she is alone with her denial, vulnerability, loneliness and even a bit of madness.
We often see those who have lost someone putting on a brave face in public, setting aside their own agony for the sake of other’s discomfort and being praised for their “strength”. This leaves no room for grief except in extreme isolation, which further compounds the feeling that you are on your own.
War Widow is meant to challenge the expectation and veneration of stoicism after suffering loss to normalize and destigmatize grief as a very human process and show that though we all may be suffering by ourselves, we are not suffering alone.
To see more of this project, click here.
APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease. Instagram
Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it. And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.
