PhotoGraphic: November 2011

►The Art of Lauren E.Simonutti...

Mental illness is not something easily understood. Most of us only hear about it through television or the cinema, which tends to sensationalize the condition. Rarely do we meet a person truly afflicted with mental illness who can explain it.

In 2006, Lauren E. Simonutti started hearing three distinct voices in her right ear, the ear she lost hearing in years prior. After numerous hospitalizations and mis-diagnoses, Lauren was finally given a name to her illness, rapid cycling, mixed state bipolar with schizoaffective disorder, and given proper medicines which allows her to function with great clarity on a daily basis. Taking pictures since she was twelve, Lauren turned the camera on herself, photographing within the confines of her home, which she has rarely left since 2006. The result of this self-imposed isolation is a haunting, honest body of work about mental illness and a testament to her resilience and need to confront and understand her condition. As she says in her artist statement:

"Madness strips things down to their core. It takes everything and in exchange offers only more madness, and the occasional ability to see things that are not there....The problem with madness is that you can feel it coming but when you tell people you think you are going crazy they do not believe you. It is too distant a concept. Too melodramatic. You don’t believe it yourself until you have fallen so quickly and so far that your fingernails are the only thing holding you up, balanced with your feet dangling on either side of a narrow fence with your heart and mind directly over center, so that when you do fall it will split you in two. And split equally. So there’s not even a stronger side left to win.Over three and one half years I have spent alone amidst these 8 rooms, 7 mirrors, 6 clocks, 2 minds and 199 panes of glass. And this is what I saw here. This is what I learned."

Most artists strive to make work that says something – that reaches deep inside themselves to reveal a fear or a desire. Lauren E. Simonutti presents work that is so truthful and so raw that the viewer can’t help but accept her truth and enter a world which may be unfamiliar but undeniably powerful.

Artist's Statement...
Madness strips things down to their core. It takes everything and in exchange offers only more madness, and the occasional ability to see things that are not there.

03.28.06 There were so many beginnings I had to choose one, and since this is a story of anniversaries 03.28.06 seemed the most appropriate. That is the day I began to hear voices. Three of them, quite distinct. Two are taunting and the third voice is mine, as I have heard it externally, on a tape recording or answering machine. That voice has some reserve, it seldom makes itself heard. The others are a constant. They all live in my right ear which rather makes sense as I spontaneously went deaf in that ear a decade ago and it has been vacant ever since. As time and treatment progressed they have stopped screaming and contribute only a dull murmur. Except at bedtime, at bedtime they like to sing. It presents itself as a sing-song - Rapid cycling, mixed state bipolar with schizoaffective disorder.

The problem with madness is that you can feel it coming but when you tell people you think you are going crazy they do not believe you. It is too distant a concept. Too melodramatic. You don’t believe it yourself until you have fallen so quickly and so far that your fingernails are the only thing holding you up, balanced with your feet dangling on either side of a narrow fence with your heart and mind directly over center, so that when you do fall it will split you in two. And split equally. So there’s not even a stronger side left to win.

I began to break time down.
Smaller and smaller parcels are easier to digest, easier to recognize, easier to bear.
This would be the math:

4 birthdays
3 + 1/2 years
42 months
1307 days (taking into account the leap year)
1,882,080 minutes
112,924,800 seconds

I would anatomize it further but it might make me appear obsessive.

The misfirings of my beloved/despised mind that conspire to convince me to destroy all have rendered me housebound and led to a solitary life. A creature of past, proof, memory and imaginary friends, I am aware enough to know the things I see and hear are not real, but that does not mean I do not still see and hear them.

Over three and one half years I have spent alone amidst these 8 rooms, 7 mirrors, 6 clocks, 2 minds and 199 panes of glass. And this is what I saw here. This is what I learned.
I figure it could go one of two ways- I will either capture my ascension from madness to as much a level of sanity for which one of my composition could hope, or I will leave a document of it all, in the case that I should lose. - Lauren E. Simonutti

http://lauren-rabbit.blogspot.com/

Monday, November 28, 2011

►Lauren E.Simonutti