still thinking

I talked to James Gobel on Monday about my reluctance to simplify the meaning of my images by talking about them as holes or windows. A few weeks ago Jeff Gibson said I was dumbing down my work by talking about it in terms of 'absence' and 'presence'-- I didn't believe Jeff at first but then I started seeing a bunch of first-year MFA students with pieced titled things like "Absence" and I panicked because I realized HE WAS SO RIGHT. So now I'm on a mission to not use dumb-words. Anyways, James was quiet for a second before having one of his epiphanies about how my images were like cartouches. I told him I would look it up in the dictionary and think about it:

cartouche, noun
1. a gun cartridge with a paper case
2. an ornate or ornamental frame
3. an oval or oblong figure (as on ancient Egyptian monuments) enclosing a sovereign's name