***NEW NAME, NEW SITE - WWW.ROXANNEBRYANT.COM***

Clients, friends, and family, thank you for your support and love over the past few years here at J is for Jane.  Please visit me at my new website and blog www.roxannebryant.com.

If you were following along here at J is for Jane, your email address will be transferred to the new blog list.  Or please find the "submit" bar on my new site's homepage and update your contact information.

My facebook account remains the same, with the new name Roxanne Bryant Photography.  Come find me there for regular postings of my latest work.

Look forward to hearing from you from my new web location, and very much appreciate your support.

Love, Roxanne

What the space before dreaming looks like

In the space before dreaming fear cannot find me.  I lean open-palmed into the darkness, and snap pictures with my lids – bursts of black thrown against the light.  Everything I make in the space before dreaming is right.  Because only my heart is there to judge.  Every image, a husked memory, woven tight.  Nothing less.  Nothing more.  Captured not because it needed to be beautiful but because it is part of a story meant to be told.  In the space before dreaming, I knit my worries wings and push them thru the cracked sill over my head.  Their escape leaves me empty, and whole.  Here, every beat and sound and sob and shout can find it’s way through the finest needle hole of my heart.  They fit without splitting me open, printing images on the underside of my soul.  In the space before dreaming, I am immune to the noise.  I am a wide open window, within a tightly clamped safe.  I make no mistakes.  I define imperfection.  I take pictures with no mercy.

So very honored to join a lovely group of photographers, sharing a monthly post on “What ____ looks like.”  Please continue the blog circle to drink in the amazing, amazing work of Lindsey Bergstrom.  You will not be disappointed.

365: a very long road home.

I am full of holes.  But I didn't realize how many until i began this 365.

Over the years, I've made volumes of things I have hated.  And trashed many beautiful things.  But taking photos every day for one whole year cracked me wide open.  Quickly, I realized I had to keep the mistakes.  I had no choice but to keep shooting.  There were simply no days to hide.

Many, many days I was disappointed. 

But the rhythm took over.  The daily song held me accountable.

I started to see the real need for our memories to be etched somewhere besides my own heart.  The daily grind of motherhood easily wore away the slivers.  The bits of life so tiny they went down the drain -- yet so lovely I wanted to hang them on the wall.  I began to catch those moments here.

As I did, I realized how important is was to write our story.  One picture at a time.  It grew.  Often lopsided and ugly.  And some days a photo never materialized.  But that was OK because the next day i could create two.  My project became a huge wobbling bloom.  Until it burst into a love letter.  I stood there with tears in my eyes realizing it was glorious.  Not because of technique or execution, but because it was for my children.  My children's children.  My husband.  And myself.  A living memoir.  Glorious because of its heart.  And intention.

So I started to let go.  Of the rules.  Of the fear of making the wrong things.  Instead, I just made pictures.  Everyday.  I didn't share them all.  Many were just for me.  But I came to see erasing the ugly ones did no good.  They were often the best seeds.  I leaned on friends.  Any journey that takes a year to finish requires loyal, honest, loving friends.  I leaned on them often.  And I made a book.  One for each of my children.  A storybook of a year of our lives.  With the images that echoed the memories I wanted to hear until I could hear no more.

I've got miles to go as an artist.  But this is the first year I have realized the importance of seeing with my eyes closed.  Putting the lens directly against my heart - and letting it thump the shutter open and closed.  Here I am one January later, feeling a bit naked without the rhythm of my 365.  But so grateful it's changed my life.  And the fluidity in which I am making things - a new path has been carved.  I am moving forward.  And making without fear.

{Preview} Our growing-up song

We long for details.  Clues as to how we started our lives.  Her words pelt me -- "What did I sound like when I cried?  How did you hold me?  Did I fit in your arms?".  It's a furious digging, hoping if we close our eyes long enough we'll stumble upon something.  Something we lived with our bodies but our brains just can't remember or know.  I have clumsily forgotten important things.  Only eight years back to the beginning of my babies, and I have to push-push-push my mind to remember.  The haze of Jane's room.  The sound of her rounding out new words.  The way the morning puddled quiet light on our floor.  Thankfully the past is smeared in our now.  Pieces of baby are etched in their big kid bodies.  More times than not - a jolt of Jane's once smallness will still fill the crook of my arm.

No matter which baby I photograph, their blank, beautiful slate jogs the melody of my children's growing-up-song.  There is healing in meticulously recording another's beginning.  Taking picture after picture.  Watching a once-again mother, or sister, lost in the skin, the hair, the babyness of one that's new.  It helps me scrape the walls.  Peel back the layers.  And remember all the things my skin isn't strong enough to hold.