By Hannah Gjertson and Daniel Ballance
Featured in Caesura 2020: Imago
Artist's Statement: Hannah Gjertson, a writing and graphic design junior, and Daniel Ballance, a photography and graphic design junior, collaborated on this piece to capture the idea of Imago. When explaining the image of a person, an actual picture is often most effective. However, how can one describe someone to make them familiar to someone they have never met? Ballance and Gjertson wanted to capture the idea of familiarity and newness through image and writing, describing and showing one of their peers through image and language
He
He is a warm cup of apple cider. Even if you don't want to take a sip, you can't
help but feel comforted in his presence, bringing warmth to your hands in the harsh
winter. He is the first stolen glance between you and whom you admire. He is
movement made graceful, careful, and clean. You do not mind change if he is there.
He roams from place to place; he is willing to take his time to smell the air as
he passes through time. He is meditative. He does not feel the need to be anywhere
or be anything. He exists and recognizes that his physical embodiment is a small
fraction of the universe, but he, still, is one with the universe.
He is reverence. He provides spaces for his friends to find significance in all
things: in nature, in art, in love. He has not been certain of much, he lives in shades
of gray, but he is certain of the love that he has found.
If you asked his roommates what they thought of him, they would tell you that
he cannot wake up to any alarm. If you asked his lover, she would say that he inspires
her to find beauty in all things. He treasures what he values most: Rest, art, and love.
He admires science. He loves patterns and intricacy. He loves the order in
which things work, from the molecules in our cells to the response of light in film. He
is an admirer of beautiful things, and when he is able, he captures his admiration in
images. If he cannot manage an image, he rests in the magnificence as long as he can
before roaming to the next beautiful thing.
He is balance — the steady, quiet, slow movement of time and space. He is a
living room chair beside the fireplace on a cold winter's evening, inviting you to sit,
remain, and dwell. He is reverence in a way that encourages all those around him to
stop and rest for a moment.
He wants to believe in God, but he does not know if he can. He tries, and he
searches, but he does not find. He asks, but he does not receive. He takes bread and
wine with hesitancy and hope, uncertain if he believes, but hopeful that one day he
might.
He does not fight pain. He does not resist suffering. He sits during the cold
because he knows there will be a shining sun after a mid-December's snow. He
welcomes suffering to sit with him during his worship--he fears the praise would not
be real if pain were not welcome also. Suffering and joy are equal to him, just as the
snow and the sun are equal. He watches the snowfall to understand that he cannot
hear what is happening; he can only see: this reminds him that he may not know
everything about anything, even the most familiar things.
He is powerful, but only to those who will see him. For he sits with suffering, and he will also sit with you.
Hannah Gjertson, a graphic design and writing junior, collaborated with Daniel Ballance, a graphic design and photography junior for these pieces. Gjertson wrote the pieces, titled He, and designed the layout using images from Ballance. The writings are inspired by the men in Ballance's images. The two wanted to display the idea of "Imago" through language, photography, and design.
