Background
To Have Heart
by Alina Wilczynski
Light Painting Photography Composite with Still Images & Documentary Video
September 11, 2021
“To Have Heart” is a video documentation and interpretation of artist Ellen Frank creating her art piece for The Breathing Project. As she is pouring and painting with adhesive that will become the foundation for gold leafing, she recounts her essential worker story.
The essential worker is a Cardiologist who tells Ellen about a man who had had a heart transplant at her hospital. Everyone in the hospital loved and admired this man, and they were rooting for him to survive the transplant surgery. He survived… and then he got COVID while he was in the hospital recovering… and died.
The “in between and around” of this piece is the space that holds Ellen and myself, the Cardiologist, and the man who survived his heart transplant, as well as all the nurses, doctors and support staff who cared for the man, his family and everyone who loved and admired him. All the energy around the caring, the triumph, the hardship and the devastating irony of what happened is the poured and painted adhesive that is the foundation for our shared feelings and experiences. The gold leafing — which Ellen describes as a marriage between the earthly, or mortal, and the divine, or pure light — connects us to our ability to breathe in spite of the hurting and to heal.
Biography:
Wilczynski is a professed photo-voyeur, forever driven to capture the spirited exchange that happens between passionate creatives who apply the power of their work to progressive projects and causes.
Her early work used a layering technique of painting over photographs that have been heat-transferred onto materials like rusted metal, broken glass, stained wood, textured papers and other found materials. She has continued this layering of media, now combining elements into video pieces that also incorporate spoken word or recorded interviews with the subjects of her pieces.
A marked change in her work came with her study of Qigong, which combines visualization, breathwork and concentrated slow movements that build up life-force energy or Chi in the body. At around the same time, she also re-discovered a long exposure photography technique that was first discovered in the late 1880s called Light Painting.
Combining the principles of the healing art of Qigong with the photo art of Light Painting, she is on a mission to bring light to the moments “in between and around” our most spirited actions.
She explains: “Deep within the in- and out-breath, we hold our deepest intentions, our most pure love along with our greatest anxieties and fears. But most brilliant of all, it is the place that holds our readiness to step off and freefall into the unknown. Therefore, the deepest impact of an action is not in what might appear as the most beautiful, painful or shocking imagery or words that are produced, but in the silence immediately before or after our actions are taken… before or after the art is made. If we could catch a glimpse of this space that is filled with moving color, light and incredible art of our own making, we would know the power that lies within and what we are capable of. And we would know that everyone else has a brilliant space like this too. Art would be made in our admiration of each other.”
Wilczynski teaches Photography at Farmingdale State College SUNY.
