Spotlight on Jim Dukes and Anne Miller

inthejasperspotlight_JimDukesandAnneMillerBy Haley Sprankle

Exploratory introspection.

That’s how photo artist Jim Dukes and yoga instructor Anne Miller describe their collaborative work, Pieces of a Whole.

“Jim participated in a professional development workshop at the Tapp’s building that I co-facilitated as a yoga instructor,” Miller says. “Jim took pictures after the workshop of the yoga space and wrote a poem about his experience. The photo and the poem opened the door to collaboration.”

While most photos of yoga feature some type of standard formatting, Dukes and Miller sought to look at the unique movements of the body in a different way.

“Yoga and photography blend fluid, quiet beauty with the still images of tranquility and strength of the moment. The feeling and energy of our first shoot guided my lens to the close up parts of Anne doing poses, rather than the standard 100+ yoga poses you can find online or in an instructional book,” Dukes explains. “I wanted to examine and present poses from a unique perspective—intimate and thought provoking. I want the pieces to force the reader to mentally connect the dots of the body and pose to complete the image.”

Once the two created a concept and a plan for their project, the rest was history.

“The process has been uniquely Jim and Anne. We laugh, stress, create, second guess ourselves, create some more, offer decisions to the universe to be settled, wonder, plan, modify, reexamine, and focus. This has been one of the most human creative processes I’ve ever been a part of,” Dukes says.

Although a lot of this project, and yoga in general, seems to merely offer a visual analysis of the body, both are much more of an intrinsic journey.

“For me, this project has been a personal awakening with multiple growing edges. Owning who and what I am has been both a gratifying and intimidating experience,” Miller says. “It has been rewarding to see my heartfelt and meditative words come to life in print. Seeing my body in the yoga poses has been a mixed experience of gratitude for a body that can do yoga and a growing experience to accept what I see in the photos.”

Letting go and accepting things as the universe presented them were not only concepts that the project proposed, but were also an integral part of the creative process.

“True story: We couldn’t decide on the 20+ images for the book and prints. We narrowed 1000 images to 200, then to 60, and then got stuck. So, we let the universe decide for us. I took the 60 4×6 prints, shuffled them, and dealt them upside down into four piles of 15. Then we picked one random pile. We honored that decision,” Dukes says.

Pieces of the Whole will be unveiled at Artizan on Friday, February 27 at 6:30.

“The unique nature of Artizan, the products that they sell, the location, the drive to be different, and their support for local, collaborative projects are a great fit. Clayton and Jeffery have been so excited about Pieces of the Whole, offering constructive criticism for future editions, and welcoming us with respect and understanding as artists,” Dukes says.

This will be the first of eight editions of Pieces of the Whole published, with the second debuting in the summer of 2015.

“It has been a moving experience to allow our gifts and talents to amalgamate. We have trusted the process and followed what became visual project stepping-stones guiding us to the next level of creative development,” Miller says. “Pieces is an original and touchable piece of art that provides a personal and intriguing opportunity for a soulful exploration of self.”

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