Stephen Mead's Page

Around a decade ago I did a painting called "Boys Are Bubbles Also". It was based on photos I took of my partner's grandkids playing at a children's museum's large bubble making machine. The translucent colors were rainbow-hued, very strong and durable but also of course fragile as they popped and disappeared. This phenomenon became for me a symbol of life itself, and when making "Our Collage Life" I found myself applying that theme. Just about everyone who is given the chance at an education at some point might make a collage as an art project and also as a gift. It is something I think most of us, even if we don't have any sense of being an artist, can relate to, and maybe enjoy in the end. Carrying on with that tradition over the years and in this film, I began to realize how our lives and our memories are collage-like too. Collages, moments, memories, photos, bubbles...Life is a bittersweet hodgepodge of sorrow, joy, adversity and hope. When gathering images for this film and feeling again the memories, experiences, circumstances surrounding them, it came home to me about how I wasn't always necessarily happy , optimistic, free of anxiety, while these images were taking shape, that I wasn't necessarily in a place where I thought "things may get better", but I also know that while actually taking the photos or doing the collages that during those moments things were beyond being better, that in those moments things and I were actually pretty good. I am nearing 50 years old and still have moods of interior grumpiness (to say the least) and doubt about the point of "it" all, though when I look at everything which went into the making of this film, both the images and the experiences which they came from, I am happy that what comes across is mainly a sense of wonder. No, I am not a famous artist or celebrity or politician. I am not even rich (!), so you might ask yourself why on earth you should care what I think or have to say, and I might agree with you, but I'm still going to ask this of you anyway: just for more than the slim chance that things might get better, why not give yourself a little time to try and remember what is good in life despite the rest, and stick around too.Links to work:http://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Mead/e/B002P5TVQChttp://indieflix.com/filmmaker/26PTBXXG-21924/http://soundcloud.com/stephenmeadarthttp://www.blurb.com/user/stephenmeadhttp://www.cafepress.com/stephenmeadarthttp://www.zazzle.com/stephenmeadhttp://www.lulu.com/stephenmead