On Friendship, Paintings and Polaroids: A Thought Piece About a Friend of Mine by Laura Hanson

My friend Joshua is one of the smartest people I know. He is also an enigma, holding a law degree and living a minimalist life in downtown Minneapolis. You see, for some people like Joshua, the world is never enough. They’re grafting it into another version in their minds, concerned but not devastated over the lack of resources, somehow always figuring it out as they go along. Joshua came into my life a few years ago after we were both in our drunk hoe phases and met on Tinder, but never met in person, until a few years later when he asked if I wanted to meet up for drinks. I was high on snow when we were crouched over a fire in the middle of the warmest winter I’ve ever experienced. Ever since I met Joshua, I’ve constantly wondered how he is doing, why he’s always at the most bizarre functions and what is going on in his mind. There is still a whole world of complexities I haven’t even began to tap into, but I would like to try.

Like I said before – Joshua is very, very intelligent, he is an attorney at law and his most notable works are doing pro and low bono work for protesters from the upper Midwest, for various reasons. He has been able to get charges entirely dismissed for his clients, and I am sure that meant the world to them as well as setting a standard in that particular type of law that protestors are not always necessarily the hardened criminals that the media loves to portray them as. People rise up when they’re feeling discontentment and upset with how the status quo is going and trying to create change and sometimes you get in trouble because those thoughts are thought crimes and those actions are real crimes. ‘They’ll’ want to throw the book at you and make an example of you to discourage you from ever doing anything with your life, and I’m so happy Joshua is one of those people who entered the law profession to help create change. Individually I had a lot of grudges against the judicial branch entirely but Joshua has been able to reshape some of my biases.

Because of his work as an attorney, Joshua has been dismissed by a lot of artists for some reason. Maybe they don’t think he’s fun at parties or something a lot deeper and more complex to dissect. This has created some setbacks in Joshua’s artistic journey. It’s not like he lives at the court house, he’s a person with hobbies and passions. I am sure other attorneys that have different interests like golfing or watching football aren’t being excluded from social groups in the same way. Also, maybe it’s because Joshua is still trying to navigate the artistic community and hasn’t quite found his style yet, being somewhat unfamiliar with the processes of working with deadlines and exhibiting in public. How will he ever learn anything new if the artistic community is excluding him? We all deserve a chance at finding community, and if he can’t find one, we will forge one ourselves.

As a depressed and anxious painter, I was out of it for about a year myself. After years of covering riots, political events and other biblical events, I was so wound up that my back started curving around in an S shape. I was told that is scoliosis, but after 28 years, I’m a little skeptical and do think that the pandemic and 2020 as a whole has physically transformed me and I’m trying to nurture myself better. I was trying to study for the EPA section 608 exam, having no meaningful hands on experience with air conditioners, I had no idea what I was doing. I’m taking a random test in hopes to get an apprenticeship in another trade other than painting. The more technical you get the more you get paid and HVAC is amongst the hardest trade to learn with having to study for different exams including gas mechanical, electrical, plumbing and refrigeration. I wasn’t sure if I had it in me.

When Joshua wanted to meet for drinks, I was down bad. Line after line, being loud and hyperverbal at home re-explaining Tudor history to my boyfriend, rock after rock, it was probably going to kill me. I thought to mention to Joshua at some point that I’m applying for artist grants and if he would consider helping me write those, and he didn’t hesitate to agree to help. It took a few months and we finished the grant applications within hours of each deadline, but after the first big two he helped me write, it’s given me the confidence and dialogue on how to approach every other application for anything for quite a while. It was hard for me to try to explain the type of artwork I want to create next when it’s been sitting in my head, I have no concept of what it really looks like yet and I’ve been painting the same themes for years. Starting over entirely again, autistic people like me hate starting over. I’ve been so unstable my whole life, where it’s all I know, but it’s never easy.

Starting over though, turns out, was one of the best things that has ever happened to me as an artist. I still won’t know if I get any of these grants until the end of the year, so it’s literally one full year of manifesting, but I do hope that the works that we collaborated on will transpire into something. Now, onto the ‘point’ of this article, is the fact that Joshua asked me a while back if I could help him with his artist statement. Now, this article won’t be that yet because I need to think in the third person, but for me to be able to start, I feel like I needed to put myself in his shoes. Joshua does draw and paint in a more limited capacity than I do, and he’s always been kind of the ‘polaroid’ guy I know. My first experience handling a Polaroid in over a decade was when I was shopping for film for his camera. He came over to my house to do a photoshoot of my work before I completely gutted out of my basement collection. He had two cameras, an SX-70 and a Now+. He showed me some technical hacks like cheating the battery requirement for his older camera. About a week before my birthday, I finally went out and bought a real polaroid. I had a mini instax before, it died after 13 years, and I wanted a polaroid now. A lot of the family heirlooms I have in my possession are polaroids and developed film and I’ve always had a soft spot for it, and as a creative I love all of the possibilities that can come with experimentation.

In this last week, I’ve burned through 5 packs of film. That’s pretty expensive and I definitely cannot afford to do that all the time, but it’s my birthday weekend and I wanted to have some fun after a pretty cruddy week. I’ve found I love the double exposure feature the most, maybe that’s cringe to some polaroid enthusiasts, I’m not sure what the norm is. My analysis of using polaroid film, Joshua’s tool of choice at the moment, is almost entirely neutral so far because I don’t know a lot. I do know how to maintain the film by keeping it stored in the refrigerator, so that’s about it. The camera Joshua has is a little fancier than the one I bought because it has a mobile app feature where you can adjust the temperature, saturation, etc etc and mine does not, but I wanted that way because part of the fun with instant film is not being able to control most things beyond what you’re pointing at.

The type of subjects Joshua does are a lot more involved, layered polaroids to create portraits, shifting in different angles and perspectives. I want to do something like that, and I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to pull that off. I’m going to have to watch a few more youtube videos. Joshua’s subjects are also different than mine because we have different experiences. I have a lot of time spent in the cities under my belt but I’ve never lived there or relied on their economy as a primary source of resources. He’s taking polaroid moments of getting sworn into the Minnesota Bar via zoom which is a unique experience in itself. George Floyd memorial during the heat of the riots, a woman unironically wearing a trump flag across her body, the gathering of the juggalos, and a portrait of himself wearing a Polaroid shirt which is extra meta in itself. My personal favorite is ‘Steph Playing Guitar’, a beautiful portrait of a beautiful girl with purple hair wearing a beautiful rainbow sweater. I’m always about the rainbows and maximalizing colors. Many of his polaroids, the collages and standalone photos, include some kind of poem or one liner that describes what is happening. I’m very supportive in Joshua finding his footing as a traditional artist utilizing pencils, paint and anything else he decides to try on, but he really does have a way with polaroids and I’m a little jealous of it. Eventually I’ll be able to figure out a way to help him out articulate words better for artistic statements so he too can go out and apply for grants and art shows.

Thank you for being such an awesome friend, Joshua, and we will free you from Arne Carlson’s tyranny #FreeJPPreston