Marico Fayre is a photographic artist whose work explores vulnerability, mental illness, LGBTQ identity, a search for belonging, and the exchange that occurs between maker and viewer in art. Marico is a founding member of Small Talk Collective, based in Portland, OR, and she splits her time between the Pacific Northwest and Austin, TX. Marico holds an MFA in Photography and is dedicated to teaching and mentoring photography students and presenting workshops on the business of art and using photography as a tool for healing from trauma. Marico’s work has been exhibited internationally including Newspace Center for Photography, Blue Sky Gallery, Center for Fine Art Photography, RayKo Photo Center, Wolff Gallery, 625 Sutter Gallery, Gotham Arts Salon, Brooklyn Pride Center, PhotoPlace Gallery, Lightbox Gallery, and Bellas Artes in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Publications include Diffusion Magazine, Shots Magazine, Color Magazine, Vogue Italia online, and VJC–Journal on Images and Culture.
Chasing Mania
We all go to hell. Sometimes we choose the journey, more often we are pulled into the darkness kicking and screaming. And then. One day, we emerge. Changed. Broken. Patched together and, if we’re lucky and a little bit wise, stronger and more awake than we were before.
After a dozen years and at least as many doctors, I finally found the word for this “illness,” this carnival ride that was pulling me apart piece by piece, no matter how many self-help books I read – bipolar. Mood stabilizers took away the wildness and arrogance of mania and replaced it with to do lists, charts, emergency contacts, sleeping pills, an ongoing search for psychologists, and fear that anything I trusted would just be another trick of the mind. Life became a cycle of failing and experimenting, enduring the fog of exhaustion and the hot, tingling net of anxiety. Slowly accepting a new normal, nurturing flickers of hope. Three years and a drawer full of empty orange bottles later, I am getting to know this new woman who is made up of familiar pieces stitched together like a patchwork quilt, full of edges.
Persephone didn’t naively eat a handful of seeds and I never believed she was coerced into staying underground, however violent her original transformation. The young girl became a queen in the darkness. She still dances in the sunlight and, as the leaves turn, she hears the whispers begin and she walks into the earth, steadily. Maybe she follows breadcrumbs, or maybe she has learned to see in the dark.
To view more of Marico Fayre’s work please visit her website.