Book Cover

I just returned from Boston fulfilling the last requirement for the summer residency, namely a presentation and workshop. There is a lot to process but it came at the end of a very busy seven days and the quiet time that followed was so welcomed.

Some of the art documentation work I do never gets much attention outside of applications for grants or faculty reviews. This morning I got an email from Ohio State University Professor Suzanne Silver that an image I took of one of her drawings will grace the cover of Michael Swartz' book, The Signifying Creator, and will include a photo credit. I love her drawings and look forward to continue photographing her work in the future.


Michael Swartz book cover of a drawing by Suzanne Silver.

Transferred at Fotoweek DC

Target gallery, part of the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, Virgina will be exhibiting two prints from Forces of Nature along with work by Tracy Longley-Cook during the month of November as part of the exhibition Transferred: Alternative Processes in Photography. The exhibition, juried by Regina DeLuise, will open on November 5th and run through December 4th.

The exhibition is part of FotoWeek DC and a reception is planned for November 10th, from 6-8pm which includes a talk by Ms. DeLuise.

substitute distillation for abstraction

The glow of summer is in the rear view mirror and it's finally cooling down here in southwestern Ohio. The Miami valley is probably about three weeks away from the trees of winter which means I don't have time to re-do the film developing mini disaster from nine days ago. The pinhole chapter of Forces of Nature has been pushed back slightly due to a rust in the water supply problem which struck the photography lab. I've been developing film on the occasional Saturday and decided to expose and develop four rolls of film on the same day. The same day the rust decided to show up.

To get to the point, the wash water for the film was full of rust which stuck to the emulsion. Too much to try and spot out in Photoshop. The film will have to be re-shot on the appropriate day that has directional, late afternoon sunlight. Bark, sunlight, and leaf shadows will make an occasional appearance in these images. I just need to figure out the optimum camera subject distance when photographing with the Holga 120WPC.

some secret notes to myself from last nights Lightbourne lecture at the Cincinnati Museum of Art:
Leo Rubinfien, Arbus, Sander, Sontag, photographs saying nothing and showing too much. People looking into the camera and away from the camera, color photographs influencing black and white. Most importantly, substitute "distillation" for "abstraction" when discussing camera based images. Writers of prose speak better about their photographs then photographers who leave the writing to the wordsmiths. At least from a sampling of one speaker.

happy anniversary baby!

Ten years ago today I went on my first date with Bridgette Bogle. Happy anniversary darling!

color blind and home is where the studio is

Last night I was able to re-photograph the red rose petal anthotype of Somnambulist #6 which is the only one I did on the back of Kozo Unryu paper. This one will also have the title of Blue Blouse although it is not blue in the anthotype and it isn't really rose petal red once it interacts with the paper.

Lot's going on in the home is where the studio is. I modified the Holga 120WPC which hopefully will eliminate the vignetting which was randomly cropping up. In the Woodland Cemetery I spotted some amazing tree fungi which will make it's way into the tree bark pinholes. I learned how to identify a new tree (for me), the sassafras, which is one of the first trees to change color in the cemetery. I  may have also settled on a method / process to print these images. More on that later.

barking up the wrong tree

Perhaps I am barking up the wrong tree. This work is very new and very early into the process. I still haven't determined scale and printing method yet. The only thing I know is I want it to be about texture and I want it to be these long, eastern landscape type rectangles. Hopefully I can take a handful of these to Boston at the end of the month.

PRC Auction

While I was in Boston, I joined the Photographic Resource Center and took advantage of one of their monthly portfolio reviews. Glenn Ruga, the director of the PRC was the reviewer in July and he suggested I submit a piece for the annual auction. It's almost time for the auction and PRC has put every piece by every artist participating on line. Two Mushrooms with Eye is my contribution and can be found here at the auction website. The auction date is Saturday, Oct. 15 and doors for the live auction open at 5:30 pm. The exhibition and auction are taking place at 808 Gallery at Boston University, 808 Commonwealth Avenue,
Boston, MA 02215.

September Song

Suzanne Silver's Soap House

Two days left of this month and, because it is my little obsession, hours to vote in the first round of ArtPrize. It's been a busy week which is my way of saying that I'm at a loss for time in the studio. Bridgette and I went to the Wexner Center for the Arts last Friday to see Guy Maddin's new movie Keyhole and the next day I had to photograph installation work by Suzanne Silver. Now the funny thing is that usually there aren't any happy coincidences but the Guy Maddin movie turned out to be the autobiography of a house and an installation Suzanne was working on in the Franklinton neighborhood near Columbus was in an old bare bones, abandoned house.

Things I'm am working on that need to get to the printed image stage ...the pinhole images of tree trunks to go along with the vandyke brown prints which make up the Forces of Nature and from walking projects. Additionally I  have been picking pokeberries and getting some of them into emulsion form. More on that this weekend but let me say that Everclear is making a welcome appearance in the emulsion recipe. Thank you Nate Smyth for the grocery bag full of berries from your dad's backyard. It must be the mother lode of pokeweed.

the gardner in all of us

Wednesday night I attended the Dayton Visual Arts Center annual meeting (for 2010 - 2011). The initial pull was a phone call from Patrick Mauk requesting my attendance to receive the Lombard award for apple which was the first place winner in the annual members show. These sorts of things don't happen very often for any artist and it really is due to the hard work of Bridgette Bogle that I had any work in this exhibition.

It was a chance to catch up with Tess Cortés (Netta Bits), Bruce Campbell, and Christina Pereyma who's works were also honored on Wednesday. But it was also a chance to see Jane Black one last time in her capacity of Director of Dayton Visual Arts Center. In a few months she will be co-directing the Dayton Art Institute. It was also a chance meeting with retiring Board of Trustees Secretary Anne Johnson who has an unexpected connection to an artist that I strongly admire.

During the reception following the meeting, Anne spoke admiringly of apple and then proceeded to offer me a copy of Plant Kingdoms: the Photographs of Charles Jones. It turns out her nephew in San Francisco has some of the glass plate negatives produced by this turn of the century English gardner who never exhibited his photographs in his lifetime. Her nephew is also a co-author of this book. I can't remember how I originally found this book but I believe I may have bought it in Half Price Books in Columbus. I was able to tell her that I did have a copy and that I did think that Charles Jones was an inspiration for my own approach to photography.

Now I have two tasks: Locate this book amongst my disorganized shelves and look up her nephew the next time I am in the bay area (perhaps a two week visit to the Headlands Center for the Arts).

this is only a test

From last Wednesday afternoon while the alternative photo class at the University of Dayton was working with pinhole cameras I decided to try out a new one.

Lensless images will make an appearance in next fall's "Naturalists" exhibition at Dayton Visual Arts Center. Here is the starting point, a test roll with a Holga 120 WPC. I may play around with the shutter, the shape of which I believe is causing the semicircular vignette at the bottom of the frame.

domestic duties

from Walking at the gallery of the Arts Council of Greater Grand Rapids

A day of rest would be today after all the printing, framing, more printing, painting magnets, painting push pins, more printing, cutting, transporting. ArtPrize is the last of the fall exhibitions I had on the burner. Besides preparing for classes at the University of Dayton, I have been working on the following: the Artist in Residence at Emmanuel College exhibition, the Photographic Resource Center Auction (happening soon), Texas State University San Marcos (Wild Kingdom), Bowling Green's Fresh: Ohio to the Faculty Exhibit at Sinclair College (I teach one class there) and ArtPrize 2011. It should be apparent I haven't had a day off in a while. While I do have to pick up Bridgette's work for the Rosewood gallery exhibition today, today is mostly free and I may actually get to some domestic duties.

ArtPrize, a blessing and a curse

Up in Grand Rapids now to install work for ArtPrize 2011. Tomorrow, I'll shoot a pic of the trunk full of art. The "from walking" pieces are very compact and very time consuming to install.What you might call a blessing and a curse.

the faintest ink

Here is an installation view, photographed by Bridgette Bogle, of Rose Red Pajama Pants which is on view at Sinclair Community College's Triangle Gallery. It is on view "sometimes", if one is willing to open the black curtains. This is an idea I appropriated from a traveling exhibition of William Henry Fox Talbot's Callotypes and paper negatives on view at the Museum of Photographic Arts in the late 1990's. There are hooks on either side to keep the curtains open so that viewers can step back from the work to get a proper view. In borrowing the Chinese proverb "the faintest ink is more powerful than the best memory, I will substitute fugitive or transient. Given enough time and exposure, these transient pigments will become the faintest of inks and may then be hardly better than the best memory.

sad state of disappearing

In case you were wondering, I have been caught up by the new semester and finishing up exhibition preparations for ArtPrize. I had to reprint three of the from walking pieces since they were needed for two concurrent exhibitions, one at the Greater Grand Rapids Arts Council gallery and the Ohio: Fresh exhibition. I have rethought the map pin method and will be using a slick magnet and nail head method introduced to me by Mari Lacure during the Boston residency.

On the anthotype front. I pulled out the large  pokeberry pajama top with rain drips (Somnambulist #3, Clem Wolfham) and discovered it had faded badly. I suspect it might be the pokeberry pigment or its interaction with the paper. I will photograph its current state in the next few weeks.

As a response to this sad state of disappearing, I have installed black curtains over the Red Rose Pajama Pants on display at Sinclair Community College. I have to go back there tomorrow to iron out the folds in the drapes and install some hooks to allow viewers to view the piece unobstructed by the black curtains. I'll take a picture of the finished installation tomorrow. It is both censored and funerary in appearance but will visitors know they can look at it?

August Parting Shot

Here are the four Dr. Frangst cyanotypes going to Bowling Green for Fresh: Ohio.  Maybe there will be a return of the return of Dr. Frangst. The series has spent enough time in storage and the 8x10 Burke and James camera needs a workout. Pink ceramic skull gift of Konsuela (Konni Carpenter).

Correction: The pink skull was actually made by Kristi Bogle (sister of Konsuela).

excuses, excuses, excuses

The two month residency in Boston is now in the rear view mirror and I am swamped with obligations that took a back seat to a very productive summer. I still hope to summarize the residency in an entry here before too many of the details are lost.

In the meantime, this wordpress blog is going to become a little less active as I work on the various printing, framing, and shipping tasks that have been waiting for me. In the meantime here are the excuses for my neglecting this blog

Exhibition news:

Wild Kingdom at Texas State University San Marcos School of Art and Design's Gallery I from August 24th through September 2nd. Four cyanotypes from the close-up world of dr. frangst.

Fresh: Ohio at Bowling Green State University's Willard Wankelmann Gallery from September 9th through October 7th. Three of the large scale Vandyke brown prints from from walking and four cyanotypes from the Return of Dr. Frangst.

ArtPrize 2011 at the Arts Council of Greater Grand Rapids gallery, 38 West Fulton from Septmeber 21st through October 9th. Selections from from walking.

Sinclair Community College Faculty Show from September 6th - October 6th with an opening reception on September 15th. One anthotype Rose Red Pajama Pants made during the summer residency in Boston. Please visit Sinclair Community College's Gallery website for more information.

video killed the alternative processes brown dwarf

During the summer residency, I was able to work with Emmanuel College's Nick Pizzolato which resulted in three video shorts. Please visit http://www.vimeo.com/27244003, http://www.vimeo.com/27243664 and http://www.vimeo.com/27243001 to listen to me talk about vandyke brown prints, polaroids, and anthotypes.

Emmanuel College | Artist in Residence | Frank Schanberger from Emmanuel College on Vimeo.

Emmanuel College | Artist in Residence | Frank Schanberger from Emmanuel College on Vimeo.

Emmanuel College | Artist in Residence | Frank Schanberger from Emmanuel College on Vimeo.

It's my pants party part II

Here is pants party number #2 which is an interesting creature. Part failure. Part discovery.

The yellow flowers I chose, Rudbeckia Hirta, surprised me. I had expected an image of a pair of pants in the bright yellow color of the flowers on a light ground. I got an image of pink pants with light folds and a medium density ground.The pigment faded to some degree and also changed color. There is also evidence of a negative image which is visible in the folds of the pajama pants and the less layered areas of the garment. The three areas of density are: the folds which are the least dense. The midtones which are mostly the bleached-away ground and the darkest areas which are the least layered areas of the pajama pants.

See the detail image below.

Pants Party

Last night I did a bit of art documentation including a painting by Bridgette and lots of the anthotypes from the residency. Here is one of the more successful pants anthotypes made using rose petal emulsion on Arches Cover. The exposure was about 13 days (it came down on August 17th, a day before I left Boston).

male art or completion is in the eyes of the receiver

Male art (I used ken doll bathrobe) or, more accurately, mail art is a fitting end to the residency. As part of an exchange with friends left back mostly in Ohio, I promised handmade postcards if they put together a mixed CD of what they were listening to. I got beautiful compilations from Dayton, Columbus and Baltimore which went a long way to making the tedious task of grinding plant pigments or meticulously washing Vandyke Brown prints more pleasant. I was at a loss for ideas. What should I send my DJ's back in return for their contribution. Initially the postcards were going to be small Vandyke Brown prints, then it became anthotypes, and then I just ran out of time and good sunny days with which to expose. Artists don't solve problems, they make them and sometimes, if they are lucky, they get someone else to solve the problem.

I sent my three collaborators a rose petal emulsion coated piece of Arches Cover covered by taped on transparency of an image appropriated from an Ebay auction. The image is a Ken doll bathrobe (in keeping with my somnambulist theme).

The mail art cards are a work in progress to be completed by the three recipients. They all need a little bit more exposure before the transparency is separated from the anthotype coated paper. Maybe another week in a sunlit window. Perhaps one or more of the three recipients will elect to not put the anthos in the window and not separate the transparency from the paper. They could be done,  after all isn't completion is in the eyes of the receiver?