Pecans and Pinholes

This morning I got out on a walk to the row of pecan trees I have been photographing for the past three winters. Not exactly a morning constitutional, yet. It's about a mile and a half from the bunk house to this stretch of pecans.

I was passed by about four vehicles on the way to the trees; these were tractors, semi-tractor trailers, and maybe a passenger car. The first pickup truck to stop to check on me was driven by my father and law who asked if I wanted a ride. I got a sense that no one walks in Dexter, NM.

I photographed all fifteen of the original pecans. There are several rows of younger trees. I am interested in the original row because these were older trees that were pruned back and moved from another location. They are strange looking, almost Seussian in appearance and the first thing I truly recognize when Bridgette and I pull into her home town.

The photograph below shows the Holga 120WPC photographing the third pecan tree to the south. I'll be back out there with more film on Saturday and Sunday to photograph the rest in pinhole fashion.

framed fugitive

Here is the cut grass sleeping dress anthotype, made during the summer in Boston and framed for the Roy G Biv ImageOhio 12 next month in Columbus.

The Color of Meat

Early this year I thought I had reached a point...a point of no more making presents (at least gifting photographs I have made). Our trip back to San Diego two years ago netted a beautiful shot glass with metric measurements on it (useful in alternative processes) and a plastic bag from the butcher section of Keils grocery store. The plastic bag has a chart depicting the cuts of beef and where they come from on the steer (or is it a cow?).

My in-laws are New Mexico ranchers and Bridgette knew this would someday rightfully take its place as a Christmas present. This year it has. Printed in the gum bichromate process in flame red and carmine red gouache for pigment (on Fabriano Artistico Extra White Hot Press). The PVA size I used didn't prevent staining so the highlights took on a bit of a pink color. But as Bridgette remarked, it is very much the color of meat.

the pinholes

Just a quick image of what I have been working with. Scanned negatives to follow.

in between Ranchita and Anza Borrego

There are still a few minutes for archive Monday. Here is a palladium contact print from my San Diego days. Ranchita a few thousand feet above the Anza Borrego desert floor with my tripod from about 1996. Taken with a Rolleiflex Automat and repackaged HP5.

Illusion and Chemistry

I have work in an exhibition of alternative processes organized by the Kiernan gallery and juried by Christopher James. The exhibition is scheduled to run from January 10th - February 4th. There is also an online version of the exhibit you can see at  http://kiernangallery.com/3/Image.asp?ImageID=1402035&full=1&apid=1&gpid=1&ipid=1&AKey=8JMSW35S.

The exhibit consists of work from Tyler Suppha-Atthasitt, K.K. DePaul, Diana Bloomfield, Ronald Cowie, Emma Powell, Sarah Nesbitt, Susan de Witt, Scott Barnes, Edie Fogel, Michelle Rogers Pritzil, Liz Lee, Geoffrey Agrons, Ivan Bernal Palli, Aspen Hochhalter, Dominic Turner, Rheana Gardner, Peter M. Lindstrom, Andréa Brächer, S. Gayle Stevens, Lindsey Beal, Jenny Brown, Robert Alexander Williams, Timothy McCoy, Paul-Jude Guillaume, Jessica Somers, Michele Cole, Kaltes Klares Wasser, Jasmine Swope, Paul Karabinis, Dan Herrera, Karen Divine, Ryan Shelley & Elizabeth Herrmann, Molly Rapp, Clive Heritage-Tilley, Kristen Kay Thoen, Iciar Bravo, Marydorsey Wanless, John Shuptrine, Sally Ayre, Missa Coffman, K.K. DePaul, Patrick McNelis, Erin McGuire, Kate Shelley, Genevieve Neal, Genevieve Neal, Annie Hogan, Ig Mata, Donna Moore as well as University of Dayton alumnus Christine Zuercher (a former student of mine).

The gallery is located at 23B West Washington St., Lexington, VA 24450. Please visit the Kiernan gallery website for their regular hours and holiday schedule.

the night was mostly a blur

My dinner with Bridgette, Jill and Tim. Much to the annoyance of my dinner companions, last Saturday I propped a white Diana Mini on our table at Woodberry’s and commenced to make long, time exposures while we ate and drank. There are two images by Tim Castlen and the rest are mine except for the last one which is also by Tim.

By Tim Castlen…



The rest of these should be by me but the night was a bit of a blur. Maybe everyone at the table collaborated on this.



One more by Tim.

picture(s) from "Transferred"

Only two pictures to report from Transferred which ended it's run at the Torpedo Factory last weekend. All photographs by Tim Castlen.

That's me pointed to evidence I have a cat. To the left, Sacred Heart and to the right, Apple. Below is an image by Michele Cole's palladium print Stir.

Jane Reece vs. Dr. Frangst

In the battle for supremacy, who will win? Will it be Ohio’s most famous pictorialist after Clarence White, Jane Reece? Or will it be Francis Schanberger adopting the guise of Dr. Frangst? Please visit the next exhibition by the Dayton Society of Painters and Sculptors, “Past, Present and Future” to find out.

Ragweed Look-up by Francis Schanberger (left) and Children in Costume by Jane Reece (right)

gum over second layers

Here are the next layers, ugly as they may be. I was searching for a cadmium orange to go on top of the cyanotype layer and not finding any mixed up something hideous. I also neglected to smooth out the brushed on emulsion creating the paint brush streaks. Maybe the students will like them but I don't.

Second layer of pink made using the black color separation with a five minute exposure.

 

 

 

Ugly orange red mix like Venetian Red on top of the cyanotype layer. Exposed for five minutes using the magenta separation.

gum over

For the alternative processes class, a gum bichromate demonstration. The digital photo is from my wedding day (a walk before the ceremony) in San Patricio, New Mexico six years ago. The first print is a single layer of pink using a magenta color separation negative exposed for five minutes. The second print is cyanotype layer lightly exposed in the NuArc First Light for 15 minutes using a black color separation negative.

five minute exposure with magenta separation

15 minute exposure of a cyanotype layer with a black separation negative

Tonight I did two more exposures / layers on top of these but I won't be able to photograph and upload them until next Monday.

three tries

Right now I am trying a few different approaches to creating photographs based on the trees of Woodlawn Arboretum and Cemetery. The pinhole, eight x ten and one other technique to be unveiled later this week (it involves spray paint!).

This one feels like winter and I just may photograph the pecan trees in Dexter this way. After one roll, I am in love with the Diana Mini!

Three attempts at photographing an ash tree and sky, Sunday November 13th.

got a gun

Welcome to archive Mondays. I've got a gun or more accurately a photogenic drawing of a starter pistol. It is a palladium print on Crane's stationary from about 2007.

Images from Transferred

The Torpedo Factory has images up for the work being shown in Transferred: Alternative Processes in Photography. Please visit the Target Gallery website at: http://www.torpedofactory.org/galleries/target2011/Transferred_Artwork.htm.

Participating artists are: Aspen Hochhalter, Erin Woodbrey, Alison Nguyen, Michele Cole, Timothy McCoy, Alexander Larson, Jonah Calinawan, William Fenn, Emily Barnett, Gary Salazar, Paige Critcher, Marydorsey Wanless, Therese Brown, Rebecca Sexton Larson, Scott K. Murphy, Angela Kidd, Alice O'Neill, Elizabeth Janis Sweeney, Lindsey Beal, Barbara Johnson and the two represenatives from Ohio, Tracey Longley-Cook and myself.

Painting

It's time to make the switch from photography to painting!

Since ruby and amber lith are in short supply I took another route. Today I worked with red gouache in an attempt to create a red mask for a vandyke brown experiment involving an offset positive and negative of the Japanese Pear. I will post the (possibly fugly) results in a few days. Photo courtesy of Jenny Watercutter.

maybe number 102?

"Apple" and "Don't Take This Personally" will both be included in the Ohio Art League's Annual Fall Juried exhibition. The juror this year is Liz Maugans,  co-founder and Managing Director of Zygote Press, Inc. The exhibition is located at Schnormeier Gallery, 221 South Main Street, Mount Vernon, OH 43050 and will run from November 18, 2011 - January 7, 2012. The gallery is located on the campus of Mount Vernon Nazarene University.  An opening reception is scheduled for Friday, December 2, 6 - 9 p.m.

Maybe this is number 102?. The Ohio Art League began their juried exhibitions around 1910 and recently had their 100th anniversary Fall Juried exhibition in 2009.

making the laboratory romantic

Going from an undergraduate degree in science (biochemistry) to an MFA (emphasis in photography and digital imaging), I often look back to how I became interested in science and what made me change careers. In explaining my initial attraction to the sciences I recall images from NASA's unmanned missions like Voyager and Viking, drawings of blood cells in a National Geographic, and an image of Marie Curie in her lab.

In the summer of 1999 I attended one of the Museum of Photographic Arts workshop lectures. Susan Kae Grant was the artist and in her talk she alluded to a record of Marie and Pierre Curie returning to their Paris lab at night and seeing a lavender glow on work surfaces in the darkened room. Photographs like the one above are probably a strong influence in my early staged images of Dr. Frangst.

Today is the 144th anniversary of her birth (she's about sixty years younger than her countryman Frederic Chopin). Madam Curie, thank you for making he lab space romantic.

a cosmological bent

Here is the latest work print in the Forces of Nature series. So far this year I have created prints of an apple, which was one of handful Bridgette used for a drawing assignment, and a pluot, which I found in the cafeteria of Emmanuel College this past summer. This is a Japanese Pear, pyrus pyrifolia, which I spotted in the produce section of Dorothy Lane Market here in Dayton. All three have a cosmological bent to the image. My hope is that they are just as likely to reference stellar nurseries as they are the specific products of trees.

tree bark, take two, seeing what's on the ground glass

Last Saturday, for the first time in three years, I broke out the 8x10 camera. I gave myself a problem by loaning the 120 WPC (Holga) to a student and I found myself in need of continuing on with the new chapter in the Forces of Nature project, tree barks with shadows of leaves falling on them.

Here are the first two sheets of film processed on Monday. I feel like the lens is too long of a focal length which means finding a shutter for an old Goerz wide angle I have in my basement. However, it was nice to be using the view camera again, setting up the tripod and seeing what is on the ground glass.

I imagine the work being printed on a paper like Kozo, perhaps a toned Kallitype that ends up a neutral black. Here is what the cropped version may look like.

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.