Bed Jackets Times Two

It is difficult to know where to start, when I haven't blogged about my making in three months. 

I am currently using red tulip petals collected during early May. Truly gleaned because allof the petals were on the ground. The ones that were too damp, we're cleaned in water and ground up in a mortar and pestle. That first red tulip anthotype of the year was one of two images I've made involving two bed jackets. The exposure was stopped late last month and is a bit more narrative than the first double bad jacket image (made from yellow onion skin). 

Below are both of the images. Top: yellow onionskin "Two Bed Jackets". Bottom image: "Puppet Show" in acidified red tulip.

Gang of Four

Here's a preview of the grid of four framed cyanotypes of fungi at DVAC.

Army of Anthotype Love

The production of these Anthotype lab coats has become quite the project that involves eighty plus spring clamps, lots of plywood and clear acrylic (Plexiglass).

Did I mention that it's exhausting?

my next big thing

This is the layout for the next multi section van dyke brown piece I am making for in vivo. These are the negatives used for the print exposures done today. Thirty-five minutes per group of four.

Tomorrow I'll be processing about seventeen of these. I'll have two extra blanks and four unexposed, coated pieces of paper in reserve because I do not work in a perfect universe.

unhappy accident

the aftermath of a heavy rainfall last week. I'll unveil the disaster tomorrow.

what a mess I've made

The devil is in the details from what I've heard. Here are some current details.

I've thawed out the remaining poke berries from last fall given to me by Nate Smyth. What a mess I've made!





I also invented something to make my job easier. The crushed pokeberries make a thick liquid which is more syrupy than watery. A good potion of this syrup clings to the seeds.

In order to avoid rinsing the seeds with water to reclaim as much pigment as possible I developed a press to push out the liquid. I used three plastic containers, two are pint size and one is quart size (which becomes the default collection container). The middle container gets holes drilled into the bottom. This middle container holds the seeds and syrup slurry which I push down upon with an empty container with a lid closure.

All the containers share the same diameter (and lids), so they fit into each other (creating a stack). Since the largest container has more depth than the smaller containers, it never comes into contact with the liquid being separated from the seeds.




A note of warning. The previously frozen berries create an environment for fast decomposition. Gasses will build up in the bottles in which the liquid is collected. Leave lots of space in the bottle to prevent a magenta explosion!

Finally, I bought some fabric to make the lab coat and have done a small test coating of the material. This swatch will become the upper pocket on the front of the lab coat.

Clem Wolfham in fuchsia, day 2

Today is a bit of a wash for exposing outside (continuous rain) but I did get to wear a cardigan and jeans on this first day of June.

Here is a picture from yesterday. My best estimate is that the anthotype can get six hours of sunlight unattended in this one spot in my backyard.



Yesterday, I did get out to glean some mulberries. I have about 3 pints worth of berries but the lab coat may require a lot more.

Gone Bananas

I think I've gone bananas trying to make prints I will send to reviewers I met with at FotoFest.

Working title ..."Ridiculous Nebula"

a slightly complex photograph

I've been concentrating on reprinting "Don't Take This Personally" for a Houston based photography collector. I've been working this, off and on, since late March. Teaching and other exhibition obligations have limited the amount of time available to focus on this slightly complex photograph (or is it a collection of photographs).

This week I have had the whole week available to address color variation, flaws in coating, flaws in paper or exposure concerns. It's almost done. Today I am going to spot the sections, draw guidelines for the framer in Houston, trim down the paper, flatten them and figure out a way to sign this piece. Then it gets boxed up and shipped to Houston.

File Under Book Keeping

Pluot at Red Filter Gallery

Japanese Pear in DVAC's 17h Annual Auction Preview

This is one of those posts where I list current exhibitions. Sorry. Some people keep a spreadsheet. Some keep a binder. I use this blog on occasion to keep track of shows and what work was exhibited in specific venues.

Currently I have one piece, Pluot,  over in New Jersey at the Red Filter gallery in their Alternative Views exhibition which runs from March 1, 2012 - April 22, 2012. This is a re-working of the Transferred exhibition last fall in Alexandria, Virginia.

Dayton Visual Arts Center is previewing their 17th Annual Auction. Japanese Pear is in the silent auction and is part of the preview exhibit at their gallery 118 North Jefferson Street here in Dayton, Ohio. The auction will be on  April 27, 2012 at Sinclair Community College’s Ponitz Center. Please visit the Dayton Visual Arts Center's website for specific hours and ticket information. The preview exhibit is free and runs through April 25th at . Gallery hours at  are 11 am—6 pm, Tuesday—Saturday.

Last but not least, I will be showing Honeycrisp in Manifest gallery's Botanical:An Exhibiton of Works Exploring Plant Life which has an opening scheduled for Friday, April 20th and runs through May 18th. Manifest is located at 2727 Woodburn Avenue,  Cincinnati, Ohio 45206.

Honeycrisp at Manifest Gallery

apple (again)

The last few weeks have been both chaotic and structured in preparation for Houston. Good printing days and bad printing days. Bad printing days followed by no printing days. I really shouldn't be mussing with gold and palladium toners with the Van Dyke Brown prints this close to FotoFest.
Needless to say, all the lack of blogging will be followed by an avalanche of correspondence once step onto Texas soil. In between now and then, how about a little synchronicity between my new favorite muse, apples and perhaps my even newer, new favorite muse, images of planetary nebulae from the Hubble telescope. I came across this, strangely enough, from a recent Los Angeles Times column about their decision to scrap the star rating system for restaurant reviews.

Planetary Nebula NGC 6751

 

apple (again), gold and palladium toned van dyke brown print

Mommy and Daddy are Alright

Just a quick snap of the new saffron anthotypes, "Mommy" & "Daddy". Better pictures on Monday.

ImageOhio Artitsts Talks

From yesterday afternoon's ImageOhio talk. I was too wrapped up with my late entrance to snap the participants and Fort Hayes students. The bottom image shows two new photographs by Ardine Nelson.

Wrapped in Plastic (the great saffron experiment III)

This will be a bit of a strange detour for me. Doll clothes. Somehow in my search for sleepwear, a bathrobe for a Ken doll came up. That led me to pajamas for Ken which in turn led me to Barbie's Nightie Negligee. Despite the oddness of working with doll clothes, it did solve a couple of problems.


Scale. Making tests that would fit into smaller printing frames. Now I can try different plant materials on smaller sheets of paper before committing to a larger sized sheet of paper able to fit adult sized sleepwear.

Light Resist: The Nightie Negligee is interesting because of its transparency and opacity. It has distinct lines and a sheerness that will allow light to be held back or to freely pass depending upon the layers and folds of the garment. In other words, I don't have to cut it up.

Paper with Ten Coats of Saffron and Barbie Nightie Negligee

Print Frame, Anthotype with Light Resist, Wrapped in Plastic

The exposure begins today, overcast and twenty eight degrees Fahrenheit. The Anthotype (ten coats of saffron emulsion) should be safe from the elements. I've wrapped it in a plastic bag to protect it from the elements. There will be two more of these "tests". One will be the other half of the Nightie Negligee and the other Ken's Pajamas. One possible direction for this project might be homemade Ken and Barbie sleepwear. I need to sleep on it.

Regarding the title of the post, yes it is a nod to the name of the official Twin Peaks Fan Club newsletter.

the great saffron experiment, part II

Yesterday and today I have been coating the saffron emulsion onto Fabriano Artistico Hot Press Extra White.

zero, one, and two coats

zero, two, and four coats

zero, three, and five coats

zero, four, and six coats

Some notes:

• The emulsion was brushed on with a foam brush. Keep the brush as perpendicular to the paper as possible and don't apply too much pressure on the paper surface. The more coats applied, the more likely the nap of the paper will get pulled up.
• The color is becoming more concentrated around the center of the paper. I believe this is because this is where I pour the emulsion on (about 6 cc per coat) before brushing outwards.
• I will probably go through the entire 100 cc of emulsion I made on two sheets of 12" x 15" paper (and stop there).

the great saffron experiment, part I

Today I began the Great Saffron Experiment. It will be great if it works.
My intent is to use saffron as an anthotype emulsion. This afternoon was primarily preparing the liquid which will be applied to paper as multiple coats to build up the color.
Below are pictures of the process.

dried saffron

saffron with hot water

saffron with hot water, mortar, pestle and tea kettle

regrinding the saffron before adding more hot water

cloudy saffron suspension

As best as I can remember:

• I used about two teaspoons worth of saffron. A little goes a long way.
• Added hot water little by little, mortar and pestling (I hope that is the verb) the saffron leaves as they absorbed water.
• Pulled off the liquid from round one of crushing the saffron in hot water using a transfer pipette. Filtered it through the mesh filter. I had about 70 cc of liquid at this point.
• Re-pestled the saffron. At this point it was effectively a saffron poultice.
• Added more liquid. Continued to mortar and pestle.
• Pulled off the additional liquid and filtered it through the mesh filter.
• Just as an additional experiment, I added a few cc's of Everclear (alcohol) to the remaining poultice to see if I could leach out a little more color. It helped a little but probably added to the cloudiness of the collected liquid.

From the pictures you should notice that I strained the hot liquid through a piece of a gold mesh coffee filter. The collected liquid did have a suspension which was too fine for the coffee filter but it did settle down to the bottom of the glass jar after a few minutes.

specialist secrets

untitled (cruciform), 16"  x 20", vandyke brown print, 2012

Specialist secrets is a term I came across in reading a review of Thomas Struth's exhibition in Portugal (or was the review referring to a showing in Dusseldorf?). Is a term that stuck in my mind and I want to title a piece after it or a create a piece specifically for it. After a couple of days of sun and a suddenly cooperative NuArc plateburner,  I have a couple of new pieces to push out into the world.  Now the winter rain is back and I am finding myself with a weak but noticeable bout of season affective disorder (self diagnosis). 

What are the secrets of this specialist? I am having better luck working without toning the vandyke brown prints (at least for the moment). It is easier working with the NuArc 261K than it is with natural sunlight for exposing the kallitypes. It is more romantic to work with sunlight (think Fox Talbot's Reading Establishment). The Forces of Nature images can be broken down into leaves, fruit, pollen, bark and roots. The bulk of these images are leaves followed by fruiting bodies. 

and one more secret: I want to make anthotypes with very yellow tumeric.

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.

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.