A sensitive man

Yes. I am a sensitive man. Last month I ran into a lot of trouble trying to ship Iris Peignoir with Hidden Shorts to Arizona in a frame. I packed it so that it would be within UPS's height and girth restrictions but my avoidance of dealing with the UPS store resulted in a lot of driving around and a lot of packing and unpacking of a large box with a smaller box in the parking lot outside the UPS customer center.

Severely defeated, I called up Gina at Art Intersection who gave me the go-ahead to send the unframed piece in a tube. When considering fourteen dollars vs. 200 plus dollars and all the heartache, my artistic vision is compelled to be OK with hanging a fugitive work on paper on the wall unframed.

Which is how it is being shown at Light Sensitive on view at Art Intersection now until April 19th. The exhibition juried by Tom Persinger of f295 is billed as a celebration of images from the darkroom. There is nothing dark about the grassy area I exposed this piece in during three weeks of Vermont sun. But it is light sensitive.

Summer pajamas in iris day 1

Today doesn't really count (as day one). I have had this sheet of  59" x 46" coated water color paper waiting for a couple of things to occur. The first item was getting a sheet of OSB cut down to accommodate the paper. I got around to that late last week. Forty-six inches happens to be the widest sheet the Subaru Forester will accommodate.

The second hold-up: I was planning on using another peignoir but decided that if I was going to continue to use pajamas in this series that the added opacity of men's sleepwear would be best served by exposing the anthotypes as close to the summer solstice as possible. 

Today's mail produced a vintage set of Sears summer pjs. 

The third obstacle actually has a fourth obstacle associated with it. Working this scale means either buying a sheet of plexiglass or scavaging the garage for an alternative. Since a new sheet of plex would be around seventy dollars, I opted for the latter. I ended up cutting down three scraps that when pieced together would cover up the paper and pajamas. That was today. 

Last Saturday I attended a presentation on proper techniques for packing art work for shipping. It was during that session that I was introduced to plastic cling wrap. This is what I ended up using (along with a small amount of packing tape) to secure the three separate pieces of plex, hopefully creating a water barrier in the process.

Tomorrow will be officially day one.

perhaps something in purple?

Here is the second anthotype taken down from the window last Thursday. A few reviews alluded to drawing characteristics. It is a photogenic drawing (in purple). The iris petal emulsion was applied drop by drop (yes, I’m nuts) onto Kochi washi paper. Hence the pattern. The pajama was red fleece with trains and no name on it. If you have a suggestion for a title, I’m all ears.

BTW, I have been adding a dash of citric acid as a preservative to my latest flower pigment emulsions (in solution). Today I noticed that the red roses I was grinding up returned to their warm red shade with citric acid instead of the cooler red / purple with just water.

the opposite of instant gratification

Today I will budget in time to document the two anthotypes which I pulled from the window yesterday evening. For the record, the mulberry on Utrecht drawing paper was exposed for 27 days, just shy of four weeks. The iris pigment print (yes, it sounds like a confusing mixture of Iris print and archival pigment print) took 19 days.

In the meantime, I arranged the pajama bottoms on heavy weight watercolor paper coated with the Black-Eyed Susan emulsion. The yellow represents three coats of the flower emulsion (air dried between coats) on two separate sheets. First day of exposure is today as Boston gets ready to crack 100 degrees Fahrenheit.