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?

Wish me luck

Here's the start of the pokeberry Anthotype labcoat.

Textile in progress

Here is a preview of the pattern I created using two pokeweed leaves. These will become the pokeberry emulsion textile from which the labcoat will be made. After cleaning up the scans of 14 leaves I ended up using just three. The bottom and top side of one leaf as well as the bottom of another. The double sided leaf is to scale. The other was reduced to fill up so empty space in the textile.

The coat is the experiment

I should know when to stop.





Here are three examples of different pokeberry dilutions painted onto the cotton fabric I am using for the lab coat.

There will be one back panel and one pocket that will represent the undiluted pigment.

The two front panels, the other back panel and the two larger lower pockets will be the first dilution.

The arms and collar will be coated with the second dilution.

The coat is the experiment!

Three Easy Pieces

Today's image shows three larger pieces of fabric hanging to dry. The two on the right are undiluted pokeberry pigment.

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.

Progress Report

June 02

June 03

June 05

June 06

June 6th, detail

Lot's of pictures showing the progress of the fading and small misfortunes.

The garment is slipping a bit from bringing it inside in the evening and taking it out in the morning. Addtionally yesterday there was  a small downpour. This is something I wanted to introduce to the image but it is a bit different from the first Clem Wolfham. The image is being exposed sideways which is a "number of clamps" and "size of plexiglass relative to the plywood backing" issue. So the drips run perpendicular to the way I would like to introduce these marks. Additionally the plexi doesn't cover the entire surface area of the paper so the pokeberry emulsion has completely run off the paper in these areas.

I am getting closer to exposing the fabric of one of the anthotype lab coats. Now I just need to teach myself to sew and maybe I can pull this off.

clem wolfham in fuchsia, day 1

It's out, getting a small window of intense light each day. Check back for progress reports but I expect to keep this out until roughly the summer solstice.

After this will be a pokeberry anthotype on a labcoat. First, I have to thaw out and mash up some pokeberries from last fall.

the color fuchsia

It’s not summer until I begin a large anthotype and because I planned ahead (or perhaps never got around to it), I have pokeberry emulsion in late May! This is going to be a re-print of the Clem Wolfham anthotype which is badly faded due to mixing the original emulsion with water.

Don’t do that.

I suspect the diluted emulsion caused the image to fade but I don’t have a good guess as to why. Another sheet of paper I had coated a year and a half ago also faded quite badly in the dark. It’s something I noticed last summer after I got back from my Boston residency.

Last fall, after picking and separating berries, I had pokeberry juice all over my hands and made a  hand print on blotter paper. The image is still quite vivid perhaps hinting that maybe this emulsion shouldn’t be diluted.

The images below are the uncoated sheet of Fabriano Artistico Extra White Hot Press and the coated sheet. It is a bit streaky but the color is intense. As intense as fuchsia can get.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, will be the first day of exposure. Even with the heavy tree cover surrounding the back yard, I expect the exposure to take less than two weeks.