greetings from the frozen midwest

Staying in today to avoid the wind, the wind-chill and the subzero temperatures. I even emptied my work area in the garage to make a spot for the car. That's what garages are typically designed for...the sheltering of cars, not the coating of anthotypes or UV exposure dependent printing. 

It's a good day for late, late portfolio review follow-ups. I think I sent one about four weeks after getting back from Chicago. That would have been early November. I guess now they are New Year's greetings. 

Next week, the Eight Annual OOVAR (Ohio Online Visual Artist Registry) Exhibition will have a closing reception on Saturday, January 11, 2014 from 2-3:30 p.m. in the Carnegie Gallery which is on the second floor of the Columbus Metropolitan Library's main branch. Included is a digital print of the (Basic) Red Tulip Sleeping Dress. 

The original was just sold by Loretta Puncer's Gallery 510. It is my favorite of the anthotypes and am glad to see it go to a good home. The framed anthotypes do take up a bit of room in my studio / slash office. I really do take after my father. His office was unusable except for a small area of a table in a room full of stacks of medical journals and old mail. 

No nightmarish pictures of cluttered office spaces today. Instead just a few snaps of the start of the (Basic) Red Tulip Sleeping Dress and it's final framed version.

Red Tulip part II

The two red tulip anthotypes were exposed for about the same amount of time. I estimate about nine days give or take a rain day. 

If you look at the lower right corner you can see rain did make its presence known despite wrapping the "contraption" in plastic. The contraption is usually a thin sheet of OSB, the paper coated with pigment, the garment, and Plexiglass all held together by spring clamps. The spring clamps show up occasionally around the periphery of the finished anthotype. Bridgette has described them as giving the finished piece a rhythm. I use to hate the artifacts they left behind, now I am kind of digging them. 

This anthotype was made with the same emulsion as the "Little Gown" anthotype but I kept the red tulip color by adding a bit of citric acid to the emulsion. Normally this paper (Arches Cover) and Fabriano Artistico have a bit of buffer that pushes the color to the blue end of the spectrum. Flower pigments act as a pH indicator for naturalists. I have even made purple iris pigment red. 

This is "Red Tulip (acidic) Peignoir #1". 51" (H) x 42" (w).

Speaking of iris pigment. I raided the last ones today. I have a bit frozen away and two sheets already coated one of which is exposing right now. I see plenty of purple gowns, peignoirs and pajamas in the future.

Red Tulip (Basic) Little Gown

The weeks around the summer solstice are amazing times for this anthotypist who is so used to slow emulsions and winter sunlight in the midwest.

I removed the two red tulip anthotypes today and the results were more than I could have hoped for. Today I am uploading one I will be giving the clumsy title of Red Tulip (Basic) Little Gown. It is arguably the better of the two primarily for the delicate lines around the sleeve and neck areas.

Yes, it is blue even though it has "red" in the title due to the buffering in the paper which has shifted the color towards a cooler tint. The dimensions for this anthotype are 36" x 26".

red state, blue state

The other anthotype involves the use of a nightgown purchased off eBay from a woman living in Alabama. This anthotype also invokes the red tulip emulsion but you may notice it looks a bit like cornflower blue. I noticed in 2011 when I had access to the rose garden in Boston that a red rose emulsion would be shifted towards blue. I speculated that it was the buffering in the paper or perhaps as the emulsion oxidized it became more alkaline.

The one thing that supports this idea is the addition of citric acid to the emulsion. Instead of heading towards blue, the acidified emulsion stays red. The large peignoir antho was prepared this way. The little green nightgown was not. BTW, both show significant fading as of Tuesday and they only went out on Sunday.

Regarding the little green nightgown, there was a Post-it note included with the  garment. It read: "Please take care of this little dress. She's been in our family for sixty years."

I am not going to reveal to the seller that I am leaving it out in sunlight for days upon days but I might mail her a snap of the finished anthotype. 

sheer sheerness of it all

To begin with some disclaimer, I am not entirely sure how I ended up here. I know there was never some end goal to work with lingerie. I do feel like the sheer sheerness of it all is promising to create some intriguing anthotypes for the Somnambulist project.

This is an extension of the sleepwear. Two, maybe two and one half, years ago I began using pajamas as a light resist. The reason was a memory of my father when he was in the hospital sometime in 2004 wearing pajamas, which brought up a childhood memory of seeing him late at night in pajamas in his rocking chair, cocktail in hand and my mom lying on the sofa. Both of them watching the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. It was their time. We, the brood, all nine of us, were supposed to be in bed. It was the parents time to unwind.

So here I am at nightgowns and peignoirs, a word I only just learned. The trajectory has been this: pajamas, Ken pajamas, Barbie Nightie Negligee, nightgowns (plural) and now peignoirs. The success (exposure-wise) of the Barbie Nightie Negligee probably sowed the seeds of my destruction. An Ebay search for mid-century women's sleepwear.

To spread out the documentation I'll just include images of the assembly of the peignoir anthotype. Tomorrow I'll post about the nightgown, a sixty year-old nightgown. The discoveries of this project so far:

• I need to do a better job organizing my spring clamps (there must be a second stash somewhere).

• I need to acquire more large, clear plastic bags to weatherize the anthotypes.

• I need even more Plexiglass.

• I am in touch with my feminine side.

• The first arrangements of each light resists are usually the best. Please see the illustrations(s) below. 

a medium for the young

 Grinding up flower petals into pigment (actually an aqueous emulsion) is time consuming and feels like its backbreaking. It's more like back aching. Hence it is a photographic medium for the young if they have the patience. 

I've been stuck working on the red tulips since I gathered them last week and tried to combine them with an under painting (yes, I borrowed a painting term) of beets (from a can). I suspect the salt in the canned beets is the heart of the lighting problem. I will test this out later in the summer once other projects get completed. 

While I was wrestling with the beet / tulip mix I began coating two separate sheets of paper, one Fabriano Artistico hot press and the other Arches Cover.

Each has gotten about 5 coats of red tulip emulsion. Besides the paper difference, I also acidified the tulip emulsion for the larger (Arches Cover) sheet which is what the image below is showing. It is a bit streaky and it has been difficult handling a 50" x 42" sheet  of paper. I've been coating it outside and transporting it back to the garage to dry. 

There is also a bit of debris (think sediment) in the coating. I resorted to an alcohol water mix at the end to pull out enough pigment to cover both sheets with several coats. This usually shows up when using Everclear to pull pigment from flower petals. 

Maybe tomorrow I will get to assembling the anthotype for exposure. I still have to cut a sheet of plex to fit the backing board and create a water tight covering for the whole thing in case I can rescue it from a downpour.

Tomorrow I will reveal what the tulip anthotype is going to be. There actually should be two going out.  I am moving on to women's sleepwear for most of this summer's anthotypes. There goes any art cred I may have had. 

seasonal miseries

The real anthotype season is in full swing and I conflicted by competing projects including the show in Japan this September. I've been collecting sleepwear which I'll discuss in the next few days. 

I've been gleaning red tulips petals from the University of Dayton campus and combining them with some purple tulip petals frozen since St. Valentines day.

 

 I had coated a few sheets of Fabriano with canned beet juice and decided to layer the tulip mix on top. While it was wet it seemed to increase the pigment density but after two coats of tulip on top of the beet emulsion, things went awry. It got lighter. 

My wife, the painter that she is, suggested putting more canned beet juice on top. My initial feeling is that it is improving but I'll look at it tomorrow in the daylight.