Camera Work, part I

During the late spring and most of this summer, grinding up pigments, collecting flowers, coating paper and arranging clothing into the exposure set- ups have taken up a lot of my studio time. In other words, I've been making only anthotypes. Perhaps "only" is the wrong word. Three weeks ago I broke out the view camera to photograph support stockings laid out on the grass.

I am working with anti-embolism stockings as a way of looking back to my father who wore them late in his life. I would find them in the laundry area or see him wearing them with his summer pajamas as he watched the "Tonight Show" in the 1980's and 1990's.

Although he didn't wear white thigh highs, I wore these for about three hours. I am now at the age that my father was when I noticed him wearing support socks and my primary care physician is encouraging me to adopt them for daily use. 

So in late July I tried the three hour experiment in the morning and then set up the camera in the backyard around 3 pm. Accompanied by a squadron of mosquitos I made four exposures, which I finally began printing this week. 

It is only the second time this year I have used the 8x10 camera and it was a struggle especially with the elastic of the dark cloth around the film back area. Forgetting the numerous mosquito bites, I feel like I am ready to get back to more camera work.

words without pictures

In March and April of this year I met with Tanya Maus to be interviewed for a project she was doing for a six-month radio production training program at 91.3 WYSO in Yellow Springs (in Ohio). The goal of the interview was to give her a chance to edit many minutes of audio into a smaller four to six minute story that would eventually be broadcast on the station.

We met twice and I talked at length about the anthotype work as well as the continuing vandyke brown projects. I haven't heard it yet but those of you who know me well, know that I hate my "Telephone Voice".

It is scheduled to air this Wednesday, August 20th at 6:30 am and 8:30 am E.S.T. during Morning Edition. For those of you living outside the Miami Valley area who wish to hear it, WYSO will have a live stream via iTunes. Please go to https://itunes.apple.com/us/station/idra.873003657 to listen to WYSO live on iTunes radio.

Vandyke Brown on Washi Workshop

Vandyke Brown on Japanese Paper Workshop

Posted on May 26, 2013

I realize that summer is right around the corner and for many of you plans for the next three months are already set.  If you are still looking for an alternative photography workshop this summer please consider …

2013 Vandyke Brown Print on Japanese Paper Workshop with Francis Schanberger

Level: Beginner through Advanced

Location: South Park Historical District, Dayton, Ohio

When:

• 2-day workshop July 19th  2013
• Friday, 9:00 am – 6:00 pm
• Saturday, 9:00 am – 6:00 pm

Cost: $375 per person plus $95 materials fee (for paper and gold toner). Reservations are on a first-come first-serve basis by email with a deposit of $200 through PayPal. Partial refunds will be given if your reservation is canceled no less than 21 days before the workshop is scheduled to be held and will be subject to a to a PayPal service fee.

Limited to 6 students.

About the Process: The Vandyke Brown Print is part of the Kallitype (Iron Salt based) family of photographic processes. It stands out due to its unique printing out of an image that requires no developing agent.  Vandyke Brown prints work on many papers but can create difficulties due to the amount of chemistry that gets absorbed by the paper. Careful consideration of how papers are sized and even applying a surface size can result in spectacular prints. Additionally, deep rich chocolate browns can be achieved through control of humidity and toning with precious metals like gold and palladium. An archival print is achieved by thoroughly fixing and washing out hypo, and iron, combined with toning.

Workshop Agenda: In this intensive 2-day workshop, students will create several inkjet negatives for use with specific Japanese papers. Each student will learn how to deal with the challenges of coating and processing Vandyke Brown on three different washi papers. This workshop will also include a demonstration of sizing paper using the Japanese method of applying dosa, which can significantly expand the number of papers onto which photographers can print. Additionally, students will learn how to archivally process their prints as well as have the opportunity to tone their favorite prints from the workshop.

Bio: Francis Schanberger is an Ohio based artist originally from San Diego, California. He first became acquainted with historical photographic processes through the workshops organized by the Museum of Photographic Arts and Grossmont Community College. His current work involves the extensive use of the Vandyke Brown Print on Japanese handmade papers (washi). These images are sometimes collectively pieced together to greatly increase the scale of work and highlight the unique qualities of washi. In the fall of 2013, Francis will be one of two American and three Japanese artists to exhibit photographs at the Japanese Paper Museum in Ino, Japan using a tosa washi paper made specifically for alternative processes by traditional paper craftsmen. His Vandyke Brown work was recently published in Christine Anderson’s Gum Printing and Other Amazing Contact Printing Processes and is featured in Christopher James’ Book of Alternative Photographic Processes. Last year his anthotype prints were published in Malin Fabbi’s Anthotypes: Explore the Darkroom in Your Garden.

Dayton: Dayton once relied extensively on manufacturing as part of its economic base. It is located in America’s rustbelt and represents one of the major metropolitan areas in Ohio. Dayton’s connection with aviation history and the abandoned manufacturing areas create opportunities for photographers unique to this part of the country. It is also the historical home of Jane Reece, one of the key pictorialist photographers outside of Alfred Stieglitz’ circle of artists.

Transportation: South Park Historical District is located near downtown Dayton and is about 21 minutes from Dayton International Airport. A cab ride should cost about $40.

Accommodations: There are Bed and Breakfast Inns located in the neighboring Oregon District such as Inn Port D’Vino as well as major hotels such as Marriott along the river.

Contact: Francis Schanberger, email: frangst@gmail.com, tel. 614.282.9871

Website: www.frangst.com

a new drawing board

At some point last week, maybe it was Friday the 17th, the new paper from Ino Town, Japan arrived. It's extremely lightweight and extremely challenging on every front. 

Here are some notes collected so they won't get lost.

The paper is about 30 gsm which is about 60 percent of the lightest paper onto which have ever printed.

It needs to be sized for Vandyke Brown. It probably works for iron based processes with a coating rod. For silver / iron processes the silver will accumulate and plate out.

I've taught myself how to work with Dosa (basically rabbit skin glue and alum). This paper does OK with  just one coat on each side but will probably be awesome with two coats per side. 

I will probably use the Dosa technique on the Kozo Unryu to solve the pinhole issue.

The paper will require a new curve. An initial print done with a Kozo Unryu negative looked posterized.

Did I mention that the paper is extremely thin? The extensive washing needed for VDB was a bit rough on my first attempt. I managed to not destroy the second attempt but will have to screen dry all of the prints. 

So far I have printed an 11x 14 inch size print. It is going to be a real challenge to print the 23 x 18 inch size images I proposed to the museum.

when papers go bad

Handmade papers like washi have always presented challenges for me, the handcoating emulsion dude. Did they have enough size? Would the paper fibers cooperate with the chemistry? One paper would work well with Vandyke brown, actually really well, but be horrible with cyanotype. 

The latest struggle was when a good paper turned bad. For the last six or seven months I have been struggling with a change in my favorite paper. When I first started using the Kozo Unryu paper there sometimes were 2-4 pinholes on half a full sheet but the last batch would have 15 to 20. These pinholes would act like a drain in a sink by pulling the photo chemistry I was applying out the back side of the paper. The result was a larger, lighter spot on the front of the paper. On the backside of the paper, corresponding ovals of chemistry would show up, evidence of the drain effect. These would process out after fixing the image but the light spots on the front would remain.

When I first started using the paper, I could easily spot 1-4 spots that would occasionally show up. But the lates batch would easily result in up to 12 or 15 light spots that were too much for me to carefully touch up.

I was taking a shower (I do some of my best problems solving in the bathroom) and was thinking about an image I was working with in gum and remembered that I had been coating that paper with an acrylic solution to create a barrier to prevent staining. Or maybe I was thinking about the shower drain and how the vandyke brown solution was getting pulled from one side of the paper to the other. Something "clicked" and a solution was realized.  I realized all I had to do was to coat the back side of the paper with Gamblin PVA (not the glue but a related size). It created a barrier to keep the chemistry on the front side of the paper.

The pictures show the backside of an unsized sheet from earlier in the week (top) and a sized sheet from two days ago (bottom). Both prints in the images have not been "fixed" which allows the brown stain on the back to be better visualized.

Tonight I looked at the first one to be processed and dried. I can still see tiny dark specks on the back side of the paper but I have eliminated the larger light spots on the front.

Now I can get back to work with this paper.

the appearance of being active

Tomorrow should be a good day of sunlight so I am strongly leaning to "bringing in" the first onion skin anthotype.

What follows is, admittedly, just the ins and outs of recent exhibitions for record keeping.

Last month I was able to exhibit Forty-six at IceCube gallery in Denver, Colorado loosely part Denver's Month of Photography. The exhibit, Icebreaker 4 was juried by Nora Burnett Abrams, the associate curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.

Also last month, the Annual Works On Paper exhibit at Rosewood Art Center's gallery came down. I was able to sow three anthotypes including Somnambulist #3 (Cut Grass Poultice) and the tow little saffron anthotypes, Nightie Negligee (Barbie) and Sleeper Set Pajamas (Ken). Somnambulist #3 was selected for and award of merit by juror Robert Robbins, Chair of Drawing and Printmaking, as well as a professor in the fine arts department at the Columbus College of Art and Design.

Later this month I will be installing work at the Riffe Gallery in Columbus for the exhibit Photography's Back to the Future curated by Catherine Evans of the Columbus Museum of Art. Look for installation shots later this month on this blog. The work included in this exhibit happens to be all vandyke brown, specifically Forty-six, Mis-mitosis and Don't Take This Personally.

Icebreaker 4

Forty-six is making its way across the continental divide to be part of Icebreaker 4, an all media, un-themed juried show at Denver's IceCube gallery. The gallery is located at 3320 Walnut Street in Denver, Colorado. The show was juried by Nora Burnett Abrams, the Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.   An opening reception is scheduled for March 8th,  5-9pm and a Juror’s Conversation event is planned for March 14, 3:30pm. 

The exhibition will be on view from March 7th through March 30th. 

osage orange and black walnut system

The one comment that really sticks in mind from the summer residency in Boston is from Drew Ippoliti who is currently working on his PhD in London. "Artists are problem makers, not problem solvers!"

I've given myself several problems over the last two weeks. The problems I haven't successfully solved are due to time constraints, defective paper and a complicated lighting set-up.

I am trying directional lighting to evoke the look of a Voyager image which is alleged to be the first photograph to show the Earth / Moon system together in one frame. Perhaps you can recognize the Black Walnut and Osage Orange I am using as surrogates for a planet and moon.

I am showing you an ugly print. Once time permits, I will upload the final version.

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

untitled (flattened cone)

A new semester is approaching which may not leave much time for posting blog entries. Maybe. In the meantime here is the second of the new vandyke brown prints, "Untitled (Flattened Cone)".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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?

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.