take note

Camera phones present a useful way to take notes of work in progress. They are certainly helpful with a complicated photographic experiment like mixing plant pigments on top of each other. 

I forgot the order I applied tulip and rose pigments to one of the anthotypes I made in Vermont. I forgot until I discovered this progression of images on the phone.

Iris on top left to right. Red rose on the bottom.

A couple of days later I had settled on creating a four square ground by applying purple iris on top of the red rose (bottom right). The top left is red rose over purple iris. All grids should have received the same number of layers. 

Open Door Policy

Here in Johnson, Vermont I had grand aspirations for a couple of projects. With just a few days left in the residency it seems to have been one project involving Anthotypes. Through it all, whether it was working with and saying good-bye to the July artists in residence to the current August artists, I've kept my door open. 

There has been a lot of work done, much of it mortar and pestle drudgery. Perhaps that's one reason for the open studio. It's so much more interesting to grind plant matter when you have something to listen to or to talk about with visitors.

Here's a list to that I hope to write about as time frees up:

1.     Content of the newest anthotypes: the mix of male and female sleepwear

2.     The studio practice: 12 hours a day in Vermont (sometimes)

3.     Slow to make fast to expose: contrasty juniper leaves

4.     The show in Japan

5.     The Ohio State Fair

6.     Future ideas for the anthotypes / accelerating the fade

7.     Condensation in "tarping up" the anthos

Above is a picture of the favorite antho produced so far in Vermont. "Iris Peignoir with Hidden Boxers"

summer ball rolling

The last few weeks have been busy. Printing work for a show in Japan. Discovering that I was going to a residency in Vermont...last minute...due to my teaching schedule and the other Ohio artist being unavailable to take advantage of an Ohio Arts Council funded residency at Vermont Studio Center. Packing the car for less than a month of residency here in northern Vermont.

It was a two day drive and now it's two days into the residency. I did dive into work once I got here. Anthotype work. Now two are outside and a third will join them tomorrow morning.

In a previous life I was a monk sequestered in a solitary cell. Maybe I was a lonely groundhog. That's my studio practice. Twelve hour days with breaks for meals and artist talks in between. A walk here. A talk there. Tonight's lecture was by environmental artist Jackie Brookner who's work is concerned with the misperception of water as an unlimited resource.

To get the mid-summer ball rolling, here's a pic from tonight's walk near Johnson Community College.