Saturday, April 7, 2012

Wending

wend

[wend]  verb, wend·ed or ( Archaic ) went; wend·ing.
verb (used with object)
1.
to pursue or direct (one's way).
verb (used without object)
2.
to proceed or go.
 
I just went through the new reading list I had posted and already it's out of date. I've added two books (one I finished and one I'm in the midst of). Hopefully I'll get that sorted out in a few minutes and repost it. I can't believe how much time everything takes. It's like all this extra after your intended work and I hate trying to figure out the blog controls. I don't use it enough I suppose so it feels like it's a whole new learning process everything I log on.
Both writers (Krause and Grundberg) have been very illuminating as well as some talks with and viewing of other artists. I'll talk more about the artists in a later post.
Let's just look today at what I've been up to since I last posted.
  Roslind E. Krause in The Originiality of the Avant-Garde and Andy Grundberg in Crisis of the Real talk about different (but similar) aspects of post-modernism and what's original. Some of the ideas that I've have hovering are still waiting to have their day but for now what I've looked most closely is the object-less-ness of photographic images.
  In several of my new images I've developed B&W photographic paper to the extent that there is no image oto depict. This is partially in response to the visiting artist Liz Deschenes and my current readings discussing the anti stance that post-modernism was taking with modernism.
 
I did several of these with little to distinguish them except for the changes in marks and the tonal quality. It's really hard to see the metalic cast in these images. They present as much more interesting in person.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Then I went on to try to use some of the  printing technique with images from paper negatives. Some worked better then others.
 
These really don't reproduce well but I'll add one more to try to show you some of the effect. The pieces are very nuanced. They look almost like printing on metal. There is a richness and patina that is really beautiful. This is all done in a web lab with B&W photos, paper negs, and solarization.
 
  In addition I've actually had a few pieces turn out from the Cyanotype process I was using. I used paper negatives and simple cotton fabric. It worked well on some images and not so great on others. There are obvious factors that caused some of the differences, such as the light and time of day and how cold it was outside. I left them in the sun (which we had 4 or so good clear sunny days) but the temp was hovering around a brisk 46-50 degrees, even with leaving for several hours some did not have the similar line definations and some didn't work at all. (For both processes - you should see how many of them I had in the 'not going to work ever' pile! 
 
 
  There is so much more to explore and do! Of course I have several themes that I'm working on but as I understand it we don't need to come back with a body of work this next semester - so I'm extending the ideas in various methods and ranging far and wide for material, ideas, and execution.
Until then.....

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