Rundown to the next residency

It has been a lot of work trying to get a huge set of papers burned and printed. I'm trying to close the gap now with some final pieces. It gets harder with little actual sunlight as the UV light only takes a few papers at a time. Unlike the yard which I can lay out several at once.

I will have a few more photos soon. But right now I've been putting in somewhere around 30 hrs a week on these things and I'm just about done. I haven't counted yet but I know I'm running out of storage room!

The latest writing is getting posted here - the artist statement. If I get a chance I'll try to link up the other papers.

I'd like to mention to anyone reading that if you are working along any of these lines, I'd love to hear from you. Let me know what you've tried and how it's going or what you're ideas are!

Artist Statement

 

In examining the meaning and expectation of what a photograph is, this work creates a tension and confusion in the viewer. Meaning comes from seeking to understand and organize the pieces as if a puzzle, making the viewer implicit in the work.

 

In the Haystack series there are multiple readings and several levels of associations that make the certainty of what it is even harder to pin down. This deliberate confusion invites questions, provokes reactions, and realigns thought patterns. By choosing to deny the traditional beauty, image, and preciousness of earlier photographic traditions, tension is introduced along a tight line of understanding and misunderstanding. Puzzling out meaning and re-aligning the idea of what constitutes a photograph is elemental in my work. 

 

Making marks

In a photographic sense I have been making marks on paper by burning and slashing the paper and then adding cyanotype to create a print.

 

 

 

 

Not only each paper receives the coating differently and responds to the varying amount of light I expose it to, but each type of paper gives a different result also.

 

To construct the final piece I need to make many more so back to work we go.....!

 

Works

I have been working with different papers. This is several burned and torn pieces of white Kraft paper using cyanotype.

 

Because these papers are not traditional water media when rinsed in the final step of the cyanotype they became too fragile and tore easily. Having burned them in the beginning the paper fibers were so weak in some cases that the whole paper tore into one giant gaping hole. To remedy that I began to sew a simple repair.

It was during my reading of Lyle Rexer's Photography's Antiquarian Avant-Garde: the New Wave in Old Process that I read about Bea Nettles using a sewing machine. I have seen her work and cookbook but didn't realize she had been shut out of the all male darkroom due to using a sewing machine.

I enjoy the additional feminist element. I hate that images and ideas can be classified or read as domestic or feminine. That of course is another issue of the baggage that all of us bring to what we see, hear, and think which I need to leave for some future time.

I have a lot more reading to do so I will leave now with this view 

 

Some writings

Here are something that I have wanted to post but have been busy and have not found time for until now.
My mentor Susan Dunkerley Maquire had me write out a description/evaluation of several pieces I showed her. This was an exacting exercise which I took a long time over. It was very interesting in how it developed the awareness of the pieces.

This piece with a semi-representational figure was not followed up much through the rest of my time working with the cyanotypes. I have spent quite a deal more time on creating the imageless pieces I have posted and will update later. This figurative image was done before the intense reading of Uta Barth that I was doing. I had been looking into the idea of traces and loss of complete image as a way to explore how memory works and sometimes fails. Reading Uta Barth and her idea of seeing tied into my exploration into highlighting how we look.

Here then is the description of one image.
Description of #4.

 

This is a traditional landscape format with a single female figure in a soft palette of pale to mid-tone blues. The isolation of the subject framed by fragile tree branches sets a lonely distancing tone. The lack of distinct and specific detail in the image area immediately challenges a fast traditional reading of a representational photograph.

The paper buckles and warps generating a depth that contradicts the traditional flat plane of photographic papers. The image is blurry and blocky where the figure and face should be, this loss of information raises questions about the meaning as well as reinforcing the feeling and depth of isolation.

The texture of the paper is evident not only in the in the paper’s rough surface but in its thickness which can be seen when the edges buckle. The uneven color coating is also another element of texture while referencing photography’s traditional use of light (and dark). Irregular staining creates blemishes in several areas of the paper, indicating the hand of the artist and adding an element of chance to the process. This milky sense of a veil separates the gaze of the viewer from a traditional engagement or entrance to photography.

Together these features create a piece that challenges expectations of what photography means.  

Fire

Just to keep you updated. I have shown a few of the beginnings of this new series. In exploring the cyanotype, I am using chance as well as planning to make these images.

You can see the marks on the paper from burning. I also have cut several to see how they will react/form after rinsing when I hang them to dry.

Here you can see the coating I spread over the paper. This is to help create a starch layer to give added color so the cyanotype doesn't sink into the paper too deep. And with that I have added a salt resist.

This is a finished piece (minus the burning) with a salt resist.

 

As you can see they are really removed from the traditional representation images associated with photography. I hope to get into the readings I've been doing later. Right now if you are interested the books to read are by Lyle Rexer. Very informative and they say all the things I've been thinking but hadn't put into words yet!

 

 

Chasing the Light

 

Here's a few pics from the meeting with my mentor Susan. In considering how the work functions - having been exposed to the properties of light and chemicals - it now doubles back on itself by using by using existing light to create a constantly changing view/piece.

These are all cyanotypes that have undergone destruction and distressing of the paper. They are printed on watercolor paper and coated with cyanotype then exposed with various images to create traces of light and dark. The key words here are deny, destruction, and deterioration.

I began by denying the representational image, the traditional idea of what a photograph is, the assumption of viewing something precious/beautiful, the flat plane of the photograph, and the machine precision of current reproductions. Here chance has been allowed to play an integral part. In rinsing the pieces, I have allowed them to take on shapes as they lay drying on various bushes in the yard.


In the various readings I have been doing and in my thinking after each reading, I began to think of photographs not of recording time so much as a deterioration of a memory. Death, destruction seem to me to be key elements of the "other" side of what a photograph is. Not only does the physical photograph deteriorate over time but our memories and connections with that image change and collapse over time. So I set out to emphasize that through the destruction of the paper. I also wanted to foreground how we see so many photographs in a slick glossy or matte presentation on a beautiful pristine surface.

 

Starting the next phase are these pieces. Here they are shown in their beginning stages. After they are sufficiently roughed up they will be coated in cyanotype and laid out to process under the sun (if the sun comes out again).
I hope it quits raining soon (although we really needed the moisture) so I can get a fire going.

Both Light and Dark

The work that I'm doing is about "seeing" and denying the expectations of the photograph. What is a photograph? What makes is photography? We see so many visual images today that many of us are unable to really look anymore. There is also the whole other discourse today about representation in photography.

Here is the shell at the beginning. A cyanotype on aquarella water color paper

Here is the shell after. I wanted to open it up to create a fragile skin that references decay, destruction, and change. Hopefully you will take away a sense of the use of light both in the process that created this and how it interacts with the piece as it now exists. Also I have eliminated the traditional flat wall hanging orientation.

My mentor Susan has had a lot of good questions and ideas so hopefully (cross your fingers) this will not fall like a lead balloon! (ha ha funny reference!)