Tuesday, January 17, 2012



GRAND CANYON:
AfterImage

Post 17

It's finally happened: I've caught up to myself in real time. The work and thoughts I'm posting are concurrent with the work and thoughts I'm doing. 

Last year this time I was preparing to go to the Grand Canyon as the January/February Artist in Residence. It was daunting and exciting and thrilling and frightening. Who knew I'd come away with the earth's shadows, and print them on Atlantic Ocean beach pebbles. Not me...

I was at the Canyon from 25 January to 15 February, 2011. So to honor that one-year anniversary, I will post one or two finished pieces of artwork sometime in that period. First, I have to do the finishing part...When I put new work up, I'll make an announcement on Facebook. And then that will conclude this series, which began (oh, to have picked a different date!) 11 September, 2011.

For now, I leave you with an image of the studio in the beautiful artist's apartment above Verkamp's Visitors Center...



And also a word of thanks to Rene Westbrook and the South Rim Artists in Residence Program at the Canyon. I'd hoped I could live up to the long tradition of artists who've lived and worked at the Grand Canyon, and be "inspired" while I was there. But my work turned out not to be the issue at all. The important thing was just being there, to receive the baton from the artist before me and pass it to the one that followed, keeping the chain of human wonder strong and unbroken. What an honor to be part of it. Wonder is where both stewardship and art come from. It's the wonder that matters.

Monday, January 9, 2012




GRAND CANYON:
AfterImage Series

Post 16


Welcome to the BLACK AND WHITE post.

Up until I went to the Canyon I'd only shot petrographs in black and white, and did all the printing myself in the darkroom. (Not the developing; I hate developing. I have to thank Iris Photo, in downtown Northampton, for that.) But the Canyon residency inspired me to acquire an on-sale Olympus DSLR camera, which I've grown to love like a limb. There was so much nuanced color in the ashes, grasses, sand, mud, and sea shots that I fell in love with color, and took most of the AfterImage Series in it.

That said...I also shot black and white film with my ancient Minolta SLR, and this is the post of those images. I've yet to print any large-scale in the darkroom, but hope to sometime this spring--after I quit writing this blog! (They'll be posted eventually...)

So here's a gallery of black and white work of the AfterImage pebbles, printed with Grand Canyon shadows.
AfterImage undone by the tide



Canyon Clock--telling time sequentially through shadows--on Jasper Beach, Maine



I'm thinking of calling this "Ancestry." Does that resonate with anyone?



The World Clock: Time, Inundated


Stages of the World Clock


The AfterImage in ashes


AfterImages in Black and White Light: Dawn, Noon, Dusk



Whatever comes of this in the final, printed version, it probably won't look like this. I'm just messing around with my favorite, arrow-shaped shadow, playing with shapes, textures, ideas. If anyone has any thoughts, good or bad, don't hesitate to let me know!

Addendum, 13 Jan. 2012: I neglected to say when I originally put up this post that my idea for creating pebble collages came from my friend Annette Kling, from Mannheim, Germany. When Annette was visiting us in November she played around with the black and white pebble photos and created some cool designs...an idea that hadn't really occurred to me. So I promised I'd credit her on the blog, and then forgot!! So now I am...Thanks, Annette!