November 13-19

Making "Repairs":

Inspired by the repaired map books I saw at the Beinecke, I collaged bits of paper onto the sheets before I printed them.  I really liked the white on white and may make an all white scroll...

After I printed the cyanotypes, some of the papers fell apart (I am still trying out different papers-- will post my results eventually) and I had to make real repairs.

Also did a second layer on some of the sheets.  I plan to build up the layers slowly, and make compositional decisions as I go along.  Photos to come...

November 6 - 12

Table is done!  I am no longer at the mercy of the weather to make my prints...  and no more schlepping!  Thanks Tom.

Exposure times and coverage are different, but this is way easier.

Composition:

Started to plan my final project.  Made sketches and abstract studies with prussian blue watercolor.  Some were inspired by Helen Frankenthaler's work.  I lovelovelove her prints.

Decided to make a long scroll and worked out size.  Researched sizes of torah scrolls; there is a wide range-- from as small as 4 inches tall (when rolled) to 29 inches.  I decided to make one of the scrolls 18 inches-- because 18 is a good number (chai or life in hebrew) and the proportions work well with the transparencies I have.  I am also making a vertical scroll that is 15 inches-- smallish for a torah scroll but a decent size for a computer screen (I realized that scrolls not only reference a very old technology, but a very new one as well-- we "scroll" on computers).  Just for fun.  In the future-- I would really like to make a very small scroll.

October 23 - November 5

In spite of Hurricane Sandy there were a few nice-weather days for making prints and an NYC trip (trip was before the storm :).

I layered multiple exposures on single sheets, experimented with sizes (mostly scroll-like shapes), stenciled text, and layered text with my printer:

NYC Trip:

Metropolitan Museum of Art --

Faking It; Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop

http://metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2012/faking-it

Whitney Museum --

Wade Guyton OS

Guyton makes large scale paintings with printers.  Must see in person, they are beautiful.  

http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/WadeGuyton

Also visited the Yale Art Gallery print room and viewed original cyanotype prints dated from 1850 through 1910:

http://ecatalogue.art.yale.edu/results.htm?ksrch=cyanotype&rf=0&rpp=25&sb=objectNumber&sd=0&pn=1

An artist book:

The Poor: Six Prose Poems

Trans. by Stuart Watson, Illustrated by George Laws Weinberg

Charles Baudelaire

Maquokeeta, c. 2010

Book

Vanderbilt University Central Library's W. T. Bandy Center

for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies

The "blue" of the prints is from a cyanotype process-an early 19th c. photographic chemical process using iron. There's a relationship/tension between the 19th century technology (of Baudelaire's time) to depict 21st century technologies, like the nanoscale DNA structures in the first print, made by IBM scientists for IBM supercomputers (called "Blue Gene").