I am picky about substrate (the thing that paint goes on). I don’t care for cotton canvas. I don’t like the texture or the bounce. Linen is better, but I still don’t like the bounce of canvas. I prefer to paint on panels. As one can imagine, there are problems with this when one lives […]
Art Supplies and International Ordering Read More »
Cyanotype can be delicate, at least cyanotypes printed on rag paper. Arches Platine is a wonderful paper — shockingly strong. But any paper that spends over a half hour being washed in a water bath is having a grueling experience. Sometimes, it shows. The photo sensitive coating is intended to soak into the paper fibers.
March 29 I am moving to Longyearbyen, Svalbard. Trying to find a place to live in a location under such a severe housing crisis is hard. Every avenue I explored turned into a dead end. I had the first two weeks of April at the residency to hang my show, but I didn’t know where
Location Independent Read More »
I never expected to become an alchemist. If anyone had told me that I would spend hours under a red light in a dark room mixing chemicals, I would not have believed them. And yet here I am, and it is magical. The first enchanted moment is coating paper. Once the chemicals are mixed they
The Unexpected Alchemist Read More »
A few weeks ago a friend told me an uncomfortable thing. She said (names changed) “Gabe isn’t taking pictures anymore. He told me there was no point. He’ll never be as good as you. He still wants to hang out with you and go hiking with you, he just doesn’t want to take photographs.” More
Most of the thinking work in creating a cyanotype lies in making a digital negative from an existing image. This… is not easy. Once you get past all the testing to determine your max blue which tells you the length of exposure time, to figure out what the proper curve is to deliver a correctly
The Digital Negative Read More »
Ultramarine. Cobalt. Indigo. Lapis. Sapphire. Navy. The list of names for blue is nearly endless. Across gender and ethnicity, blue is most people’s favorite color. My heart was captured by the blue fire of arctic ice – a color so intense, so strange, it was difficult for me to believe it was real. That is
How do you have a creative life? The good news is that there is no wrong answer. The bad news is it’s not easy. I believe that the single most important requirement to have any success in the arts, and by arts I mean anything that is a creative effort whether it’s writing or photography
Working the Creative Life Read More »
When traveling, given a choice between a multi lane highway, and a mysterious single lane road, I will take the single land road every time. This is the philosophy by which Kij and I travel. Asphalt or gravel? Gravel. Gravel or dirt? Dirt. Granted we have ended up in the middle of nowhere Iceland, having
Cave People Outside Laugarvatn, Iceland Read More »
For November I am living in Laugarvatn, Iceland courtesy of the Gullkistan Creative Center. I’m living in a beautiful house very like a beach cabin and it’s all mine. There are three bedrooms and a bathroom downstairs as well as open-plan kitchen and living room. There’s a second floor dormer bedroom that’s really beautiful, but
Laugarvatn, a Settlement Village Read More »