Openings Connecting: BEFORE THE BOOK

Friday, August 7, 2009

BEFORE THE BOOK

LESS IS MORE: stage 3...thanks for kind comments re: the process and book in the next posting. This picture shows the point of no return, when i felt i'd gotten lost in MORE, too much blue, and that birdlike shape!!...parts i liked in this, parts i didn't, soooooooo i removed some of the pieces and sanded other parts, and folded away to make the book, which i can now appreciate. it was day 1 and perhaps you're right, i may also have let my "self-consciousness" take me to ultra-critical!!

at any rate, always good to reflect on these moments and learn about ourselves.

and the quote seems to be from David Jauss, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Maine

3 comments:

Caterina GiglioAugust 7, 2009 at 4:32 PM
I really like this piece, very dramatic! why not let go of your overcritical self and just play? Play, play, play! my sketches are not great art, they are just play! : }

so, ok, the quote is not from Sas, but from David Jauss? ok
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LawendulaAugust 8, 2009 at 11:05 AM
Cat's right, just let it flow. It's lovely, I like all these mysterious shades.
Art always flows its own way.
But maybe the blue(s) claims its right to be still there....
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SethSeptember 3, 2009 at 10:28 AM
I think one thing I always try to remember is that what you take away from an art piece is equal in imprtnace to what you add on!
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FOUR DIRECTIONS/FOUR VISIONS: Two Graces: First showing for me, JUNE 3, 2011

With no directions home, I found Taos in the late 60s. It felt like home immediately. It still does. I know this sentiment is familiar to countless others.

The mountain stopped me in my tracks, and I stayed for several years. Since that time, I circle back annually.

To me, that circle is symbolic of this body of work at Two Graces. This is a time in my life when I've been fortunate enough to experiment with art making. Not surprisingly, I found myself drawn back to the images in the Ektachrome slides that I'd taken in the early 80s of Chaco Canyon, the San Francisco de Asis Church, dusty roads, and the ever changing skies of Northern New Mexico. The spirit of this adobed land lingers in my core and manifests itself within these works.

This past Michigan winter was spent creating enlarged negatives from my thirty year old slides, pulling part of my past into the present via today's tools of scanner and computer. Using traditional silver-gelatin darkroom processes, these resurrected and modified negatives acquired a new life. The majority of these prints are the result of this mediated reincarnation.

The smaller images took me into photographic processes from the mid-1800s. These handmade platinum/palladium prints are created coating vellum, for translucency, with these metal salts and exposing them to ultraviolet light. They are then bathed in the alchemy of the darkroom. The tonal qualities are unique in each print. Finally, 24k gold is layered to the backs of the prints, emanating the warmth, glow, and depth of these beloved places.