Openings Connecting: April 2011

Friday, April 22, 2011

coming out of the dark---room!!!

as if Michigan winters aren't dark enough, I've spent a great deal of it in a darkroom
processing my slides from 1980 that I'd taken in New Mexico...taking classes to convert them into digitalized negatives to print. . . When I finish this series, and it's shipped off to Ranchos de Taos, I'll write about the process and post images: most are silver, and a few of them are coated by hand with platinum/palladium on vellum, exposed to light, and bathed in developer. Dried, and then gold leaf is laid on the back side.....Here are two of my prints:

GIVING US THE LIGHT.

CHACO CANYON, 1980

SAN FRANCISCO DE ASSIS CHURCH, RANCHOS DE TAOS

My work will be part of a four person show across from the church at Two Graces Gallery.

The show is called "Four Directions, Four Visions".

I appreciate this opportunity and will be sharing it with the owner Robert Cafazzo, as well as Caterina Giglio and Vicki VanAmeyden.

It opens June 3rd.

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.