Openings Connecting: MAY DAY

Showing posts with label MAY DAY. Show all posts

Friday, May 1, 2009

GOODNIGHT, disintegrated Moon

"With all your science
can you tell how it is, and
whence it is, that LIGHT
COMES INTO THE SOUL?"

2 Months, 5 Days of Lovely Preoccupation with "Disintegration"

DISINTEGRATION Artists do worthwhile things and "don't catch hell":Tree Bundle

On our tree in February, "PERSPECTIVES OF PLACE",
Tri-fold newspaper, gessoed, with
watercolor images concealed
and revealed when opened on
May Day

NATURE'S
MARKS:

There are no stains
there are no mistakes

Disintegration Favorite// the WRAPPED ROCK

MY BIG SURPRISE:
who knew what was happening
on the back of the
watercolor sample sheet.
I was "expecting" the paints
to bleed into each other. But
no, not through rain, sleet, snow,
or high winds. But, the pedestal rusted
and with the weight of the rock it was
wrapping~~~sweet surprise!

IN THE BEGINNING
STAGES OF PROCESS

the BIG BUNDLE

This bunny's been through a great deal since February...keeping Sas's spirit in the air!
The weathered 'bunny love' pin held the hat in place through blizzard's gusts and torrential
rains...at last, MICHIGAN'S SECRET is revealed. Well, revealed at least to disintegration artists: WE HAVE REAL WEATHER here!

The whole disintegrated enchilada UNWRAPPED

The gang's all here

DISINTEGRATION: HOMAGE TO SAS

Sas Colby gently inspires
the spirit of this world.

Seth Apter encourages
even more to play with it.

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.