As I think was perfectly clear to the fifteen participants in my recent photo transfer workshop at OCAC, inkjet transfers are far more persnickety than acrylic transfers. The inks have a tendency to bleed into one another and/or slurry about under pressure during the transfer process, and then there's the whole issue of trying to seal them so that future introductions of water (i.e. if you take it in the rain or are suddenly seized with the desire to paint on top of the image) don't reactivate the inks and cause them to move around again. Nevertheless, I sincerely believe that this is a great process for those artists who find inspiration and direction in the random mark-making and peculiar color shifts that can occur when a process is not perfectly predictable. I certainly work that way, and relish in discovering a visual possibility that I could not have preconceived.
Pictured above are two lovely inkjet transfers of the same image. The one on the left resulted from too much water on the paper surface which was then rolled too hard with a small rubber brayer. Personally, I love the irregular edges and dampened (pun intended) color palette. The image on the right is cleaner, but either the paper was too dry in the lower areas or the transfer was not applied fast enough from the carrier sheet to the paper, and the blacks had an opportunity to coalesce which left a blotchy appearance in what should have been the darkest area of the print. If this were my image, I would probably focus my attention on unifying those darkest areas and punching up the blacks of the tree's silhouette. It would be exciting to see how this image ultimately gets finished by the artist. . . it was a lovely photo to begin with, and may need little more than the right frame and a bit of mat board to bring it to completion.
As someone who spends a great deal of time thinking about advertising the arts, I can really appreciate the cleverness of this little promo spot. . . It never hurts to take a cue from a master. . . isn't that right Mr. Kentridge? | |
Today and tomorrow are it for Newspace's 2013 themed exhibition about images that exist at the perimeter of what is commonly accepted as photography. Or, to be more specific, fine art photography, which is perhaps a term better left vaguely defined so as not to ruffle any proverbial feathers. Within the exhibit there are conceptual investigations of what constitutes a photograph, as well as materials explorations with alternative processes like liquid photo emulsion. Many of the photographers on display (like yours truly) are really dealing with the conceptual framework through material process, which is probably the most unifying element to what is essentially a very visually disparate exhibit. There is a heavy digital component to the show, as apparently the validity of digital images/manipulations continues to be a contentious subject among the photographic community (despite the fact that much of the world now produces images using digital means). In fact, the work that resonated most profoundly for me was a digital composite by Amy Elkins titled 11 Years out of a Death Row Sentence (river) which perfectly conveyed its spiritual tenor through a very knowing homage to the cathartic Pictorial tradition that is so rampant in landscape photography. This image alone is worth the visit to Newspace this weekend, but there are also great works by J. Swofford, Buzzy Sullivan, Shawn Darwent, Emidio Puglielli, Lauren Grabelle and Ben Panter. _____ Photography at the Edge | 2013 Themed Exhibition
Newspace Center for Photography1632 SE 10th Ave. Portland OR 97214 Mon-Thurs: 10am-9:30pm Fri-Sun: 10am-6pm
I watched this cloud move across the setting sun on my final hike along the head land at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. At the time I was simply struck by its majesty. . . now I am more cognizant of its appetite; how it took out the sun and refused to relinquish it, and all the landscape was thrust into a sobering shadow.
One can accept more readily the shadow born of beauty, it is when the memory of the originating sublimity fades that darkness becomes just that. Then questions arise. And doubts. And we feel for a time what it is to be alone at the edge of something vast and hungry.
Photo Transfer Techniques for PaintersInstructor: Jeffrey T. Baker 1-Day Spring Workshop at OCACSaturday, April 13 | 9am-4pm There are only a few spots left in the photo transfer workshop I'm teaching in Portland this spring. I'll be demystifying the various approaches to photocopy transfers while distilling ten years of trial-and-error into a selection of handy tips and hands-on activities suitable for painters and photographers alike. Read the full course description and register here. | |
If sweeping coastal headlands, herds of wild elk, and the waving grasses of a windswept estuary aren't enough to entice you to the coast this winter, perhaps the opportunity to meet a few artists while touring about the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology will be just the nudge you need. This coming Monday evening the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology is hosting an open studio event that is free and open to the public. There will be food, drink, and a chance to meet the writers and artists in residence at Sitka this winter. My studio will be open for the duration with a number of completed works and works-in-progress on display. I do hope to see you there! Learn more about the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology's residents from the 2012/13 winter season.
If the presiding metaphor of the landscape experience was that of God as supreme artist, it need only be a short step to the idea that artists were seers or priests-- if they fulfilled their mission as teachers, and behaved properly. They had privileged information. They were trained to read the Book of Nature, in which God's will was inscribed, as surely as in the Bible. So writes the late great Robert Hughes in his American Visions (pg. 139) as he unpacks the nation's relationship with landscape painting. Anyone familiar with Hughes as a personality and art critic would perhaps not be surprised at the rather pointed follow-up sentence. . . But these high responsibilities gave art a certain fragility. If it slipped, it fell a long way, like Lucifer.
| I thought I'd share an as yet untitled work in progress today. The bottom quarter has yet to be fully revealed, but I think a sense of the final product can still be gleaned from what's revealed here. | |
Amidst the sodden woods, and in the hours I'm left to my own thoughts, ley lines begin to unwind from the seemingly disparate list of experiences past and preoccupations present. I pick up a book to find it explains elements of the paintings I'm working on that I could not articulate. I dally over an article online only to have it lead me back to theosophical ideas that were the essence of my professional career for years. And I stumble upon the following distillation of esoteric thought by French scholar Antoine Faivre on the same morning that I literally see the silver behind reality; just as I so often imagine it in my studio work. Correspondence: Everything in Nature is a sign. The signs of Nature can be read. The microcosm and macrocosm interplay. Synchronicity exists, and can be found as signs from Nature and may lead to the understanding of the divine.
- Nature is Alive: It is not just correlations between pieces of matter. It is a living entity that will, and does, surge and evolve through its expanding self, replete with dynamic flows of energy and light.
Imagination and mediations: Imaginations as a power that provides access to worlds and levels of reality intermediary between the material world and the divine.
Experience of Transmutation: The Gnosis and illuminations of self and mind performing a transmutation of consciousness. The birth of an awareness, a second new life becomes born.
Practice of Concordance: Primordial Tradition. Studying traditions, religions etc. seeking the common one Root from which all esoteric knowledge grows.
Transmission: Master-Disciple, master-Initiate, initiation into the Occult. It is the first three points that interest me most (although I've included the other three as well) as I develop, perhaps for the first time, a more prolonged experience of the natural world. To see the signs in nature may require an act of imagination, or an expression of faith (or some fine amalgam of both), but there is a very long heritage for this that stretches back to man's earliest time when there was no distinction of nature as other or man as more. ----- " Theosophy." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 29 Nov 2012. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosophy>
Years ago my grandmother completed a paint-by-numbers kit of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, and it hung in my grandparents home amongst a room of treasured mementos that included family photos, rosaries, and WWII memorabilia. I photographed it one morning, marveling at how even when blurred to an extreme it remained iconic. After my grandmother died I created this work to remind me of the sanctity that resides in the work of our hands.
Fear Not, Neither Be Afraid
toner, acrylic, metallic leaf, and wax on panel
23” x 19” - 2011
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