Photography Projects
My Anthotype photography project process:
My process consisted of using frozen blueberries. I blended them up and strained them using a coffee filter to get the juice of the blueberries and skin to mix a solution to use the pigmentation. After I gathered up enough in a jar I painted a couple layers of the solution on paper and left it in a dark room. I then printed transparent film sheets of portraits i took of my family. To produce the final Anthotype you must lay the transparency film over the blueberry solution in the sun for at least a couple hours to get a picture to form. I left my portraits out on a hot sunny day for about 3-6 hours to produce different results and below are pictures of the process and written artist statement for the project. |
Artist statement for Memento project:
Humans are not
Immortal. Memento is an ongoing anthotype series of photographs of my immediate family. The emulsion is made from blueberries which will continue to expose over time since no fixative is added. This represents the natural impermanence of our lives. To keep these as a reminder of my family and for posterity I have taken photographs of them since the prints will fade over time. I want to continue this series with the addition of new generations |
Blind contour drawings layered with photography
A true blind contour drawing for those that do not know are drawings where the artist cannot look at the paper while drawing and focus only on looking at the object and seeing it as shapes. This exercise strengthens an artist's hand-eye coordination. A modified blind contour is where the artist can quickly look down to see their place to get the shapes generally in the right area but still focus on observation.
I find this process truly beautiful due to the abstraction and interesting outcomes the drawings reflect. Although a person who has never done a drawing like this could say it's a rushed drawing or a scribble, there is a challenge in actually looking at an object and capturing it without looking at your hand. I highly recommend trying this as you learn to draw what you see instead of drawing what you know. These drawings are simple outlines of looking at the subjects as they can get pretty chaotic looking depending on complexity of detail and amount of time that go into them. Perhaps that may be the next experiment to make and focus on making the portraits being almost undistinguishable due to the detail. My goal of this project was to capture the moment, gesture and energy of the portrait. |
The Window Project
A window by definition is an opening that people can see out of and a viewfinder closes a composition isolating it from the big picture. By making a physical viewfinder out of cardboard I am creating photos that are isolated snapshots of items and scenes that have become apart of my daily checklist during quarantine. Since the photos are actually taken through the cardboard to focus on what my eye would, the viewfinder becomes a mobile window.
While looking at the pictures as a whole, it looks as if these pictures could be photoshopped in or cut out and pasted onto the cardboard questioning what is real and what is not. Relating this feeling of uncertainty the world has experienced during this 2020 pandemic. |