Future Projects

It's no secret that I've been leaning away from traditional oil painting over the last year. Well, when I unpacked and moved my whole studio I sent all my oil paintings and paint supplies back with my father. Because that's it. I've decided to take an indefinite hiatus on oil painting. It was decided after I hit a wall with the Joan of Arc painting which I did not chronicle on here because I'm a lazy ass, but involved a lot desire to defenestrate the offending object. Anyway, I've been looking at new projects to pursue over the summer. For one, I'm going to entirely figure out the text in my book. If I can figure out how to put the text on AND the imagery for the remaining pages, there is a huge chance I will complete it 3/4 of the way through next semester like I want to.

I've decided to try out the huge world of experimental and alternative photography. I'm going to start off with simple van dyke and cyanotypes and pair the imagery with watercolor and gouache in collage form. I took black & white old school darkroom photography freshman year and HATED it, but I think that had a lot to do with the process of developing the film (one glint of light and you would get clear negatives) which took eons and was BORING as well as the fact that my teacher had a huge stick up his ass and wouldn't let us talk or listen to music in the dark room which made for many dull hours. Anyhoo, the reason alternative photography would be great for me is because you can use a digital negative . . . you just print it out onto a transparency in the size you want and you take it out into the sun to expose it rather than dipping sheets of paper in chemicals for eons in what looks like the inner working of a soviet submarine. I've gotten this amazing book, The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes by Christopher James. It goes really in depth, explains the processes and how to do them and variations of them as well as the history of them and their relation to new digital processes that can help them.


Plus the dog is cute.

I've also been checking out various artists who use alternative photographic processes. One of my favorites that I've found so far is Dan Estabrook. I in particular liked his series Nine Symptoms, which is supposed to illustrate symptoms of falling in love.

Shortness of Breath

Loss of Appetite

Weakness

Heart Rate Increase

Chills

Fever

Delirium

Sleeplessness

Euphoria

They are simple, monochromatic, but this is what makes them work. They are like pages out of an old medical book trying illustrate something abstract so that you can consult these and know that that is your illness. The idea of love as a disease is not new; Gabriel Garcia Marquez basically wrote a treatise on it in Love in the Time of Cholera. But the visual nature of these images feels fresh to me despite their aged look. The ones for Shortness of Breath, Weakness, and Euphoria in particular kill me. I would love to see an entire medical journal of prints like these of transcendental emotional states. An abstract idea, word becoming specific. Yet none of these are too literal.

I think I shall try some collaging out tomorrow, though I can't do the photo processes yet because I've had to order the chemicals and they won't be here for bit as they've come from New York. I mean, seriously, what town DOESN'T have a local shop to buy photo process chemicals in these days.

On a final note, here's a photo from a while ago of working on invitations late at night in my apartment.

Ta!