Some Blogs I Like and Pinhole Photography

I thought now would be a good time to tell you about some blogs that I like because you might like them too. I have been reading Lisa Congdon’s Art Blog for a while now, and she and her blogging story are very inspirational to me because it is largely through blogging that she has changed her whole life and is now a selling artist. I have also stumbled upon Anna Maria Horner’s Blog which gives a peek into the life of a designer, mom, and altogether creative person who is succeeding at paying the bills with her creativity. Anna Maria writes lots of great anecdotes from her family life and designs some incredibly beautiful fabrics. I also love food and crafting, and my friend over at Errant is always up to something interesting in that area and documenting it with excellent pictures. I have also just added a new blog to my reading list, Sourtimes is a new crafting and art blog with lots of cool textile and art projects and interesting photos.

Now, I want to show you my most recent photography experiment. Last Spring, I took a pinhole photography class at The UC Davis Craft Center where I volunteer and will soon be teaching. I got really excited about the simplicity of taking pictures with just a box with a pinhole in it. Most of all, I got excited about what you can do with motion. The camera (loaded with just photo paper instead of film) is not very sensitive to movement because the exposures take quite a while (mine were around 1-2 minutes in pretty good sunlight) so it takes quite a while to capture an image and therefore the camera does not catch everything you do. The camera is also very vague in it’s focusing because there is no lense (I’m sure you could make a very accurate pinhole, but I like experimenting). From my interest in motion, I decided I wanted to take pictures of myself with wings and document the transition from arms to wings. It sounds weird, but I am a little weird, and I like the strange results.

The pictures may seem blurry to you, but I find the vagueness of the results to be really interesting. I like that they just give an impression of what’s happening. It’s really fun for me, after years of doing traditional photography, to throw everything out the window and get back to the most basic form of camera. There are five in the series, and I am make them into a sort of book by sewing them onto board covered in tea dyed rice paper and somehow linking them together. The sewing is the most time consuming, but I have finished that, so now I am just contemplating how to finish the book.

Stamps, Stamps, and more Stamps

This whole putting good photos in my blog is much more difficult than it seems. Hopefully I will get better and the process will get faster over time. I had a request for more close up pictures of my stamp project and here it goes.

I have been using good old fashioned mod podge to glue down and laminate these collages. Mod Podge really gives the whole thing a finished look. I prefer the matte finish, and now they have Mod Podge specifically made for paper use– basically it’s acid free which makes it archival– at least if you’re using acid free paper. I have wondered how long it would really take for the acid to start affecting an art project. I’m assuming you would see the acidification process (paper discoloration) start happening sometime between a couple years and a normal life span depending on how acidic the paper is. Does anyone know more about this? I’m also a photographer, and was told that fiber paper is the most archival choice for printing in the darkroom. Recently, I have seen first hand what that means; there are some prints I made about 8 years ago on resin coated (rc) paper (the non-archival, cheaper choice), and they have actually started to get strange reddish-brown spots on them in the last couple years. I guess it’s not all a marketing ploy. Happy weekend! Happy art making!

My first day as a blogger

Well, as you can see, this is my first day as a blogger. I’ve imagined many times what I would say in this first post but here I am, and I can’t remember one of the witty and clever things I thought of. Here’s a little bit about me . . . I’m an artist, crafter, and writer living in Davis, CA. I spent most of my undergraduate career studying literature and creative writing, and I have now finally gotten back to visual art. One of my main interests has been black and white photography, but I have recently gotten interested in printmaking, mixed-media art and collage, and I have always loved drawing and painting. I am also starting to take classes in graphic design, so hopefully some of my graphics will start to appear on this blog over the next few months.
I’m starting this blog as a place to start showing my art and making connections with other artists. It also has the extra added benefit of forcing me to make something so I have something to post. Here is one of the projects I have been working on recently.

This is the first part of a piece I am calling “Grandma Leta’s Garage Sale” –last Spring, my boyfriend’s grandmother moved out of her house into a senior living community, and I left her garage sale with a big box full of reject stamps. I got the idea for doing a monochromatic wall hanging from an interior design magazine that showed a monochromatic series of bottlecaps. It’s pretty fun to see the story of each stamp and then see how they all tie together through color. There will be nine panels in all when it’s finished. Since I’m new to blogging, please let me know how everything looks and works.