All on the farm

As I’ve said before, the University of California at Davis was set up as the UC Farm School. In celebration of the centennial this year, the UC Davis Craft Center is having a show called “Crafts from the Farm,” and I’m participating!

I teach beginning photography at the Craft Center, so I thought it was only appropriate that I use photography as my medium, specifically, my Holga (which you can read about here). The Holga just felt right for this project because I got an image of old-looking farm pictures. I decided to challenge myself to take the photos only on the UC Davis campus to show what remains of farming here, 100 years later. I gave the pictures an extra added old feeling by using warm tone fiber paper, which gives them a warmer tonal range.

This show is happening towards the end of September– I’ll let you all know the actual dates in the near future, in case some of you Davisites want to take a look. There will also be lots of other crafts, inspired by the farm.

I think I will end up with 7 or 8 photos. I am printing them small– about 4 x 5 inches, with the intention of framing them in a variety of thrift-store frames, to give them a homey feeling. Here are my two favorites, so far.

About Town

I’m just getting back into the swing of things after a wonderful, long relaxing weekend on the northern coast of California, Sea Ranch to be exact, where my boyfriend’s mom recently moved (the product of vacationing there every summer for more than 20 years and her retirement dream fulfilled). So much relaxing and cool sea breeze– it was an especially grumpy Monday morning back to work.

Hopefully I will get to printing some of the pictures I took there, but I thought I would share some pictures I finally printed from the spring first. I haven’t shared much black and white photography on this blog, but traditional darkroom b & w photo was my main art all through high school and college. I have gotten a little away from it, but I still love it.

In recent years, I have been most interested in experimental photography, which for me means photography focused more on trial and error conceptual results, often using non-standard equipment, and less focused on large fine prints. One example would be the pinhole photography I did quite a while ago, and also the photos I’m about to share now, which I took with a Holga Camera: an inexpensive, 120 size, simplified camera that is known for producing uncontrolled results with light leaks etc.

The camera feels like a plastic toy, has two light settings (sunny or cloudy), and four focusing settings illustrated with small pictures (mountain, group of people, three people, one person from shoulder up). I really like throwing my results up to chance. Just like with pinhole photography, it’s a miracle to me that I actually capture a photo.

Anyway, here are some photos around my neighborhood, taken with my Holga, I was very interested in sun and clouds that day:

A little bit of history

This is the view from my morning bike ride to work. I’ve been passing these bales of hay for two days now, wishing I had a camera. I finally remembered it today. You can see the University of California at Davis campus in the distance.

In case you didn’t know (and probably not many people do) UC Davis was originally set up as the farm school for UC Berkeley, way back in 1908, I believe (there will actually be a whole exhibit about UC Davis at the California State Fair this summer in honor of the centennial).

You can see the remnants of that history here, although you might call these remainders more than remnants– the UC Davis students are called “Aggies” (as in agriculture), and there is a very prominent emphasis on plant and food related majors as well as a world renowned Viticulture and Enology program (the study of wine and grapes), and vet medicine with emphases in large animals (as in horses).

I did not go to school here, but what an interesting school it is, which has a huge emphasis on the town of Davis. There’s such a large number of bike-riding, food-growing, environmentally conscious, smart people here. I love it!

California

While most of the rest of the northern hemisphere is still under snow and rain, it is amazing how quickly Spring comes here in Davis, California. Out of nowhere, blossoms appeared on trees today. I love Spring blossoms– I wish I knew what kind of trees they were (where is my horticulture friend Erica when you need her?).  It even smells a little like Spring out there, but I better stop now before I jinx myself.  Here are some pictures from my walk with my dog Lance this fine Sunday afternoon. 

 

 

   

Darkroom Magic

I’m sorry to say it’s been too long since my last post. I promise to start posting more regularly! Here’s a little bit of what I did last week in the darkroom. The first photo is a double exposure I’m working on. I am trying to print a picture of a group of trees on top of a picture of my living room. The second photo is an abstraction of can you guess what? The third photo is a picture of my dog– he loves to run. These are all traditional gelatin silver prints done the old-fashioned way in the darkroom.

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!