Uncategorized

Today was a darkroom day. 

It was wonderfully relaxing for a change, the first day like that in a long time. 

I was in my studio very early, due to needing to babysit the kiln during the glaze fire we were doing today. Instead of napping on the couch, I managed to stay awake and keep moving at a nice, steady pace. I developed two rolls of film (Ilford PanF 50 developed in Ilford DD-X developer – so far the results look good!).

Once those were done, I spent time making prints. It was nice to get back to that. I was able to just take my time, and I got two prints that I am very pleased with.

When you take your time, you can get the results you want. I need that reminder as much as I needed a day like today.

I worked on a bit of pottery as well today. 

Computer Labs finished the repairs on my printer today, and I already have it back. I'm looking forward to a bit of extra time with the holiday this week and plan to use it to get a few more things together for the holiday sales. Hopefully my next work day will go as smooth as today.

Until tomorrow,

~Peace~

Today was not as productive as I had hoped it would be. Any of you who might follow me on Twitter, happen to be one of my daily chat buddies, or happen to be there to answer a slightly crazed and desperate text message from me today, you know this is because my printer went Kaput today. After a brilliant display of flashing lights and error messages of needing service, it just simply wouldn't print, and no amount of restarting or swearing was going to make it. So here is a printer I bought about 6 years ago, brand new, and have used to death since day one. My BFA show was printed on it, my Waiting Ribbons show was printed on it, not to mention many other images and portraits in between. I recently found that the print drivers wouldn't work in the latest Mac operating system upgrade, and heard more rumors that Epson wasn't going to support it anymore. I thought for awhile I was royally screwed, and on the path to shelling out $$$$ for a new printer. 

Thankfully a wonderful friend was on the other end of the phone this afternoon and assured me I could most likely get it fixed and pointed me in the direction of a repair shop. One phone call to them later, and I was on my way out to Computer Labs in Mendota Heights to drop it off. The guy who checked it in today assured me my printer wasn't junk, was still fixable, and was still a great model to have. Digital equipment goes the way of being obsolete so fast, so this was a really awesome thing to hear.

Since I can't possibly work on printing anything digitally tomorrow, I decided to take this as a sign that I need to get back into my darkroom and work. So that is what I will be doing tomorrow. Cameras are packed, rolls of film are ready to be developed, and hopefully there will be enough coffee to get my brain cells functioning enough to mix up some photo chemicals. Back to analog. 

I updated the Holiday Sale post. I'll be working hard this week and next to get prints ready and framed for Bloomington Art Center's sale and for Dabble's next Holiday shopping day. (That same friend who pointed me to where I could get my printer fixed, also kindly offered to let me have some time on her printer if mine isn't fixed in time!) At least there will be no worries about if I can get things done in time. Who knows – maybe things will work tomorrow and there will be some traditional black and white prints in some of those sales too!

Last, I tweaked this compilation just a bit tonight. The changes are subtle, but I feel like it is closer to being finished now.

Until tomorrow

~Peace~

In between places to be today, I tweaked this image just a bit.

We Are Here

I like it better. I'm not convinced it is complete, but I like it more than the first edition of it.

Until Monday

~Peace~

Today, thankfully, ended better than it started. I like days that are great all the way through, but I'll take this over a completely down day anytime.

I started out slow this morning. Really slow. I've felt very foggy and uncreative the last few days, and those of you reading this that know me personally, know that really drags on me. There are a ton of things I can attribute it to: working on too many other things, getting out of the mode of creating art, not feeling good, being overly tired, just basic blah. Any one of those is a good scape goat for me.

I had a lot of things to print today, so I finally got enough coffee in my system and got started, hoping it would be a mind numbing warm up. 

Everything was still weird and I still felt foggy. Many weird, sad things were going on in other parts of the world and I still couldn't get into working on anything more productive then that, so I finally grabbed a camera and walked around a little bit. I finally ended up shooting this:

No, I'm not depressed, or crying. I was letting my mind wander, and looking at the dead sticks that are filling my little flower pots right now when I finally snapped the picture. It is one of the first times in a portrait I haven't thought about my expression, and just let it be there. 

I decided it was enough of a start for the day and headed back to the computer. I came back to see this post on Twitter which lead me to read this blog about giving yourself permission as an artist to try, fail, succeed, and to be true to yourself. I have heard things like this many times before from many wonderful people. Seeing it again in writing today helped a lot. I finally gave myself permission to work on my artwork again, and gave myself permission to try.

Once I did that, I worked on these:

St. Anthony Main Reflections (or something like that) – this one is still a work in progress. I'm not convinced it is finished yet, but I am happy with the start. 

I also worked out this:

Where You Walk – which started out as this. I am much happier with it now. 

I'm happier with my day. I hope there are more like this coming up soon.

Until tomorrow,

~Peace~

It has been a busy day. The kind where I spent most of the time working my paying job and tending to other things that happen in life (if anyone has figured out how to get their house to clean itself, please let me know!!) and spending much less time working on or even thinking about my artwork. It is just one of those things that happens.

I did go to a sale with my aunt which did make me think a bit towards my project: where do 'vintage' things fall into the spectrum of 'analog' things? Something I haven't really thought about before. 

Considering that I don't have anything else to say about my artwork progress in this post, I'm going to shut up, stop reading my friend's blogs, stop obsessively checking my email/twitter/facebook and go write. I think I need some time to journal and see where I'm at.

Until tomorrow.

~Peace~

Today was, in a way, productive, though, once again I don't have much to show for it.

I was out in Dinkytown today (ok, yes, my mom and I went to get massages at The Refinery – that place is amazing!) and since it was another gorgeously sunshiny filled day, I tried taking a few photos. I got a couple of Polaroids (which I will scan in later this week sometime) and I took a few photos with my Holga. Right now I have 35mm film loaded in that. I'm anxious to see how it works.

I started working on the book of photos from our Japan trip. So far, it is easier than I expected it to be! Blurb has a set of templates that you can use in Adobe InDesign. So far it makes it pretty easy to create your own layouts. I think it will take me awhile to finish, but someday you'll see it!

In the mean time, I get to go through our trip photos again, and I'll post more here! I have plans for Thursday to spend the day printing and working on some new compilations. Maybe there will be more new things here later this week!

Also, I cleaned part of my studio today. That actually is a pretty big accomplishment.

Downtown Osaka, our first night.

Until tomorrow!

~Peace~

I have a lot to post about today!

Katie and Josh were an awesome couple to photograph! This was my last wedding (not at all because of the couple! There are many many reasons for me not working on weddings anymore) and I am so happy to be ending this little stint as a wedding photographer with such a great couple. I have many happy memories from this, and really really hope they do too! 

After finishing this over the weekend, I spent today getting back into working on artwork. 

Along with taking many polaroid photographs, most of the peel apart type films create a negative as well as a positive image (the positive is the polaroid print). I read somewhere (if I ever find the blog post again I'll link it here) that you could clean the negative portion, and with a bit of chemicals (mostly bleach) make a transparent negative (like regular film) that could be scanned into a computer, or used as a negative in a darkroom to make a print. That is what I set out to do today. I failed pretty spectacularly. I didn't lose any negatives I was terribly fond of, but I did learn that this process works much much better with the Fuji polaroid film and not so much with the Polaroid brand polaroid film I have been using. So, after many chemical mixings, much elbow grease, and a couple of pairs of rubber gloves later, I decided to give up for awhile. Not completely! I'm still convinced this can be done, but I am realizing I won't be able to perfect the use of any of these in time for my project. So, it is something to work on later. Sometimes, you need to see the failures as progress. While I don't have a lot to show for my work today, I did learn a lot.

I am back to working on our photos from Japan (this ties into my project because many of the images I took in Japan have been intended for use in this series). I am working on creating a book through Blurb with all of our photos and stories. I do enjoy looking back through them all again. I can't wait to finish the book.

It has been a long time since I just went around, taking photos of almost everything. It is something that is hard to do at home, and much easier to do when you are visiting another world. I am working on shooting like this again, but it isn't easy. I'm not giving up on that either though.

Until tomorrow.

~Peace~ 

Today I have all of our Japan photos back on my laptop, so I can start working on laying out our book. 

I am setting up one of my cameras to take some overnight photos again.

I am planning on taking more film photos this week, and have a darkroom day planned for Monday including film developing and a bit of work with some of my polaroid peel-apart negatives. 

It feels nice having plans. 

There are more deadlines coming up now: another Holiday sale, an artwork request, but everything seems manageable…at least it does tonight.

I'm going to hold onto that feeling as long as I can.

Here is to a weekend of preparations, and a week of work ahead.

Until Monday.

~Peace~

Today I spent a lot of time finishing up a project to be able to send to the people it belongs to. 

I worked on cleaning up a few other things on my dear little laptop to make space for the next things that I'll be working on. I also wrote quite a bit today. All great things. 

Tonight, I got a chance to hang out with my friend Joni. I haven't seen her since we got back from our trip to Japan (she has been teaching English there for the last two years) and it was so much fun to hang out. We met in the darkroom of Anoka-Ramsey Community College, and went though many many many many college art classes together. We have an amazing understanding of the way each other thinks – perhaps it  has something to do with all of the photo chemicals we were smelling those first years, perhaps something more. Either way, I am so very happy she is back living in this country! 

We rarely take photos together. I'm not sure why, but we just don't. We didn't take many together in Japan either. It isn't a bad thing, it is just a thing. 

Tonight I decided we should take a photo, and instead of reaching for my digital, I grabbed one of my polaroids. We took 3 shots (one didn't work out), I scanned both into my computer, then she kept one original, and I kept one original. For some reason, it felt so much more fitting, more of an event, and more authentic than a digital photo. I don't hate digital cameras at all. I do think they are great, and I love using my little Canon Rebel DSLR – it is fast, it takes great photos, and most of all it is convenient, but there is something about having a print immediately from a moment in time, that just can't be beat. So here are the photos. I don't know if they will end up in my end project, or if they will just be great prints as a memory of a fun night. Either way, I think they are awesome and they have gotten me thinking about photography and digital and analog in a different way tonight. I think even more than I do already, I'll be putting down my digital camera and using one of the many analogs. There was a time when I didn't have a digital camera. I enjoy exploring that time again.

Until tomorrow.

~Peace~

Population density only meant that things got a little slower around here at times.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

More of a process day again. I made it to Wet Paint after work today to pick up a few things and learn how to clean my fountain pens. 

Tomorrow will be a full day of artwork. I'm looking forward to it.

Until tomorrow.

~Peace~