Rubber Band Photography
As I have said elsewhere I as a painter and a printmaker I have always been a bit leery of photography seeing it only as a means to record an event or objects.
The idea for this project came from me idly playing with stray rubber bands while I was doing something else. The shapes interested me and led me to consider photographing them. When I started doing just that the question of how to work them into the philosophy that I employ in my paintings and prints
rb#3 | 2016 | altered digital photograph | image size: 15″ x 13.5″ | $200
rb#2 | 2016 | altered digital photograph | image size: 11″ x 18″ | $200
rb#1 | 2016 | altered digital photograph | image size: 14.5″ x 18″ | $200
then became the question.
A slight accident in trying to touchup one of the photos gave me the answer. Using the touchup tool in my photography app and dragging it quickly across the image I was able to combine automatism and the ethos of losing control or getting out my own way. The result was a blurring of foreground and background, a dislocation of parts of the image and obliterating partly or completly the subject so much so that in some cases it is hard to recognize the original subject.
Copal Incense Experimentation
Experimentation for any artist is important. During a recent conversation I had in which I talked about John Cage’s work at Crown Point Press, where he smoked paper by lighting newsprint on fire and then laying dampened paper on top and then running everything through a press. Having the conversation fresh in my mind I lit some copal incense, which I do on an occasion to be centered and clean the space of negativity, but before I put the flame out I grabbed a piece of kozo and held it over the smoke and moving the various directions I got a very delicate image. I liked what I saw so today I purposefully lit incense and did three pieces.
paper smoked with burning copal incense
paper smoked with burning copal incense
paper smoked with burning copal incense