From: Sarah Van Keuren (svk@steuber.com)
Date: 12/12/00-08:53:44 PM Z
Judy Seigel wrote:
> In my experience, gum printing is the anti-previsualization photography
> (and not a moment too soon). I sometimes have a print in progress for more
> than a year -- I get stuck, it sort of gets buried in the midden, then one
> day it surfaces and -- I see INSTANTLY what it needs.
I have the same experience but have never articulated it as you do so well
here.
>
> The problem, at least for me, is that sometimes I do start with a clear
> idea in mind, and something else emerges. That often should be seized with
> joy (not always, needless to say). The hard part is knowing when to want
> what you get if you didn't get what you (originally) wanted. Of course
> with enough time and more perfect world, we could get both.
I'm sitting here smiling, knowing exactly what you are talking about. I
wonder about how much of a pollyanna I should be about accepting what
actually happened when my intention found expression in physical materials
with wills of their own. Or sometimes my intention isn't specific enough and
what I didn't imagine cannot be controlled by me.
>
> But I think this is a very different premise in gum -- as I said a
> couple of years ago on these very pages, and I believe Sarah aptly
> describes: a gum print is (often if not always) interactive, like a
> painting -- you look at what you've got so far & continue from there.
Gum printers have to be very tuned into the materials they use, always
responding to how well each layer of emulsion prints with such and such
exposure time. Empathy is needed to size paper effectively, to apply and
preserve this thin membrane which must accept exposed pigment and release
unexposed pigment with all the inbetween partial releases and adherences.
So much depends on how the emulsion was applied My head is spinning from a
day of critiquing gum prints by advanced non-silver students at U Arts with
Ernestine Ruben as our inspiring guest critic. So exciting to see what the
students come up with from printing on sanded plexiglass to combining offset
lithography, cyanotype and gum to renderings by many of the students from
Scitex imagesetter negatives along with desktop negatives to copy camera to
the completely handdrawn. The handdrawn negative student got deeply into
cyanotype dilutions, tonings and multiple layers thanks to the last P-F
issue #5 on cyanotype.
Sarah
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