From: Sarah Van Keuren (svk@steuber.com)
Date: 02/08/01-10:23:42 PM Z
> Sarah wrote:
>
>>> Judy
>>
>>'Try to want what you get' ranks with the Crosby Stills & Nash line 'Love
>>the one you're with'. We humans are not masters of the universe. Anyone
>>working with physical materials has to learn how to get along with them -
>>while remaining alert to improvements.
>>
>>Sometimes a medium's characteristics can lead us into a mindset that we
>>might not have come to using other materials. Mosaics seem to prefigure the
>>pixilated image. Watercolor on paper precedes inkjet. Printing in layers of
>>gum that accrete to form an image flows into the Photoshop Layers. Since I
>>have committed to the gum process, I am being lead by the materials to see
>>gum printing metaphorically. It has something to do with transparent
>>memories stacked in our brains, of insects trapped and preserved in amber.
>>
>>
>>Sarah
>
> Thanks Sarah,
>
> A very interesting and timely observation about the medium's
> characteristics. However, you lost me with the statement about
> "transparent memories stacked in our brains, of insects trapped and
> preserved in amber." Does this have anything to do with DNA? Help!!
>
> Sandy King
Sandy, I wrote that I was seeing gum printing metaphorically as pentimenti
or insects in amber (preserving something temporal within the transparent
medium of layers of gum). I develop my gum prints in room temperature water,
unless I've overexposed, and try not to scrub at them so they hold on to
quite a bit of gum arabic that can seem a bit like amber. Both are,
afterall, sap.
I have recently bought "Coming into Focus" edited by John Barnier, and I see
that you have an essay in it on monochrome carbon prints. I will read it
this evening. The book is beautifully designed and the essays I've read on
other processes that I use myself have been good. I met Russ Young at the
Pinhole Resource a few years ago and have his catalog for a show of iron
prints which is also elegantly put together. Sam Wang whom I feel as if I
know from this List wrote a fine piece on 3-color gum prints from digital
and I got to see more of what his painterly, imaginative work looks like.
John Rudiak, whose untimely death I read about in this List, wrote such an
excellent essay on enlarged negatives. His platinum/palladium print of Slim
Perkins and Mocha, a man on a horse in front of a barn, is memorable, a
perfect fusion of seeing and medium, at least on that printed page.
Sarah
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