Sunday, October 25, 2009

Book of Forests 5 - Grand Canyon

Book of Forests 5 - Grand Canyon
Each page of the book is approximately 12" high and 8" wide.
It is an accordion style book that stretches to about 27"


Book back

Book front

4 page detail


Page Detail- Digital print on canvas, dyed watercolor paper overprinted, print on melted tyvec, crocheted hemp




Dyed canvas, lutradur heat distressed, dyed cheesecloth, wire wrapped pieces of hemp, printed organdy and printed canvas

Dyed canvas, lutradur heat distressed, dyed cheesecloth, wire wrapped pieces of hemp, printed organdy and printed canvas

Digital print on tyvec with printed watercolor paper cut out and wrapped with heat distressed lutradur and wire

Strip pieces cut from digitally printed cheesecloth skins, printed canvas, printed metalic crinkle paper, along with pieces of dyed canvas and cheesecloth

Detail of 4 pages

Book of Forests 5 is based on images from the Grand Canyon. The piece is for a show at Tohono Chul Park in Tucson Arizona. The show "Canyons of the Southwest", will be on display from November 12, 2009 until January 10, 2010. If you haven't been to Tohono Chul and you are near Tucson, the part is a treat to visit. Check it out!

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Digital Prints on Alternative Surfaces


Back in my studio today after spending a week traveling. First I went to Denver to participate in a seminar from the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. Imagine my disappointment when I arrived at the convention center in Denver and the instructor for the seminar didn’t show up. The organization didn’t even email anyone that morning to save them the drive into the city and the parking bill. My business trip was planned to install the piece pictured in this post, adding a couple of days early to do the NAPP seminar. NAPP rescheduled, but I am not returning to Denver to take this one.




Then the fun began installing my commission. This piece was commissioned by Mack Web Solutions in Ft. Collins, Colorado. The company wanted a piece to be installed in their new offices that was printed on my choice of alternative surfaces. The images used from the website are printed on both aluminum mesh and recycled beverage cans. I printed doubles of everything and then once in the space considered how the pieces would be used.



Here are some items that had to be considered:
The images for the piece were in 72 dpi and had to be enlarged without making the images blurry. I used a technique from Scott Kelby in one of his digital photography books. I had to change parts of how his instructions enlarged the image because mine was blurry. With a couple of adjustments to his instructions, my images were enlarged and printed at 150 dpi to keep them in focus.
The images to print on the cans are a little over 3". The beverage cans I used were only around that width, so I had to reprint many of the images that were hard to center on the cans. No amount of marking got the cans in the right place each time, but I did get enough to have them end up right.
Then, since I was not looking for the images to just be a copy of the website, I started to cut and play with the images to get the piece together. The globe is printed on aluminum mesh as well as the mack letters of the logo. There are 2 of each image stacked and cut then wired back together with beads in between the layers to separate the images. The images printed on cans are clips from websites the firm has designed. The cans were cut and wired together in 2 layers with beads in between to separate the layers.





Monday, October 12, 2009

Amate Bark Digital Print






Several projects have been going at one time and some of them were finished this past week. The subject of today's post is a piece that started when I made bark paper (featured in the previous post) using the Amate process. The finished piece is composed of 3 layers: the bottom is a piece of black hardware cloth with a 1/4" grid, above that is a piece of copper mesh that has been digitally printed, above that is a piece of the bark paper I printed with the same image on the copper mesh.

The photograph was taken in the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park this June. Photoshop was used to manipulate and combine the original photograph with another image. This piece is around 37" in height and 17" in width. The layers have been assembled using waxed linen tied through the three surfaces. The pictures show a few details and the actual piece.