A New Body of Work

The direction my cyanotype work has been going.

I started out doing very minimal and classic images. Leaves on blue backgrounds. As I’ve gotten my feet under me over the past couple of years I’ve started to feel the need to branch out.

I still love those simple leaf pictures, but I also feel like a lot of people are already doing that well. I wanted to say something a little different with my work.

It’s so hard to set out in a different direction and not end up making work that is different for the sake of being different.

I think I’ve found some fertile ground here. My new work is created using simple geometric shapes cut from paper of varying opacity. This causes the chemistry under them to expose to sunlight at different speeds, resulting in different shades of blue. When I take it a step further and bleach and tone the cyanotype I’m able to further separate those differences. Some levels of blue will turn brown while others are left blue.

For example in the above image those blue shadows that outline the shapes can’t be seen in the original before I toned it. I pulled the paper from the bleach before that part faded. So they stayed blue when I toned them.

I also like how I’m creating meaning and interest from some otherwise meaningless bits of paper. As I look more at the work I’m making I’m starting to see landscapes and smoke covered suns. There is something there considering I was making these under a haze of wildfire smoke.