Sowing Seeds in the Dark
It's midmorning on a quiet Sunday and I'm in my basement workshop coating paper. The neon yellow liquid pools in little gullies as I slowly brush it back and forth across the surface of the paper.
It is quiet. The kids are out and I've got the house to myself. The lights are off to keep the paper I'm coating with light sensitive chemistry from reacting while I'm still working on it.
This paper is a prayer. Cyanotypes require rich, warm, yellow sunlight. Something the winter grey skies of Cleveland haven't provided much of. I just want to make something. So I'm coating paper.
I am an evangelist of limitations. My best work comes from not having everything I want and having to figure out how to make the most of what I have.
What I have is the wan wash of light coming in through the glass block window over my workbench. So I ask myself what can I do to take advantage of this weak light.
In the bright light of summer sun a cyanotype will expose properly at around twenty minutes for me. Here in my basement, with my eyes fully adjusted to the dark, the light still looks dim. How long would it take to get enough light on the paper down here to make an image?
So as I pack the still drying paper into the old coal room, it's sole window covered to block outside light, I leave one sheet sitting out on my work bench. I set a few ginkgo leaves on it to see if I can capture anything.
The next morning I lift one of the leaves to see if the paper has started to change. Nothing. So I rearrange all of the leaves and leave it sitting out. I repeat the process the next morning and again every morning for the next week.
As I work I can see the faintest hints of where a leaf was sitting. Every time I move a leaf to a new spot the now uncovered paper begins to expose. Slowly erasing the memory of the leaf that once sat there. But it's slow. So slow. Three or four days after I moved the first set of leaves I can still make out a faint outline of where they sat on that first day.
When I finally wash the print, to see what the developed image will look like, two weeks have gone by. As the paper sinks down into the water I can see a cloud of inky blue lift away from its surface leaving almost nothing behind. But not quite nothing. A ghost of an image. Like a memory.
It occurs to me then that I've discovered something to explore. I thought I was working on an idea about making an image with very little light. What I realize is that I'm actually making an image with a great deal of time. Two full weeks of my life, the slow gentle days of winter, recorded on the surface of this paper.
My workbench is now covered in sheets of paper, quiescent as they turn first green then a tarnished navy. As the images slowly develop so does my understanding of this body of work.
I'm thinking about patience. The patience required to wait a few more days lest I wash it too early an end up with nothing. The patience of doing what I can with the light I have while I wait for brighter days. Being patient with my creativity, my ideas yowling in the corners of my mind, waiting to be let out.
This work is also about longing. The images look like memories of what you'd see laying in the shade of a tree, looking up at the bright sun as it passes through the translucent green canopy above. A faded memory eroded by the colorless days of February.
I am developing the idea as I develop the pictures. Some of them I'm toning, turning the blue images to brown, and then coating them to expose again. Capturing more time. Building up layers of days and memories. Records of who I was when I started each image and all the days that came after.
Every morning I greet them, slowly ripening under the pale light of a single basement window. Throughout the day I have to resist the urge to sneak down there and prod the leaves. Busy work for idle hands as I try to adjust what doesn't need adjusting.
Patience.
These too will be ready in time.
