Lemon Flip: 0th set

So. I got this new scanner. It used to be someone's grandma's, so it's not new new, but it's new to me, so now I can start showing off some things I've been up to (as long as they are not bigger than letter-size).

Did I tell you I've been working on a flip book of the weird lemon I found in the early 90's? I didn't? Goodness me, it's all I've been working on! Not really, but almost!

So I'm making 4 monoprints at a time of each photo in a roll of film I took while the lemon was still green-tipped and fresh, of the lemon slowly being turned in my father's hand. The light in the garage where we were standing was a little dim, and I was unused to shooting at close range, but I opened the aperture and went for it anyway. Perhaps because of minute changes in aperture from shot to shot, or perhaps because I just confused the overnight photo place developer, who can't have known what the hell he was looking at, and who may have been wildly guessing from print to print how on earth to color adjust the creepiness, the photos swing from citrus pale oranges and yellows to girly pinks and purples. I love the photos, and feel like they are a collaboration between me and the anonymous developer. I've since reprinted them teeny tiny, as a sort of flip book test, and turns out the negatives don't yield the same sequence of gorgeous color in reprints - so the original photos are a unique piece all by themselves.

The idea all along was to make a flip book from them, but I also experimented with displaying the photos in a grid like a Muybridge. I hit upon the idea of making a multi-media flip book a few years ago, supplementing the photos with same-size monoprints and, like a dash of pepper in random places in the run, an occasional reductive woodblock. So since the winter of 2008 I have slowly and steadily been making my way through the series of photos. When the print lab opens back up ion the fall, I'll complete my 12th set of images, taking me to the halfway point of the monoprint portion of the project.

So, first up, here is image #0, one of the few prints to come out more or less "true color." There is some really gorgeous back-lighting going on in this image that I tried my durndest to reproduce, not all that well. But I am proud of how loosely I laid the color down. I have struggled in subsequent images to be that painterly ("Well there's your problem right there," you say. "Stop struggling." Shut up.)

Above are the 4 monoprints I made from the photo below. Which one do you think I should select to include in the flip-book?

peek from the studio

So, this is the sort of thing I've been working on up at UCSC. Combining photoetching with monotype to create a series of images. That's Bob, my cat, having a snooze. She will float at the top of these images, alternately dreaming about cat things (you can just make out the fish) and being an overseeing benevolent presence against ominous announcements and other life struggles.

Last night I was there again, up till 1am sanding copper plates to shine in prep for more etching. I probably over-polished--toward the end I realized I was crouched over a cloud of copper dust, and drove home with a metallic taste in my mouth--but the kids have good music to listen to up there, so I was content.

As part of this class I'm auditing, I have access to the Cave, the art dept's name for their room full of computers, fancypants printers and high quality scanners. It doesn't see daylight. On the assumption that I'll only have access to it for the next 5 weeks, I find myself scheming about other small works I can haul up there to be scanned and made available for you-all to see.

Not today, though. It's raining buckets. So no cliffside strolls for me, either. Today is all about baking banana bread, framing my piece for the Pacific Grove Art Center show (Feb 23-April 5, reception Fri Feb 23 7-9pm--see you there!), and tidying up around here. Putter putter.

My friend 4ank sent me a copy of the Neverhood, a fun puzzle-solving computer game made in 1996 by Dreamworks Interactive--out of clay. It's a claymation game. Years ago when I visited 4ank in Washington he was noodling around with it, and it charmed me enough to be thinking about it 10 years later. So I imagine I'll be fooling around with that, too. I'm already stuck.

Pip