BIO I live in West Tisbury, MA. I am largely self-taught and have been making photographs for two decades. After coursework at ICP and SVA in New York City, I set out to define my photographic vision through experimentation and the close study of the work of other artists, especially Pictorialist photographers and Tonalist painters. My intention is to explore the interplay of memories, associations, and expectations in everyday visual perception. I make pigment prints in various sizes and small gold and silver gilded vellum prints. Recent work employs the 19th Century Cyanotype process to make contact prints from digital negatives. I also use the classic chemistry without the mediation of a camera or lens to produce “Water Marks” prints that rely primarily on sea and pond water, and precipitation to create abstract impressions on chemically sensitized paper.
ARTIST STATEMENT “No one but a vandal would print a landscape…in cyanotype.” Lyle Rexer cites this assertion by late 19th century photographer P.H. Emerson in the introduction to the cyanotype process in his book, “Photography’s Antiquarian Avant-Garde, the New Wave in Old Processes.” Well, I am a vandal! The history of the cyanotype process as both a means of documenting the physical world and a means of metaphoric expression appeals to me. After two decades of making inkjet prints, lightning struck when rereading Rebecca Solnit’s essay, “The Blue of Distance,” which initiated a deep dive into the cyanotype process. What ensued has been an obsessive “Exploration in Blue.” Christina Z. Anderson, Diana Bloomfield, John Dugdale and Mike Ware, and others set the standard for my contact printing work. Working from digital negatives, the goal is to infuse my prints with a sense of the everydayness of perception as filtered through my memories, associations, desires, and expectations. Some the prints are made from new photographs, some from my archive of images. All were made using the traditional cyanotype formula on Hahnemuehle Platinum Rag paper and exposed in a UV exposure unit.
