Dept. of Military Aeronautics Photo Darkroom Trailer
The last piece of the puzzle is an amazing custom-built LED UV lamp and vacuum frame that’s been ordered from Jon Cone. The quality of the workmanship, from the video I’ve seen, is amazing and I can’t wait for it to be delivered and to start using it. In the meantime I’ve been making lots of portfolio cases for clients and getting ready to start printing my own work in silver-gelatin once again.
Beth gave me the photo of the military darkroom under construction when we found out we had to move studios, and it now hangs in the new darkroom.
Darkroom Pano White
Darkroom Pano Safe
Many Waters: A Minnesota Biennial
This summer I have three images, all printed in platinum-palladium, in the exhibition Many Waters: A Minnesota Biennial opening at the Minnesota Museum of American Art in St. Paul towards the end of July.
“The exhibition is a look into some of the imaginative and dedicated ways that artists and culture bearers from across the state are engaging with water.
A theme that runs through the exhibition is a concern for the environmental impact of human activity on bodies of water. The work fosters conversation, awareness, a sense of care, as well as new ways of thinking about water and water stories through many different lenses, including ecological, social, political, historical, spiritual, and creative.”
This has been a slow week for darkroom construction as we’ve had to wait for city inspectors to sign off on the construction and the electrical wiring, and because of the pandemic these are taking longer than usual.
Inspections
The inspector from the State Department of Labor and Industry (wonderful!) came by for the electrical work and was quickly satisfied. “A darkroom, this should be simple.” 30 seconds later, “OK, cover it up!” But then we had to wait for the building inspector to approve the framing and support as we have a storage area above. He came by a few days later and took a look at the plans. “OK, so you’re building a darkroom, this shouldn’t be a headache.” A couple of minutes later and he’d signed off too. Now it’s a question of getting the drywall installed and painted, the electricians back in to wire up the outlets and track lighting and the plumber to do the sinks. Simple..
We’ve moved studios! We left our home of 25 years in south Minneapolis and have moved to the arts district of Northeast Minneapolis. I’ve lived in Northeast since leaving London and coming to America back in 1996 so I’m going to love the short bike or car ride from my home. The area is full of other artists, great restaurants, distilleries and breweries and, importantly, home of Art-A-Whirl, the largest open studio weekend in the country.
Waterbury Building
Situated right at the junction of Broadway Street NE and Central Avenue, the building is home to many small businesses, video editing, tv production and marketing companies.
It’s amazing how many artists I know who are moving studios right now, and I’m sure many of them have the same feelings I do, that the whole process is scary and daunting but also exciting and invigorating. But this has been a whirlwind couple of months; from knowing we had to vacate the old studio to finally moving into the new was exactly 9 weeks.
The new darkroom construction will be finished soon and it won’t be long before we stop packing and unpacking boxes. I’m really looking forward to making prints and portfolio cases once again and, once the pandemic is under control, seeing many of you at the new studio!
Mailing Address
Studio 137 1121 Jackson Street NE Minneapolis, MN 55413 (612) 701-9671 voice/text
Over at my other website I’ve started posting about projects I’m working on and general studio ‘stuff’. This is me trying to keep my personal work separate from that of the work I do for other photographers and artists.
Way back when I first came to the US, I started using Van Gelder Simili Japon paper for my own platinum printing. It was from the last remaining mill in Holland yet it was easily available in large sheets and had good wet strength. The downside was the watermark. Running the length of the longest side were the words ‘Holland’ at each end and in the middle its huge logo. These all encroached many inches into the sheet, so you lost quite a bit of paper, unless you wanted a print with the word ‘lland’ or ‘Holla’ in it.
Over the years other papers came along that were supposedly better for platinum printing, improved versions of Arches Platine, Weston Diploma, COT 320, and my use of the Van Gelder faded away. But recently I’ve found myself wanting to make prints on it once again. You can still buy the large sheets from New York Central, my original supplier, but that watermark… Then I found that they make an easily available, but lighterweight version, in convenient pads of 25 sheets for calligraphy. It’s only available in 12 x 9.5″ size but my prints are only 7 x 7″ anyway. Perfect! And it has good wet strength too.
With my work being so small, it’s easy for the texture of a paper to become distracting and lose detail. But after making just one print on this paper I remembered why I loved it so much, all those years ago. So the new prints I’ve been making are all on the Simili Japon, 50/50 platinum and palladium.
