Tuesday, February 8, 2011

More Solar Collaboration


The lamp went out on the exposure unit today in mid-exposure. Beth had already expose the aquatint screen and was in the continued process with her positive, but there was no light to reflect. So we took advantage of the sunny but cold day and did the second exposure in the sun. Given that it's winter in the midwest, we tried a four minute exposure that seemed to be just the right amount of time. Beth's puppies as an intaglio proof is the result. The plate, positive, glass and blotter were clamped to a board for the makeshift exposure unit.

We tried a second time later in the afternoon with one of Wend's pressed plants, but we forgot to use the aquatint screen in the middle of the exposure, so we ran back into the studio after about two minutes and exchanged the plant for the screen, ran back out into the sun for three minutes, ran back into the studio and switched the screen for the plant, and then back out into the sun for three more minutes. The resulting image is like an early Motherwell painting, black organic shapes against a white field. Wende is going to experiment with some off-set, overlapping color impressions of the plate to see what the potentials might be.

1 comment:

Rob said...

That sucks about the exposure unit! Technically though, the sun IS the best way to expose images. If running back and forth gets tiring ask Brian H if you can use the exposure unit we built for ceramics. I don't know if the bulbs are appropriate for the solar plate emulsion. I think they're just standard flourescent lights. They can be swapped out easy though for "blacklight" bulbs which I know will work. They're much cheaper than a NuArc Metal Halide bulb.

Looks good Wende!