I began thinking about issues of materiality last year when preparing for the final Glacial Narratives exhibition. It was vital to the foundation of the artworks that I was creating to draw inspiration not only from the imagery of Greenland and the Arctic ice, but also from the materiality of the lived experience of the […]
A sense of place is an important aspect of photography for me. It was the driving force behind my work in the high Arctic — what does it mean to reside in a place of extremes? Because there is a big difference between what you experience through visiting a location, and how you learn it
A few days ago the date changed from 2024 to 2025. All my responsibilities are done here. There are moments when I feel I should just go, and yet months ago I intentionally gave myself this extra space. We live in an age when it’s expected that it will be just one damn thing after
In a Minute There is Time Read More »
One of the many things I love about cyanotypes is their flexibility. I was talking about how to make cyanotypes with a friend and one of the questions she asked was, “Can you make cyanotypes from color film negatives?” I had no answer. Before she went off to work in Antarctica for a few months
Cyanotypes + Color Film Negatives Read More »
Today I dropped off my last artist at the airport. Next Saturday, 30 November, my contract as director of the Spitsbergen Artists Center and Residency will end. I didn’t come to Svalbard intending to run artists studios, a craft center, exhibition spaces, and an artists residency. That was not the plan. This came from a
Cyanotypes are one of the earliest methods for putting a photographic image on paper. Sir John Herschel experimented in 1842 with a method of coating paper with light-sensitive iron salts, exposing the paper to sunlight, and then washing with water. The result was a cyanotype, named for one of the chemicals used, potassium ferricyanide, which
Cyanotype: The Arctic Blue Read More »
We are inundated by pictures. We make them. We share them. We see them. An estimated 5 billion photographs are taken every day. Mostly with phones. They’re shared widely. 6.9 billion images a year are shared on WhatsApp. 1.3 billion go out on Instagram. More than 1 billion on all the rest of social media.
Everyone is a Photographer Read More »
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less. ‘ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.” — Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass AI is altering the artistic
Art, Photography, and AI Read More »
I don’t think there is any greater gift for an artist than the gift of time. So when Kij suggested we do a residency together rather than our usual Iceland trip I was enthusiastic. I immediately thought of three, no four, no five things I wanted to accomplish. In addition to the usual long walks, soaks in hot pots, and rambling back roads in the car, of course.
The Iceland Residency Read More »
Today was spent working on the 2022 calendar. Every calendar I have made has a title that has personal meaning for me. The first, 2018, was titled One Good Year. This sprang from my desire to have one year where no one died. The previous years so many people died. My husband, my brothers, my
Persistence of Vision Read More »