Yesterday I went to visit UNCC as a Visiting Artist. Holy. Freakin. Crap. I was a Visiting Artist. That blows my mind. Seriously. It didn't actually click until I was walking around their Fine Arts building with Aspen (the awesome photo professor who invited me, go look at her stuff) and she had to take a call. She told the phone-person she couldn't talk because she had a "Visiting Artist" there doing a workshop.
Seriously, my whole month improved at least 4 points. Not sure what that means, since I don't have a monthly scale of goodness that works on points. Still, probably a big improvement. That's one of those moments where you stop and realize, "Bejabbers, I'm doing art. Like an adult." It's great and crazy and it made me so happy. Well, actually it took a while to fully sink in and some of the happy might just be sleep deprivation. But still it was super-exciting.
Aside from me Visiting-Artist-Real-Life-Grown-Up-Professional excitement, the workshop went really well. Aspen's students were very interested, totally awesome ladies. And there was a dude there too, but he wasn't a student or something. He was just there to hang out and see what was up. Like a photography groupie, I guess? He seemed cool anyway. I had great questions, all very reasonable and proving that they were listening to what I had to say. Questions about potential sources for dye, possible objects for exposures, alternate substrates, all that good stuff. Some very cool large-scale anthotypes on sketch pads, using all kinds of items. Some big sections of lace, even one young lady with a bird skeleton. Whoever you are, bird-bone-lady, I like you. You make me feel not so weird for having a bag of assorted bones on my desk.
Aspen and I are even trying an experiment to see if we can get an anthotype print from one of her wet collodion glass negatives. That'll be interesting to see in a few days, especially since the negative had shattered and we're exposing the pieced-together fragments. That print is being made on hand-made paper (tinted blue from jean-lint) coated in a medium-dilution sandalwood dye.
Because anthotypes don't expose in a few hours, I wasn't able to see any of the results from the workshop. I'm hoping that the ladies get some awesome results and I can see them after they scan/shoot the images. They're working with turmeric, sandalwood, annatto and blackberry dyes, both pure and mixtures between the different colors. Some are even doing round anthotypes, and someone had an oblong, hurricane-shaped anthotype. I know all the pigments should give decent results in a few days, so I'm pretty sure they'll all get something.
And also amazing? The Light Factory (thanks to Laurie) is now holding open Darkroom Saturdays, and I'm heading in later today (dammit, it's today, isn't it? Why can't I sleep?) to do another demonstration of easy, at-home alternative processes for the open darkroom students. People can come in to develop film or print normal, boring silver stuff and while they're washing or drying, learn about awesome alternative processes like lumen prints and anthotypes. We're gunna see how things go for a few weeks and if they're doing well, this might become a regular thing. I really, really hope so.
There's so much great stuff going on. I might even be headed back to UNCC in a few weeks to show Aspen's students some special techniques for cyanotype toning that aren't exactly well-explained in their textbook. I do lurve me some cyanotype toning.
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