New Work Inspired by Flight

Taking a little moment this morning to share a bit about my latest work! The Flight show is now live to view and shop at Lark & Key Gallery and I’m so thrilled with how my pieces for the show turned out. I created six new works combining cyanotype and eco printing with a variety of feathers.

I am trying to get some blog posts up that share more of my process as I start to explore many different techniques, so below is a bit more about how I made them.

The processes used were cyanotype printing and eco-printing. Technically the eco-printed parts do not have plant matter so maybe they aren’t really eco-prints… I like to call them moonscapes. They are simply the eco-print process sans plant matter, and using alum and iron powder on the paper to create interesting, ethereal abstracts. The primary image of each finished work is cyanotype. A lot of folks ask how I get the greens and rust colors, and it is a combination of doing long exposures (sometimes up to a day or more under a UV light) and adding vinegar and soapy water to the wet cyanotype chemicals. I also have been playing with the ratios of the chemicals themselves and find this skews the colors more greenish/warmer. I hope to get some workshops and classes up soon for more on some of this, as it was hard for me to find info to learn this also.

“Moonscape” paper after eco printing and the feathers used for cyanotype printing. I sometimes layer cyanotype over moonscapes, like in my Everyday Magic series, but for these I didn’t end up doing the layering.

Peacock feathers and glass over top before removing everything and rinsing. This was at least an 8 hour exposure, so all of that chemical you see in now dry.

I love to photograph my prints before rinsing, after rinsing, and then a day later. Each will look drastically different! Sometimes the pre-rinse colors are so lovely that I want a way to capture those too, so the camera is always ready when I’m printing. I occasionally have prints in my shop using the photos of prints before rinsing when they come out especially good.

ALL SIX FINISHED WORKS

These pieces remind me of the lessons that birds inspire for us all... To let the winds of life flow through us. To soar above the stress. To let go, and allow things to unfold as they will. To fly to new heights every so often, and to always have a nest to come home to. I do hope you enjoy them, and I hope they remind you of a few lessons too.

- With Love - 
Sarah