“My interest in art began early, very early. My father was the developer for the Tulsa police crime lab and I spent many a summer hiding out in that lab. I was given a tall stool to watch all of the processes but I was told to close my eyes when some of the final crime scene prints were washing…(I peeked). I remember the fascination that 7-year-olds had in a place where few children were allowed. My father’s darkroom fascinated me, not only in a visual sense; but it also imbedded within me a memory of the non-visual stimulants associated with a darkroom. The feeling of trusting darkness, the coolness of the constantly flowing water, and the smells that would creep around from the different chemicals. Many years later in a college photography class, this imbedded memory was awakened. It allowed me to bring back to the medium the playfulness of a child’s vision from which it was personally discovered. It’s from this that my prints say what they need to say without the complexities of the critically educated adult eye. The cyanotype process allows this to happen in the very nature of the final print. The physical deconstruction and reorganization of the print is where the excitement lies for me. I’ll never claim to be a purist, only an artist, a maker of things.
Cyanotype printing involves treating a surface with iron salts that react to UV light. A surface is coated by hand with the liquid mixture. A negative the same size as the final image is placed over it. This is set between marine plywood and plexiglass and then exposed to the sun. After the exposure, the paper is washed and allowed to dry. The resulting image is viewed as black and white but with the black being replaced with Prussian Blue. The final print is then worked by hand with the application of whatever it seems to need; minerals such as Mica and Silver leaf or multiple ink washes with different pigments folded in.
The images I work with are those that I come in contact with during my daily living. The image is one that presents itself just out of the normal frame of vision. It makes me stop and wonder. Before I look too silly just standing there staring and wondering, I take a picture.”
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