Arts Festival First Weekend

I am again exhibiting at Grow Mayow Community Gardens this year as part of the "Little Greens" for Sydenham Arts Festival The first weekend has gone really well and the two workshops I did were well attended and I believe from the responses of those that attended that they "Loved it" "Wow""What a cool workshop" and ""That was the best way to start my holiday"!

The first workshop Camera Obscura was designed so that everyone would come away with a working Camera Obscura so that they could either use it to take photos through like TTV(through the viewfinder) so that you get lovely dreamy inverted images or if you were a child doing it you could come away with what could be a very cool looking steampunk telescope once finished with papier maché. I forgot to take pictures during the actual workshop but some SAF photographers had done so, I just await their images...

here are some post workshop of a couple using them.

The second workshop held on the Sunday was again well attended and we all sat outside in the glorious sunshine making Matchbox Pinhole Cameras, a little less taxing and not quite as hard on the hands the cameras came together as expected and I'm looking forward to seeing the results if any from those that came, I just hope they send some in to me. The cameras were all finished and promptly used in the gardens after discussing perspective exposure hand holding them and multiple exposures amongst other things.

Here are some of the people making and using their cams!

Whilst I was doing the workshops I was also exhibiting in this space and when I first saw the room I was a little dubious, it had an incredible amount of detritus inside as it was normally used as a children's science/playroom but after seeing the back wall and the wallpaper that was covering it I just couldn't resist. It was moths large brown repeat pattern moths in a faded gold, the edges were distressed and the paper curling but it just seemed right to use this space. It looked ideal to become an installation as well.

Here is another picture of me setting up:

My Ephemeral Moth series would look perfect in here it would hopefully not be lost but would look captured, it would be part of a large room of caught objects and ephemera including all my other lumens.
 The exhibition is still up and I hope to get more interest and feedback this weekend. I had some really fantastic comments and new subscribers, sales and promise of exhibition space and calls for more workshops. I managed to sell cards and books... fingers crossed for this weekend and let the sun be kind again as I need a lot of doing an oversubscribed Lumen Printing workshop!

Deceased Experiment Unexpectedly Terminated!

Over the summer I started doing a number of experiments using the process of Lumen Printing.I have been doing Lumens for some time and also doing small workshops but this summer I got the opportunity to do some experiments for myself. One of them was a rather spontaneous affair. I was presented one day with a mouse, a dead one, our cat is young and doesn't quite get the hunter thing and so has only just started using his 'skills'


This poor little corpse had been placed in quite a ceremonious way in the centre of a circular patch of earth in our garden(post paddling pool)

Well, what was I supposed to do with this gift, It seemed only fitting and appropriate that it joined the selection of flowers and moths and other ephemera being Lumen Printed in the garden. The little body was laid out on a sheet of BW Ilford Ilfospeed grade 1 paper and a sheet of glass laid upon it's delicate little form, much like the lid on a coffin made for Snow White!

The first image was set out for a day, I don't really know why I just didn't do the normal few hours but I think the sky was a little dull. Subsequent images varied form a day to actually being left for ten of them as I forgot and went on Holiday. It did not seem to do that one any harm.

Each time the mouse was moved it was carefully slid across onto another piece of paper so as not to damage it, though after the second day it was more like a popsicle on its very stiff tale than I would have imagined.

My original intent was to record the whole process of decomposition from day one, until it became skeletal and the print would have just had a selection of bones surrounded by flora, unfortunately this has been cut short by the intervention of some rather desperate and inconsiderate animal with a serious lack of discerning taste buds. One morning I came out to find that after almost four weeks or so of work the contact frames that had been lying out in the sun had all been turned over and the photo paper was strewn all over the garden. It wasn't the wind, as no interest had been paid to the other prints as they were not containing rather smelly decaying 'meat' believe me I searched around for them but they had gone.

I was a little dismayed as the body was reducing and it would have been great to see the intact skeleton but maybe this is too macabre. I was so focused on producing the prints and creating a series, anyway I have ten images of this mouse.

I had also been 'given' another to work with but that too had gone and so it was back to the flora and fauna and insect world for me until I am graced with another one from my mad cat.