Gakken

A couple of years ago I got really into pinhole photography. I built a bunch of cameras from scratch and adapted some old junk cameras with pinhole lenses. The result was a lot of less than terrific pictures. In the end I just bought one of these Gakken kits from Japan and put the thing together. Because of its documented f-stops, it is a lot easier to deal with than my homemade versions. I guess I just don't have the patience to do the math and film tests and figure out that stuff for myself. Anyway, this camera has the ability to shoot single 35mm frames, panoramic shots (like the ones seen here,) or stereoscopes that, when looked at correctly, appear three dimensional. Later my brother bought me one of these ridiculously expensive but well designed Zero Image pinhole cameras. I put film in it once and took a few shots. Then, for some reason, the back was opened and the film ruined. After that I never really used it again. Maybe I'll get around to shooting with it again sometime. My next photo project though, will be shooting with this Anscoflex II, a beautiful camera designed by Raymond Loewy, the guy that designed the entire damn 20th century.

Stumped on a Topic

Yesterday I went out and took some pictures with my Gakken Stereo Pinhole camera. I had the film processed and should be able to get it scanned tomorrow. It is an awesome camera and I'm sure I'll go on about it when I post the pictures.

Screening

Special Delivery: Share Your Love

A Hand Up

I just found out that someone at the Paper n Stitch Blog posted a link to a print of mine at the end of March. Nice. I made that print for the exchange portfolio at the Southern Graphics Council. So somewhere in the world there are ten people cursing the portfolio organizers for randomly giving them my crap. I have four more of those prints I don't know what to do with.

Little Fat Buddy

Today I picked up a box of miscellan- eous camera crap at an auction for $6.00. Except for a couple of things that might go on eBay, pretty much everything in there is going to end up in the garbage. However, I did find three sets of foggy close-up filters that just happen to fit on an old Minolta 50mm lens that I've had lying around. That lens just happens to fit on my new Sony DSLR camera. So we're in business. I screwed all nine of those filters onto the lens, popped it onto my camera body and took a bunch of pictures of a tiny, porcelain Bodhisattva given to me by Rhonda Jackson. The top image was taken with the lens wide open limiting the depth of field to fractions of a millimeter. For the bottom one I stopped the lens all the way down and increased the depth of field, though it is still pretty much ridiculously shallow. I think I prefer the blurry style.

The Intercession of the Saints

If anyone knows where I can get one of those one-person kneeler things that they have in churches, please let me know. I need one. I guess I could probably build my own.

Gretch

The other day I dropped off a couple of collages for a show at the Gretchen Charlton Art Gallery. I think it might be the last show there in which I participate. I'm not convinced that there is a real audience for my work, but if there is, I'm pretty sure it isn't coming to this particular gallery. If you want to come however, the show runs from May 21 to July 5, with an opening reception on Thursday, May 21, from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. They traditionally have some pretty good snacks.

Root Canal vs Just a Crown

Re: Work

I'm going back to the drawing board with some intaglio prints I made a couple of years ago and trying to make them work a little bit better by screen-printing them. Screen-printing has the benefit of speed. The first time around, I spent four 12 hour days printing intaglio-style and only ended up with one print that looked even close to what I wanted to achieve. This current run of twenty, four color screen prints took approximately 2.5 hours to produce. Plus screen-printing is generally looked upon with disdain by the fine art community. So right now its my favorite process.

Printage

One of my ongoing projects, The Littlest Print Exchange, is chugging right along. The roster of contributing artists is currently at 31 so we only need 19 more awesome people to sign up. The most recent contributors have been really exciting. The other day, I sent out some invitations to a bunch of people online who make work that I admire, so hopefully they'll want to get involved. I'm hoping for the entire project to be finished by September. Check out this lineup: Jennifer D. Anderson, Trina Baker, Brainstorm, Courtney Bryan, Katarzyna Cepek, Christopher Clark, Bonnie Cook, Michael Costanza, Amelia Cousins, D. Wesley Davis, Daryl DePry, Jenn Erwin, Carolina Espinosa, Brett Grunig, Stephanie Harvey, Nancy Jo Haselbacher, Robert Howsare, Melody Knight Leary, Luke Leyden, B. Love, Jill Marie Mason, Pam Newall, Matthew Pazzol, Sage Perrott, Diana Phillips, Roxanne Phillips, Dennis Raines, Pete Rangel, Brent Richardson, Lee Turner, David Villegas