Autumn Moon

Man, here I am over halfway through the Spring semester at KSU, and I haven’t posted anything but a few experimental photograms.  Sheesh!

Those strange looking images I shared with you earlier were created by laying various objects on light-sensitive photo paper and exposing them to various amounts of light for different lengths of time.  Essentially, they were all practice for our first real project in Intro to Fine Art Photo.  Out task was to create a large photogram from a minumum of 12 sheets of 8″ x 10″ photo paper, using the techniques we explored in the smaller ones.  The images could be separate, displayed together with some common element tying them together, or they could be arranged to form one seamless photogram using a special enlarger and the darkroom floor.  Of course, I chose the technically trickier enlarger/floor option.  We were tasked to create an image with movement, meaning, good contrast and a range of gray tones.  Thankfully, mine received a good grade and was selected to be displayed in the Fine Arts lobby along with a few others.

I chose to use a Native inspired drum my sister Mary had made for me years ago.  The circle of the drum is suggestive of the full moon, hints of the stretched hide texture replacing craters and peaks.  Dried leaves swirl from the trailing feathers, fur and horsehair, their path accentuated by traces of wild rice, grasses, dried moss and branches bearing winter berries.  I also included a few arrowheads I found in my garden.  Once it was developed and assembled, I added touches of hand coloring by rubbing in raw oil paint and a few positive images of leaves created from my negative ones.  It’s hard to see in the photo, but I cut out multiple leaves and mounted them 1/4″ from the surface, with some drifting off the edges, for a more dimensional effect. 

I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.  During critique, my classmates seemed to get the feeling of a windy autumn night, in the solitude of the woods, caught in the changing of the seasons.  But apparently, I need to watch more Disney movies, because several people commented that it reminded them of the animated film ”Pocahontas”.  Oh well, at least it connected with them in a positive way!  (I think?!?  Maybe I need to rent that movie…)