Over the weekend, I attended the opening of “The Sky Is Always There,” a new juried show at the Glen Arbor Arts Center. The Arts Center asked applicants to go beyond direct representation and portraits of puffy clouds “to consider the sky from its atmospheric characteristic to its mythic history.”
I was fortunate that my submission “Noctures” was accepted for the exhibit. Nocturnes is a triptych of photographs of the night sky that I printed as cyanotypes.
From left to right, the images are of a moonrise over Shalda Creek, the Milky Way over Port Oneida, and the northern lights over a farmhouse in Kirkjubæjarklaustur, a village in the south of Iceland.
I shared the inspiration for my entry in my Artist’s Statement: “When my children were young, we would lie on the shore of Sleeping Bear Bay at night and watch for satellites. Those moments when we marveled at the night sky have remained with me all these years. I wanted to recreate that sense of awe for this exhibit. More recently, my grandchildren and I created cyanotypes of leaves and twigs. We shared a similar sense of wonder as we watched the images coming to life in the developing tray. These experiences gave me the idea to process photographs of the night sky as cyanotypes for this exhibition.”
To create the cyanotypes, I converted my digital photographs to monochrome images and then reversed the tones to create digital negatives. Using a mixture of ammonium iron citrate and potassium ferricyanide, I treated hot-pressed, 100% cotton watercolor paper to sensitize it to UV light. Then I made a printed image from each negative by exposing the negative and paper to a UV light source. To deepen the blues, I bathed the final prints in hydrogen peroxide.
There are some remarkable works in the exhibit. If you are in the area of Glen Arbor this winter, I encourage you to stop by the Glen Arbor Arts Center and enjoy it. The exhibit runs through March 20.