Instagram Saves - I FEEL GREEN WITH...

“As a writer and illustrator, Jan creates artist’s books that amalgamate the lived research of a semi-nomadic life into works that engage broader concepts such as the circularity of time, the richness of biological and cultural diversity, and the finitude of the planet. Her subject matter ranges in scale from the vast landscapes of the Alaska Range to the minute details of the museum specimen.”

-Petra Halkes, Catalog Essay for Amy Schissel: Systems Fever, Patrick Mikhail Publishing, Ottawa ON, 2012

http://criticaltheoryindex.org/assets/PoeticsofSpace-Miniature--Bachelard-Gaston.pdf

Instagram Saves - Existing through Mark-Making

Screenshot from Introduction PII

“A Claude glass (or black mirror) is a small mirror, slightly convex in shape, with its surface tinted a dark colour. Bound up like a pocket-book or in a carrying case, Claude glasses were used by artists, travelers and connoisseurs of landscape and landscape painting. Claude glasses have the effect of reducing and simplifying the colour and tonal range of scenes and scenery to give them a painterly quality. The user would turn their back on the scene to observe the framed view through the tinted mirror—in a sort of pre-photographic lens—which added the picturesque aesthetic of a subtle gradation of tones.”

“His collection of miniatures has expanded since, and yet some of the first miniature models he utilized remain in his practice. After he arranges the miniature vignettes, he projects pictures of other everyday things—like the sun shining through the blinds or the silhouette of a person—onto the models. Then he photographs the whole new scene with a film camera, developing the photos himself in color, an arduous technique that also allows for Frances to obtain over or undersaturated shades. All of this is done in order to make a proof of an image for Frances to then carve out of wood and imprint onto paper. “The process is super clunky and kind of frustrating. For me the frustration and the gaps between what I’m trying to do and what the end result is—that gap is a super useful place. That’s where I find the surprising things. I’m a perfectionist, so I have to throw roadblocks in to prevent me from gaining perfection,” he says.Some of those roadblocks are developing the film photographs in color, carving the negative space of the image onto a piece of wood, and inking colors onto the wood in order to imprint it on paper. Before the final woodblock print is chosen by Frances, he might try dozens of different ones with slight variations of tone, saturation, and hue.”

Instagram Saves - What does the colour mean? Why do I care about colour? 

Haraway, Donna Jeanne. When Species Meet. University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.