Snowy Pines

With the new year I've decided it's time to revisit some projects that I had put on the back burner. This month I went to the silkscreen studio to continue work on a print that has been in limbo for a while. Yesterday I added two more colors to a print I'm calling Snowy Pines, for lack of a better name at the moment. The sky was the first color I printed as a woodblock, and five layers of silkscreen separations sit above that. I’m not sure it’s finished yet… my original mock-up calls for a few additional colors, so I’m going to sit with it a while and see. The image is based on a photo I took at Stratton Mountain in Vermont. Some of the other photos from the trip can be found here in a post from 2014.

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The sixth color of Snowy Pines on the drying rack in the silkscreen studio

Snowy Pines is the third print in a series I’ve been creating with groups of trees as my subject. I begin the work with photographs I've taken and select one that I digitally separate it into fields of color. Some of my best photos have been shot with fairly crappy cameras that happen to fit in my pocket. I’ve found the most important factor for me is not how good my camera is, but rather if I have a camera at all! I happen upon most of these scenes at unexpected times, like this image that I took while snowboarding. There are some limitations to what I can do with the digital images at a low resolution, but the great thing about printmaking is that you can recreate the image in ways you can’t necessarily do with pixels. 

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The first color printed as a woodblock

I’ve been printing this series using woodblock and silkscreen because I find each medium has its advantages. Woodblock gives a beautiful ground color that is easier to control in large block areas, and it has the added benefit of textural elements like wood grain or the recesses that hold ink and get transferred in the process. Silkscreen is smooth and uniform (when you get a good pull), and it layers beautifully with endless variations in color and opacity. I’m considering mixing in some digital printing with future prints. The next one up is Three Topiary Trees from a photo taken in Olean, NY. I think I’ll mix up the scale with this one and do something a little smaller. My goal is to make one or two of these prints a year and see what they look like as a collection many years from now. It’s sure to be a very colorful series!

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Me in the silkscreen studio with sunlight streaming through the window after completing two addtional colors

Slowly Sinking Twin Pines II

I’ve been back in the Western NY region for the holidays, and last week I passed by these twin pines again on Rt. 417 outside of Wellsville. I had last photographed these trees back in the fall of 2013. They seem to have descended slightly more over the past two years, but I was happy to see that they’re still standing. Here's to another year of defying gravity! You can find my 2013 photo of these trees here. 

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Pine Barren

A month has passed and I’ve been averaging about five trees a day (*see October’s post for context). There is nothing like a deadline to get motivated and to work twice as hard. I have a solo show opening at the Olean Public Library Gallery in January and I plan to finish and frame the work by the end of the December. The show will include my Satellite series, as well as this new work, Pine Barren, a set of four 20” x 20” prints. I have a lot of work ahead, but it’s starting to take shape.

Here’s a little write-up I put together about the work for the back of the show card:
The lives of plants unfold around us, quietly persistent and often unnoted.  Their movement is subtle and accumulates with time: moss spreads across our roofs; leaves pile up in our yards. When we stop to observe these singular forms, their inherent evolutionary intelligence comes forward. In reimagining their predicted behaviors and forming new landscapes from plant fragments, I aim to create alternative environments that are at once familiar and otherworldly.

The show  will be on display from January 7- February 25. 

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Pine Barren no. 1, Archival Ink Jet Print, 20" x20", 2015

Growing My Tree Farm

I'm at the beginning stages of a new project. 
On my weekday route from the bus to my office and back, I pass a row of Zelkova trees on the eastern edge of the Arts Quad at Cornell. The shape of the Zelkova leaf caught my eye because of its resemblance to a pine tree. Last week, I started collecting these fallen leaves and working with them in my studio, painting them and trimming their edges to give each a unique character. It's hard to say where the project will go at this early stage, but my intent is to create a sprawling tree farm that will be the source for a series of prints. I plan to have 100+ more of these Zelkova pines before I'm ready to start laying out the landscape. Stay tuned!

Norway Spruce Trail

I recently visited Genesee County Park in Bethany, NY, to attend a family picnic. While taking a walk after lunch we passed the wetlands preserve and came across this enchanting little forest. The Norway Spruce Trail leads around and through this grove of tightly packed trees. They are mostly bare of pine needles except for at the very top and on the exterior of the forest, where they receive enough sunlight to thrive.

Directional Pruning

A solitary row of pine trees pruned back to make space for the utility lines running along Rt. 3 in the Northern region of New York state. 

Butchart Gardens

In the summer of 2010, my father and I took a day trip from Seattle to the Butchart Gardens in Victoria, British Columbia. In the early 1900’s, the site was at a limestone quarry owned by Robert Butchart, who used the stone to produce cement.  When all the limestone was exhausted from the site, his wife Jennie Butchart had arranged for massive amounts of top soil brought in from the surrounding farmland to line the floor of the huge pit. The Sunken Garden was one of the first of the many gardens that would become the Butchart Gardens. From the lookout you can see an incredible spread of annuals, flowering trees and shrubs. 

Looking across the Italian Garden, Butchart Gardens in Victoria, B.C.

White Trunk Tree

A white trunk aspen tree grows in the steep embankment of the gorge at Taughannock Falls State Park in Trumansburg, NY. The north side of the gorge receives more sunlight than the south side. For this reason, deciduous trees grow here, while on the opposite side (from where I am standing), evergreen, confiners and hemlocks are more common. While hiking the trail in late May, this tree caught my eye because of its distinction among the chaos of greenery. 

Sprig and Sprout

After a very cold winter, warmer days are finally here. The landscape is changing rapidly. I found this solitary seedling emerging from a groove between concrete and granite. Life is springing up all around, even in the most unpredictable places. 

Longwood Gardens

This month, Lou and I visited Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pa., following a short trip to Philadelphia.           Most of the outside gardens were still dormant, so we stuck to the Conservatory and took in the Orchid Extravaganza that was on display. The Conservatory was breathtaking, and I loved the thoughtful integration of plants within the light-filled architecture. Leaving the soggy, gray day behind and entering the balmy temperature and oxygen-rich air of the Conservatory, it was immediately summer. 

Rose House 

East Conservatory

Green Wall

One of the many orchids on display for the Orchid Extravaganza 

ca. 1890

This maple tree in Smith Woods (an old growth forest in Trumansburg, NY) dates back to 1890. This was also the same year our house was built about a mile up the road. Imagine the things this tree has seen in it's 125 years on the planet!

Winter Trees

I happened upon this window display in Berlin while I was there visiting friends in the summer of 2009. This image is in stark contrast to my other photos from the trip, filled with the bright skies and lush greenery. Looking back, it makes me wonder why this wintery scene was there at all in the middle of July, but here it is. 

Aglow

On a trip to NYC this December, Lou and I made a point to see the famous Rockefeller Center tree. This was no easy task. The streets were flooded with people, and our sense of direction was lacking after seven hours of walking around Manhattan. This was my first trip to the city during the Christmas season and at every turn I marveled at the absurdity of lights, elaborate decorations and intricate window displays. We weaved our way through the crowds to get a view of this 85 foot Norway Spruce covered in lights. This was as close as we dared to get, but It was worth the effort and it made for a nice bookend to our day in the city. 
Happy New Year!

The Onlookers

It's Christmas tree season again and I recently thought back to this image, although these trees are far too large for any interior. These looming spruce trees occupy a wide footprint dotted across a grassy field. This C-print was part of a series of photographs I printed in 2009 on yard spaces across Western, Central and the Finger Lakes regions of New York state. This photo was taken in Etna, NY. 

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Duotone

Two varieties of sedum, ‘Dragon’s Blood’ and ‘Angelina’, form a vibrant duotone on the green roof of Milstein Hall at Cornell University. The sedum ‘circles’ increase in diameter as they move closer to the edge of the building in the direction of the gorge.

Unfortunately this rooftop isn’t an open space yet but I had the opportunity to venture up there and walk around briefly. This peaceful plateau fully sustains itself in the variable weather of Ithaca, NY. It's an incredible planting and is worth a peek from the windows of Sibley Hall or from the ivy-covered stair tower. 

Lake Ontario Maple

A maple silhouetted against Lake Ontario at Southwick Beach State Park. 

Art & Garden

This gem of a tree was on display at the C.V. Starr Bonsai Museum at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. This particular image seemed to capture the mood for that day being followed by a stop at the Brooklyn Museum to see Ai WeiWei's current exhibition, According to What?.  
The Brooklyn Art & Garden tickets are the way to go!

Transmission Tree

A cell phone tower disguised as a very tall pine tree off Interstate 485 in South Charlotte, NC. 

Cumulus

Cumulus no. 1 • Iris print • 14" x 16.25"

Cumulus no. 2 • Iris print • 14" x 16.25"

Cumulus no. 3 • Iris print • 8.5"x 9.75"

Last week I had the opportunity to be an artist in residence at the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University. The Experimental Projects Residency is a unique facet within the School of Art and Design, New York State College of Ceramics, where I received my BFA nine years ago. The residency invites artists from around the globe to reside in the tiny town of Alfred, NY for one week to make great work. I was honored to be part of the growing list of accomplished artists to pass through the IEA.

My project at the IEA centered on the distortions within expired Polaroid film. I began by scanning the cloud-like chemical stains that had formed on the Polaroid film with prolonged storage. I was printing these forms through several passes on the IEA’s drum-based IRIS printer, layering the composition in stages. I was interested in the idea of creating a digital print similar to a traditional printing process, building the print in layers. Each time I sent a file, I would anxiously wait for the drum to stop spinning so I could see what I had. It was a very tactile way of thinking about digital prints. From there I would decide where I needed to add more form, density or color. This process was all about letting go of some of the control and allowing the image to accumulate onto the paper.

To ground these airy, water-filled clouds, I paired them with some of my recent landscape photographs of open fields and distant trees. You can read more about the project here on the IEA’s blog.