First Rolls of 35mm Processed Film

So I finally got into the darkroom today and processed three, COUNT 'EM, three rolls of film! It was hectic, time consuming, and also somewhat rewarding.

Getting the film on the rolls was the worst. Complete darkness, trying to shove this extremely thin film that wants to roll up into it's perfect little roll every chance it gets into a plastic opening about 2mm thick will give you enough stress to throw your film into the black air and collapse onto the cold ground. I didn't do the former but will admit to having to relax and sit down for a little bit while my photo partner fixed my roll.

After that it was pretty simple, 10 minutes of developer and rocking the developing tank back and forth to agitate it, then washing the film, and finally fixing it so that it wasn't light sensitive anymore. When I pulled the film off the drying racks I was instantly reminded why photography is probably my favorite medium to work with.

Here are some negatives from my first rolls. I found an iPad app to use that turns the screen into a lightbox to view them which I'm using in these pictures.

Pretty awesome stuff if I do say so myself.

Copper, steel, and aluminum... oh my!

My wonderful wife went to Pacific Recycling and picked out some nice copper wire for me to start my sculpture and it's perfect for what I need. Not too thick, not too thin, very sturdy, and easy to move. I've started bending the pieces to get them all straight so I could start working in the studio.

It's difficult, but I spotted some clamps in our studio that smash the wire into a straight line so I'm not too worried.

One thing I don't like about working with wire is the smell. My hands smelled like metal all day and it was only after much scrubbing and soap did the strong irony smell go away. But also I'm doing something with my hands for the first time in a long time, so I'm enjoying making nice shapes and 90 degree angles with the wire.

After multiple attempts with other types of material, I've started using hot glue for the corners and it holds together very nicely. These pictures aren't as good because I just took them with my iPhone vs. my DSLR, but you can see that it's coming together nicely.

Now for the "skin" I'm using cream-colored nylon stockings. I bought both white and cream-colored and the white is just way too white. Makes it look too fancy. The cream-color is perfect because it makes it look antique, especially accented by the wire copper. The stockings were perfect also because the wire shapes just slid right in. The copper didn't bend under the pressure of the stockings, which hold very tightly and let light though in some of the stretched areas.

Wire Sculpture Final Sketches

Alright so I'm decided on a sketch I'm going to use to build my wire sculpture. Here are a couple preliminary sketches, including my "tentacle idea".

You can see I discovered this shape after working on the "tentacles". The resemble wings, and I can see a creamy colored material stretched over them tightly that would be perfect.

You can click on this picture above to see it more detailed. On the left I'm brainstorming some basic shapes, mimicking my paper tests and some other shapes. You can see the "tentacle" on the bottom left, the first one I came up with and then repeated later. On the right, I started exploring that "wing" shape and seeing what I could do with it. On the bottom right, is the first of the final sketch. The top drawing would never stand up, so I solved that problem by giving it this circular pattern. This gives it 4 legs that will keep it upright nicely.

Finally, here is the finished sketch that I'm going to be working with. I like it because it reminds me of old aerial machines with it's "rocket" like structure. I think its perfect for the assignment also because it has line and plane and stand up using only the wire.

Oh, the Fun of 35mm Photography

I'm taking ART 251 this semester, and it's proving to be a very expensive class. I lucked out on finding a manual camera from my grandma that I can use, but spent over a $130 on other equipment we'll be using to develop and enlarge our black and white photographs. Today we learned how to develop and process our film, which I'm excited to do for the first time--though it seems extremely monotonous and daunting.

I spent the last couple of days shooting and ended up filling two rolls of film, mostly on pictures of my dog and the surrounding areas of our apartment complex, including the pretty cool abandoned prison next door.

Here's some pictures of the camera my grandma lent me for the class. It's a Canon, which I'm not that crazy about, but It'll do.

I'll be processing my rolls sometime this week, and will probably put up some pictures of the process later. For now, it's time to work on my wire sculpture.

Focus on the Artist: Elizabeth Berrien

Elizabeth Berrien is a world class wire sculptor and illustrator who does some amazing work with wire. I googled looking for wire sculptor and found her stuff and was blown away by the detail.

While her work doesn't really go along with the assignment, she does work with wire and I found myself oogling her organic patterns and realistic pieces. Here are a couple from her website:

Just looking at her work makes me excited to work with the wire more and come up with something of my own.

http://www.wirelady.com/

Wire Armature Sculpture Brainstorm

In class, we were shown lots of examples for our upcoming assignment. We're doing wire armature sculptures with "skin". I immediately started sketching ideas on my paper as she showed us past students' artwork. Some really great ones caught my eye, including some with stretched canvas for skin and wire shaped like clam shells. This made me really want to do something inspired by something aquatic.

During our brainstorm we got pieces of scrap paper and magazine pages and crumbled and formed them to find shapes that were interesting. I really liked the clam shape, so I did some folding and moving till I came up with these simple things:

 Translating this to some sort of sketch, and I found something really interesting. As I formed the geometric shape that trailed from the fan folding pattern, I noticed my sketch was turning out to look like something of a tentacle. I went with it and started filling it in to add depth to the end and more geometric body work. The brainstorm left me with this shape:

I really like it too. It's organic, yet geometric. I can picture them being tall and kinetic as you walk around them. As for skin options, I have a whole list:

• toilet paper
• nylon
• stockings
• thin fabric
• condoms? - suggested by Laurie (LOL!)
• celophane
• gauze
• feathers
• balloons
• silk
• wedding veils
• gauze

Not sure what I plan on using, or if this is even the shape I'm going to go with. Lot's more work to do. Tuesday we start working with wire.