Do you know the way to Santa Fe?

In case no one noticed, I snuck out early from AIB to catch a flight to New Mexico early Sunday morning. I cleared this with Oliver and had him sign off on my semester plan of action and off I went. I had gone there last summer where I met Christopher James and I was hooked on alternative process printing immediately. For those of you who don't know the legend of
C James it is amazing. He is the Guru of alt. proc. and wrote THE book on it, he currently is the head of Photography at AIB and just an all around funny, brilliant, creative genius. A workshop with him is inspiring and I recommend it to all interested artists out there. He does them in summers at Maine workshops and Santa Fe workshops.
I was a bit apprehensive about this trip as I had thought I would maybe work with him and start my studio work there. But through the week at AIB my semester plans changed and I am going a different direction.
I arrived on Sunday and the minute I touched down in the desert I felt the warm air blow away any trepidations I might of had. My good friend Lisa picked me up and we drove the 45 min. drive up to SF. Oh yeah that 7000 foot altitude is a tiny bit tough to get use to. WATER is your friend.
A week of doing nothing but art is an amazing gift to yourself. It is so different than school where we have assignments and crits. As adults we really don't have a prolonged period of time to just concentrate on pure creative expression. I joined 9 other super cool and talented artists one is joining us in January at AIB one wants to apply, the others were all so cool and creative.
I worked on pinhole photos, we tried a very cool new albumen process, did Zia types, cyano types, made large sized digital negs and did some platinum. One of the highlights of the week was visiting Bostick & Sullivan and doing Carbon printing. They have been involved in the process for quite a while and we all got to do 2-3 prints each. I will post some of this work soon. The hand with the small chair that appears on my page was a digital photo and turned into a 3 color separation then printed with 4 passes of gum bichromate. A yellow layer, cyan, magenta then a last dark blue pass.
I had a blast, but I had been gone for 17 days and did miss my clan at home. So here I am back home starting to organize my study, read, firm up my mentor stuff and continue to create art.

Post Residency thoughts

Having just returned from my second residency at AIB I have mixed emotions. I knew the first day as I hung my work that it was not looking as substantial or polished as I would have liked. I honestly felt like much of it was inadequate. So sitting through days of critiques was difficult, because I agreed with most people, I needed a stronger presence in my work and content. Sometimes that's hard to hear over and over, but bottom line is I am in this program to learn, and I took it all in. I would have liked more clearly defined guidelines as to what work should look like when returning to a residency. I could have done many more larger prints with my photographs. However I felt like much of my work was early concepts and not really worthy of large glossy enlargements. I will admit I don't like the feeling of not being prepared, or appearing unorganized. However if I nailed it coming into the second semester I probably would not need the program. I was very happy to be part of a nice group of mostly photographers and we had some excellent crits. I was also very pleased to have Oliver get me on track and believe in my next semester's plan. I am working on a mentor in Los Angeles who is an amazing portrait photographer, I don't want to jinx it so I will post it when it happens. Stay Tuned for my adventures in Santa Fe...

My First Post

Welcome to my blog...I have just begun to write on the wall of cyber space so be patient. I know I will get rolling soon but as of this moment I don't have much to say.