I have focused all of my attention of late on moving forward with the Displaced artist book. I’ve decided to apply for a RACC (Regional Arts and Culture Council) Project Grant. The application is due in a few weeks and I’ve been working frantically trying to secure all of the requirements needed to be competitive. The reason why I’m applying is because the grant would essentially pay for the full edition of books, the number I’m aiming for at this point to be fifty. This would include the letterpressing, printing, paper, binding and marketing costs. Knowing that the entire project could be paid for in winning this grant is too tempting to ignore, so I have thrown myself into the process. I’ve never written a grant proposal before, so I’m trying to avoid the inadequate, insecure feelings I’m having and just keep moving forward with it.
The grant application has raised some good questions about who the target audience is, how I’m going to market this and what my true goals are. It has provided me an opportunity to reflect on the work as a whole and figure out how I can reach beyond the photographic community and open the book up to other groups of people who might be interested in this story. It got me thinking about how therapeutic this project was for me. It was the most difficult period of my life, no question. But picking up the camera, and being able to immerse myself in the art, in another country, in an imaginary world, helped me in ways I never would have dreamed.
It got me thinking about the larger audience I’ve been continually striving for. I’ve reasoned that there are two groups I want to approach to talk about the work and how it helped me get through this time… one is people coping with separation or divorce, and the other is people advocating for or contemplating art therapy. I didn’t intend for this to be some kind of therapy, yet I experienced first hand the powers of delving into something larger than yourself, the search for visual perfection. It was a complete escape and something I would like to encourage other people to do. I’ve never have felt like my life experiences would be worthy of sharing. During the few exhibitions I’ve had, there have been instances when someone has approached me to express how meaningful the pictures were to them… that they related to what I was going through and saw the sadness, felt the frustration, and remembered the feelings of displacement that they had in their own life. I’ve realized that there could be opportunities to help people with this work, to share my experiences working on this and encourage others facing similar challenges to find some kind of artistic endeavor to delve into.
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I spent last weekend assisting master printer Tyler Boley teach a scanning and printing workshop at Newspace Center for Photography here in Portland. Tyler is the owner of Custom-Digital, a fine art scanning and printing studio in Seattle. He is, quite frankly, producing the most beautiful and innovative fine art prints I’m seeing right now. I met Tyler two years ago. He was teaching a Piezography workshop in Vermont at Jon Cone’s studio. Piezography, for those of you who haven’t heard of it, is “a brand of monochromatic inks and software that produce what is unarguably the absolute highest-standard in black and white printing” as described on the piezography home page at www.piezography.com. Simply put, Jon Cone has developed different sets of black inks to replace the Epson’s inks inside their printers. Using 8 black ink cartridges instead of 3 produces a range of tones unavailable using Epson’s ultrachrome ink sets. It is also a much more archival solution since the images are printed with black ink only. You therefore don’t have to worry about different colors fading at inconsistent rates. I took this workshop primarily because I wanted Tyler’s workflow expertise, but also to see if I could eek out an extra level of quality to my own black and white printmaking. The workshop there was phenomenal. I really learned how to print digitally at that workshop which was a week in length.
Since that time, Tyler and I have had many conversations about the craft of printmaking, about the pace at which these processes are developing and frankly, why so many people find releasing bad prints out into the public an acceptable practice. We talked this past weekend about whether “beauty” has become a dirty word. I feel lately that the importance of beauty in photography has been replaced by cynicism. There seems to be little work shown that inspires me to remember that how we live, where we live, who we are, is beautiful. And I am constantly wondering, and speaking to other photographers about why that is. What is it about a photograph of an empty kitchen cabinet that is so inspiring? For me, the great art, the kind you get goose bumps looking at, does two things: reflects a visual perfection that almost seems unattainable, and prompts the viewer to ask questions either about how the work was made or what the artist was trying to teach us about the world we live in. I would have to say that it is so rare to see both. But more than that, it seems like my definition of great art is not valid anymore. There seems to be a constant sarcasm or pessimism that is pervasive. I don’t find it unappealing all of the time. But there has to be a commitment to the craft of image making and printmaking in order to draw us in to the images, to lure us into seeing the beauty in something that may not be at once perceived… and I just don’t see it in all the empty kitchen cabinet pictures I’ve seen of late.
It bothers me when I hear people saying, “That’s a beautiful print.” There is nothing there that refers to the image itself. And maybe the commentator has nothing to say about the image. But usually, when this happens, it is said almost as a cautionary compliment, like the viewer is afraid to say instead, “That’s a beautiful photograph” because they are suspicious of being seduced by the talent of the printer.
I never thought I would say this, but I think we need to be careful not to make being a great printer a hindrance to being a great photographer.
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I’ve been looking at all of the costs involved with producing an initial run for this book project. I met last week with a wonderful artist, Inge Bruggeman, who has been making and publishing fine press artist’s books since 1992. I wanted her to be the one to letterpress the text pages in my book. She has a beautiful studio and makes lovely artist books. I was inspired by her to move forward despite the growing costs and obstacles.
I have had to make some modifications to the original design to keep the costs down. Instead of the book size being 11″ x 12″, it will be closer to 9.5″ x 13″. This will be a more economical size to print and will require less time for paper cutting. I also may cut back on the number of pages of text, but I don’t need to decide that right now, so I’m putting that decision off.
So far, I plan to print an edition of 100 of just the book and and an edition of 30 books in slipcases with two loose prints, one from each part of the project. The costs, up to this point to print an initial run of 10 plain books and 10 books in the slipcases are:
$785 Paper for Books
$2,328 Letterpressing (this would be for the entire project, so this would be a one time cost that would not reappear in future printings)
$90 Prescoring of Pages
$2,240 Bookbinding, Slipcase Production10 Slipcases
$5,443 Total Initial Output
Because the costs are higher than I anticipated, I’m trying to apply for a grant that would at a minimum cover $1,000 of these initial costs. I’m sure the competition (especially right now) will be tough, and it will take some time to answer all of the proposal questions, but it’s worth a shot…
I’ll keep you posted…
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Here is a new video from D.K. Row also talking about my work from Nova Scotia which is currently showing at Camerawork… This video courtesy of The Oregonian.
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D.K. Row of The Oregonian has published a review of Displaced: Part I in today’s Arts & Entertainment section of the newspaper. You can also read the review online by clicking here.
Thanks!
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