Darkroom progress: The shed was a bust. Got it all cleaned out and the space is there but...the floor is in worse shape than i thought and not knowing how long I'm going to be living there I just don't want to put the money into insulating that puppy properly. It would take way more fixing up than I'm willing to do at this point and I kind of need that money for supplies....and bills.
Solution? I'm going to try setting up a part of the studio for the enlarger and getting some extra heavy fabric to black out the windows and cover the open doorway that leads into the hall whenever i need to expose photos. Might be a little ghetto but...you know--artist on a budget, here. I think it'll work fine in the end.
Books: Been working a lot on books. I've got ten in the making (about half way done) right now and five at a store in Boone (Anna Banana's)!!! So that's pretty exciting to have some of my books in a store. Getting ready to send half of these ten over to Brianne Greene who has graciously offered to try and sell them at a local craft fair in Okinawa, Japan (along with her own fabulous handmade items) in the next month or two! Really excited to have some in another country, the idea of that is just...super cool to me, hah! And then the other half I'm gonna post on etsy. That's kind of a leap of faith for me--I've really been procrastinating getting the shop set up but I think it's about time. Just gotta dive in there and get started.
That's really about all I've been into lately; just trying to figure out a way to get this enlarger/darkroom thing set up and get going with my new idea for a photo series and really get going with these books. I feel like I'm picking up the tricks of the trade and getting faster at making them. I'm really enjoying coming up with new ideas about bookmaking and learning more about the craft as I go along. I've had the restless bug this week, however and haven't been at home too much to get stuff done. But I guess that's okay. :)
So today...was kind of awesome.
I went into town to return some books to the library and rent one of the Harry Potter movies and came back with a whole darkroom set up. I swung by Ram's Rack thrift store, remembering that Michael had said there was a photo enlarger there. And sure enough--there it was. $40. I checked it out and even though it's pretty old school-- everything looked really well taken care of so I got it. When I drove my car around the guy asked me if I had seen the box of darkroom stuff and I said no and checked it out. Everything needed to set up a good dark room was in it--safe light, extra film holders, contact printer for film proofs, measuring cylinders/cups for chemicals, film developing tanks, timer, a bunch of filters for camera lenses, loops, etc. Pretty sweet. So yeah! Now i have no excuse to set up a print space in the storage building. I took the first step today and converted the old playhouse/doghouse thing that the owners (i'm guessing) left into a little storage place for the bikes so we can have more space out in the building. Next steps are to just clean everything we don't need out of the shed, get all the dirt and dust out, get Michael's dad up here to take a look at things (already existing wiring/getting some insulation in there/see if we can rig up something for washing prints). I also want to set up an exposure unit for screen printing and printing station out there...maybe a baby printing press in the near future? who knows what else. Hopefully this all works out. But I figure if a darkroom landed in my lap--maybe some other good stuff will as well, right?
The last one should be captioned "The closest I'll ever get to Robert Pattinson", hah.
