Many thanks to Laurie Moorhead for sharing her journey through several art media with us. It was very enlightening to hear about her progression from simple sketching to painting with oils and watercolors, carving stamps and cutting paper, and binding her work into zines and books etc. What a journey it has been and we appreciate hearing about it.
This is a great time to continue sharing some of the beautiful work of our members. Mary Elizabeth Nelson (aka Emmy), one of our members from Pennsylvania, recently completed two boxes commissioned by an Interior Designer.
In February Emmy first started sourcing suppliers and figuring out what type of box to construct for storing 50 to 75 8 x 10" color photographs. The photos were to be mounted on a complementary color background. She found two new (to her) paper sources; Lessebo Colours from Sweden and Colorplan from England. Both carry a wide variety of colors and weights.
After ordering samples, the designer decided on Sahara from Lessebo. The 300 gsm (110 lbs.) weight was heavy enough for the 8 x 10 photos making the finished size 10 1/2 x 12 1/2". Archival mounting corners were ordered from Lineco. Binders board and Jade 711 PVA were ordered from Talas. Emmy already had navy blue linen book cloth for the spine of the boxes that looked good with her wet-cyan prints and Madeleine Durham's paste paper.
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| Lots of wet-cyan prints! |
Early in March Emmy started making wet-cyan prints using dried leaves and flowers on quarter sheets of Newcomen paper that she already had on hand. A quarter sheet is 17 1/2 x 22". This vintage paper, in a light tan color, has a high cotton content and holds up well with multiple lengths of wet time. She's previously used it for paste paper and now the wet-cyans. She can only make two prints a day because of the limitations in glass size and the amount of time they have to sit in the sun (about three hours). Emmy was working most every sunny day while also preparing some short videos of the process of making the wet-cyans for a presentation for the San Diego Book Arts Guild.
April and May brought an increase in the amount of fresh plant materials, but she still used some of the dried leaves she had on hand. Many of these dried materials have become "old friends" because she uses them over and over. Fresh delicate flowers are used only once since they tend to bake after three hours in the sun. In total, Emmy made 30 sheets of wet-cyans by mid June.
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| Early construction of the first clamshell box. |
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Covering the box with the wet-cyan prints. Each gluing step required that the pieces had to sit over- night under weights. |
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| The navy book cloth was used for the spine of the box. |
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The photographs were mounted on the card stock with archival mounting corners. 122 photos with four self-stick corners each. |
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| Because each step in the construction had to sit under weights, Emmy had two extra tables set up in her studio. |
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| The finished size for each box is 12 1/4 x 14 1/2 x 3 1/4" |
What a beautiful way to store photographs! Well done Emmy and thank you for sharing the process with us!!
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