I'm so happy to have one of my photograms included in this year's Flower Power 2013 exhibit at the 1650 Gallery in Los Angeles. The image included in that show is from a series of photograms of medicinal and edible tundra flora I worked on during my downtime in Kotzebue this past summer. As photograms require ultraviolet light for development I thought perhaps I might put the nearly 24 hours of sun I had to work with to use, and so I had shipped the chemicals and papers I needed ahead of myself last July. Between our trips into the Noatak Preserve I took long wandering walks in the tundra with my colleague the wonderful poet Andrea Spofford and our new-found K-town friend Norma. We collected for tinctures, teas, and balms, gossiping about people we barely knew and eating more than our fair share of cloudberries and blueberries as we went. Now that winter is closing in I finally have time to work through the images I made this past summer. I find myself waxing nostalgic over those long bright sun-filled nights I spent in that red house on Grayling, listening to KOTZ, catching up on local events through Tundra Talk, marveling at musical selections so insanely eclectic and disparate the playlists opened up a whole new dimension of coolness. I'm still figuring out the intricacies of the process, and though I am acutely aware of how this project speaks to its originator Anna Atkins' magnificent work on the flora of the British seacoast in 1848, I am trying to find new ways of exploring the medium. Most of the images I made last summer were first drafts of what I hope will become a far more layered project, but for now I am happy enough with some of this preliminary work to start sharing it.
