Taylor T. Digital Studio II

Project Focus/Title: My digital focus project consisted of photographic images that were affixed to serving platters to form a wall piece. The piece is currently untitled.

Size/Format: roughly 3x2.5 feet from end to end, top to bottom (5 separate platters, forming one larger piece this size).

Conceptual Ideas/Thematic Subjects Investigated: In this project i visually explored an old, abandoned cabin that belongs to extended family. My photographs are meant to show this investigation in a way that is both personal to me and my family but remain relatable to a larger audience. I placed these images, with text from old books, on well-used platters from a thrift store. The piece comes together with a worn feeling of memory while still questioning the space's back story.

Work Process: my process consisted of photographing, editing, printing and acrylic varnishing onto old platters from a thrift store. I also obtained books from a thrift store, which I went through and took phrases from and also varnished to the platters. My major problem was the acrylic varnish, which I liked, with the exception of it creating a sort of bubbled surface on larger images. It seemed to turn out okay in the end, with practice, but I still feel it could have been a bit better and less bubbly with further practice. If I were to do this project again, I feel I would still use acrylic varnish, but practice further and try to figure out why exactly it bubbled and how to stop this.

Final Craft: In the end, I feel my project came together well. If I were to do this again, I may use a semi or satin gloss varnish instead of matte, but I otherwise rather liked my turnout.

Display: Ideally, this piece would be displayed to a public audience through installation on a museum wall.

Continuation: If I were to continue to develop this work, I would like to expand by making prints of other images I took in making these five, matting and framing them, and displaying them with the wall piece.

This week I have completed a couple of my final pieces and plan on completing the rest of them and trying the layout of the platters in various ways so that I can be sure which composition is going to work best for the final product. I am going to have to be careful with my larger pieces to make sure I don't get a ton of air bubbles, but it looks like the smaller ones will not be a problem. Also, if there are air bubbles in the larger final pieces (since it seems almost unavoidable because I am not putting them on a completely flat surface), I don't think it will be too detrimental to the final product. However, I will definitely do my best to keep them to a minimum. So basically, this week I am just going to keep working on my final product.

This week I printed my finished images. I ended up printing them multiple times, since the first time they came out a bit dark and I needed to lighten them up. So after they were lightened they ended up printing well. I also picked up the acrylic varnish and did a couple of test prints, which taught me that I need to be really careful with letting the bottom layer of varnish dry before putting the top sealant layer on on. If you don't let it dry, you end up with air bubbles. I also plan on beginning my final pieces this week.

This week I have finished choosing and editing the images for the project (I also edited a couple extras, but I don't think I'm going to use them). I have also back to the cabin to take a closer look at the books on the shelves. It turns out, they're all accounting books-- yuck! So, I took a trip to Goodwill and picked up an older book with good page color and type, and started going through the book to find some sentences and phrases that will work with my project. I have since found 5 or so, and will attach pictures of them. I'm thinking i'll most likely use the ones about things never changing and remembering the story, etc. They seem to fit best. However, it will depend on how they look on the images. In the coming week I plan on printing out the images (i made sure to crop them so that they will print the correct size over the course of this week) and seeing which text looks best on them. I also plan on trying out acrylic varnish on a test plate with some other images, so that I can get a feel for how to best work with the product before beginning on the final placement of the images and text on my "good" plates. This last week I have also figured out which images will go on which plates. Here are the finished images that I have not yet put on my blog, and the images of the ripped-out text:

In the last week I have gone back to the cabin and shot for the project a second time. I have also edited my first three images that will definitely be on the plates, as well as made some other decisions. I am going to rip the images to fit into the platters, rather than cut & fit them perfectly, because I feel as though this fits the concept better. I have also decided against newspaper/magazine text being collaged onto the images, because they would be too new and wouldn't fit with the rest of the project. I'm going to try to find the books that are shown in one of the images and use them to collage onto the platters instead. If I can't find those specific books, I'll get some other books from the same time period from a thrift store and use those. Here are this week's finished images:

In my first entry, I said I was planning on using decopauge. I have since changed this plan. Because I was the physicality of the papers to be in the works, I do not want to use a transfer method such as water-slide decal or inkjet transparency, etc. However, instead of decopauge, I have decided on using acrylic varnish, which dries clear, glossy, and transparent. Acrylic varnish, according to everything I have read, will also eliminate brush strokes, which is one of the things I was unsure of with decopauge. Acrylic varnish also adheres well to metal surfaces.

In addition, last weekend I went and shot for the project. I am not putting the images up yet, as I am still deciding which to use and still need to edit them. You can see my other entry with the title "new work/crit one" for an example of one of the images I will be using, though.

In the last week I have also decided on a layout for the platters. Although in the picture they are just laying on a bed, this is the formation they will take when finished and hung. So here it is:

I am planning on using well patina-ed old silver serving platters that I found at a thrift shop. I am going to take images that I have but have never worked with before or even taken out or camera raw format, as well as new images. I will make a total of 5 finished pieces that will together form a unified wall piece. I am planning on printing on thinner, magazine-type paper if possible, and am considering collage-ing a few small pieces from magazines or news paper on (still not sure about this). I will attach the images of my work on the serving platters via decoupage. Thus, I will need serving platters, decoupage, a paint brush, printing materials, and possibly magazine or newspaper clippings.

Here is an image of new work for this project. While I will be using new images, I am also planning on using a couple of previously taken but never edited/used images. Here is one:

Some images of past work that relate to this project:

Some artists who inspire me:

Kisa Kavass

Annie Leibovitz

Ellen Von Unwerth

Tim Walker

Stefan Ruiz