With weathered journals in hand, explorers have long made notes and sketches of their travels for science, art, and personal record. I adore these distressed, historic sketchbooks and now make my own, continuing my interest in creating illustrated handmade books. My “sketches” spring from a desire to incorporate more of my daily experience into my art, and more art into my daily life.

These artworks depict the world in front of my camera and include hand illustrated drawings and watercolors on the print surface to portray images from my imagination— “scenes I wish I’d seen” (like chatting with Carlos Castaneda’s coyote friends). This creation of imagined worlds is a freedom photographers share with other artists such as painters, poets, and writers of fiction.

I use historic processes to mirror antiquated sketchbooks— including cyanotypes, distressed silver gelatin prints, applied silver emulsions, as well as pigment prints with mixed media on watercolor paper. Some prints are presented as full page spreads in open books, and others are loose pages “torn” from bound journals. I’ve always enjoyed revealing signs of my hand in images as fingerprints, brush marks, drawn lines, deckled edges and imperfections akin to those found in historic journals.

Just as the sketches of explorers brought new discoveries and revelations into the living rooms of viewers back home, these pages offer glimpses of previously unforeseen worlds.

I create photographically illustrated books springing from my fascination with the book format and a love of texture in art. My imagery is inspired by the surreal and poetic moments of living in our fast-paced, modern world. I'm fascinated by how daily life in the 21st Century presents us with incredible experiences in such regularity that we no longer differentiate between what is natural and what is colored with implausibility, humor, and irony.

These hard cover books are hand bound with marbleized paper and displayed fully opened to a photographically illustrated two-page folio spread. Each book is framed in a wooden shadowbox and presented as a wall piece. I like the idea of making art that contains some imagery which can be sensed but not seen. The underlying pages contain my photographs, snapshots, and work prints that "gave their lives" for the imagery visible in the open spread. These images lie beneath the open pages like history.

These landscapes are produced using the 19th Century Cyanotype and Gum Bichromate printing processes. I savor the tactile pleasures of making art by hand: building images with multiple layers of brush-applied emulsions. I believe that certain works of art created by a human touch may contain a resonance of that touch: a discernible, lingering aura.

Each print starts as a sheet of watercolor paper, coated by hand with a layer of Cyanotype emulsion. The paper is contact printed with a full size negative and exposed in sunlight for several minutes. After development, an image appears in rich Prussian Blue. The print is then coated with a layer of Gum Bichromate solution (containing green gouache pigment) and contact printed in sunlight. This second exposure rests in register on top of the blue image and the print takes on natural tones of greens. A third exposure is made in brown pigment and now reveals a landscape containing warm, natural tones of wood. A final exposure is made in black, deepening just the shadows of the scene. Four exposures are made over several days to produce these handmade prints. The resulting artwork is very archival, comprised of permanent Winsor Newton gouache pigment printed on watercolor paper.

Photographers believe a picture is worth a thousand words, while poets hope the right word is worth a thousand pictures. Photographers labor over scenes while poets labor over syllables. I’ve poured over my images for years, coaxing each landscape and still life to say more. Poetry can be the looking glass we hold up to magnify the spaces between photographs, helping explain why they happened.

Photography and poetry each have their strengths and limitations, yet both attempt to make order out of the tangled, myriad thoughts and events we encounter each day. Poetry allows me to break free of photography’s reliance upon realism; the luxury of words grants me the freedom to travel anywhere and convey whatever I imagine, without the need to stand before an actual subject.

As Kafka wrote, “You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

In 2017, Redwood City, California celebrated its sesquicentennial and commissioned a special, permanent public art project to commemorate this historic landmark in time. The Sesquicentennial Commission allowed me the opportunity to create a large, six foot tall photo sculptural “book” with 20 pages forming 10 open spread diptychs. Each pair of images serves as an iconography presenting a pervasive quality of the city. I began the narrative with a view of open space grasslands before civilization arrived, collaged with actual arrowheads attached to the foreground to hint that earlier people settled here even before Mexico and the later White culture arrived. Successive pages represent other key facets of Redwood City, such as the railroad, redwood trees, and today’s modern development. This was a period of true collaboration; it was a pleasure hearing from longtime residents and often incorporating their insights into this project. 

 This public art project was generously funded by the Redwood City Parks and Arts Foundation, the Sesquicentennial Committee, and the City of Redwood City. Redwood City Pages was curated by Lance Fung as part of a Fung Collaboratives Project.

Here are a few glimpses behind the scenes as I create my handmade books and conjure up multi-colored gum bichromate images.