- [Shelley] On this episode of "Kalamazoo Lively Arts," Ginger Owens shows us her process of making cyanotype on mixed media and why history is so important to her artistic efforts.

- When did you pick up your first camera?

- Probably high school.

Yeah.

I took a photography class.

My mother was a high school art teacher and it was a medium that she was not aware of as a teacher.

And I thought I would do something different than my mother, so.

- And obviously, you have.

- Yeah.

- Yes.

Well, congratulations on your success thus far here as a professor with Western Michigan University, I guess there's a lot to fill in between high school and there, but let's cut to the chase here.

How are you spending your day with the university and with photography?

- Well, I, of course teach photography classes.

My specialty is in alternative processes and I teach darkroom black and white photography as well as, you know, some art appreciation classes and business practices.

- [Shelley] Let's talk a little history project.

What do we have in front of us?

- Oh yeah.

So this, all of the work that you see here on the table, it represents a type of photography that's called cyanotype.

And this was a process that was created in 1842, at the dawn of the invention of photography, by a man named Sir John Herschel, an English man, and very good friends with a very well-known inventor of photography, Fox, Talbot.

Fox Talbot needed to solve a problem about fixing an image permanently on a substrate.

And went to Herschel, who was a neighbor of his.

And Herschel came up with this process.

It was then later incorporated by architects.

So you've seen architectural blueprints and this is the adaption of that process.

And now you're starting to see more and more contemporary photographers turn away from digital photography, because they feel a need to work with their hands again.

And they're going back to the dawn of photography and its earliest inventions and using processes like cyanotype.

- Wow.

Alright.

Take me into this.

As we look close, we see faces.

- Yes, yes.

So as an artist, it's very important for me to connect to history.

I've used my personal family history as a major subject matter in my work.

And as I'm getting older, I'm also thinking.

- [Shelley] You're getting better.

- Well, okay, maybe a little better.

But, you know, I'm thinking about how I'm connected to a broader history.

And so I really am passionate about the early inventions of photography and that history that, as a photographer, I belong to.

So the little faces that you see here, they're pictures from my family photo albums.

- Let's piece together, beginning to end, and you start with what's on the wall?

- Going back to personal family photo albums has... - Who's that?

- This is actually is my great-grandfather, my father's father.

And so I'm going back in and appropriating these old pictures into my artwork.

And then this is my grandmother, his daughter I'm printing on fabric in the cyanotype process.

And she was a great storyteller.

And so I just use some of the stories that I remember that she would tell me repetitively as a child and have embroidered those over the face of her image.

- And then where will this ultimately end up?

- I installed this on the wall as an installation.

And this is just a smaller couple of pieces.

There are panels and I believe there's about 12 of these panels.

They kind of have a rippled effect.

They're installed vertically and they're meant to mimic a waterscape.

- [Shelley] That's the ultimate look.

- [Ginger] Yes.

- [Shelley] Will you be precise in trimming and placing symmetrically or is it meant to be pretty much as is?

- Yeah.

Wabi-Sabi - Wabi-Sabi.

What's that mean?

- You know, a little, a little that, yeah.

Yeah.

- How did you get the image to even stay here?

- The art of the imperfection?

- It's idea of the Wabi-Sabi, but the images, they're just Xerox transfers, so it's a very low tech process.

Right.

- What do we have over here?

- The image here and here, they're actually rubbings from gravestone.

And this is a rubbing off of a very famous door from the home of William Henry Fox Talbot.

He was the inventor of photography.

And I took a group of students to his home and later went back and did a month long residency, where I got to really study the place that, you know, he lived.

Yeah.

So I started taking these rubbings on tracing paper and that's an example of that.

And then I would print those with the cyanotype process.

- So there's printing that's involved with photography as well, right?

- Absolutely.

- How about this bigger piece that's still part of your, what we see from this door?

- This image was created by Fox Talbot in about approximately 1840.

It is really the most famous photograph door in the history of photography.

So when I went to his home and studied, I was able to take a rubbing of that door.

And for me as a photographer, this is like going to the moon and bringing back a moon rock.

I love being connected to that part of history.

- [Shelley] There is also something underneath this, if you want to share a bit of a quilt, do we call it?

- Yes.

So maybe this is the newest of all the works that I've created.

These are photograms.

My parents came during COVID to visit and we were, you know, hanging out at home in my backyard.

And I asked them did they wanna make some photographs with me?

And we made simple photogram images of garden botanicals of the backyard.

- [Shelley] This is the end process.

Obviously you had to take photos, you had to present this on this and someone quilted this.

- Yes.

My mother and I worked on those ending parts together.

So a lot of family history here.

- You're more than just a photographer.

- Yes.

Do you wanna see the backside?

- I wanna see the backside.

Let's see the backside.

And then how will you use this, as a quilt or a wall hanger?

- I display it in a gallery space.

- I wouldn't want my dogs to sit on it then right?

- No ma'am.

So the backside, you can see some images of our family incorporated and intermingled.

- [Shelley] What's it like to go from an idea to this?

Does it take a while, or once you're on a roll, you're that expertise to make it happen?

Does it change?

What's the process?

- It depends on the situation.

In the case of this, it was hanging out with my parents and talking about our past, and then my mother being inspired by a new hobby that she had as a quilter.

And me looking at her and saying, Hey, well you wanna make a project together?

- And is this something your students ultimately learn to do and you hope that they take away as they go into the world?

- I do teach an alternative process class, and yes, I want them to learn about the early histories of photography and to keep them alive and vital.

Modernize them, you know, create new works out of them.

- So Professor Owen, I would like to be your student for the next couple of minutes.

What would you like to teach me?

- I would love to teach you how to make a cyanotype photogram.

- Let's go do it.

Alright.

I am the student.

You are the professor.

Take it away.

- Yeah, sure.

So with the cyanotype process, we have two chemicals and we mix those together 50/50/ We have a sponge brush.

And then we're gonna dip the brush into the chemical.

- Okay.

All right.

- [Ginger] And kind of pull off as much chemicals - [Shelley] We don't wanna waste.

Right.

So these have gone into here?

- [Ginger] Yes.

- [Shelley] Alright.

- [Ginger] And then I'll have you do this one, but I wanna show you what it looks like.

And we're just gonna take the chemical, - [Shelley] Oh, like olive oil.

- [Ginger] Very lightly on it.

And then we're gonna go in the opposite direction.

- [Shelley] Why is that?

- [Ginger] The other way.

We're just trying to get it on nice and smooth.

- [Shelley] Oh yes.

Okay.

Well here we go.

Be be easy on my critique.

Alright, ooh, so we start going down, correct?

- [Ginger] Yes.

- [Shelley] Okay.

Probably in the future I should coat it a little bit more here.

- And light is better.

- Light is better, yes.

- Perfect.

- Okay.

Perfect's good.

Alright.

- [Ginger] And then we're gonna take these and we're gonna stick 'em in a dark room and dry them.

Right now they're wet and they're not sensitive to light, but as soon as they dry, they'll become sensitive to light.

- Alright.

So while those are drying, what's next?

- So what we're going to do is we're gonna make a type of photograph that is called a photogram.

There's no camera that's involved.

We're just going to make an image without camera or camera-less image.

- So we take the pieces of the woods?

- Yes.

So we can use things that I found out in nature.

And the other thing that is interesting about this process is you can print on any kind of natural substrates, paper or fabric.

And so I'm gonna grab this and it's for contact printing, which means that I'm going to make tight contact between this, the plants and the photographic paper.

So this is dry, it's sensitive to light.

So we need to work fast.

And what I'll let you do is make an arrangement.

- Make an arrangement.

- Any kind of arrangement that you like.

- Oh, this is so outta my comfort zone.

But that's okay.

I wanna think, you know, thinking thirds, right?

Or so, okay.

I kinda like that.

I like that.

Yes.

Thank you.

Yeah, it looks like an Irwin forest.

Yep.

- [Ginger] And then I'm gonna take the paper that we've coated.

- [Shelley] Are you gonna press that?

- [Ginger] And I'm gonna press it.

We're gonna expose it to ultraviolet light and kind of like, it's kind of like a tanning bed.

- Oh.

- But you could take this out into the sunlight and expose it under the sun and it would work the same way.

So if we flip this over, we can kind of see your arrangement.

- [Shelley] That's beautiful.

- [Ginger] Yep.

- [Shelley] I'd be fine with just that.

How much you wanna buy it for?

- [Ginger] Yeah.

Now we need to make the exposure.

- Now we're ready for the water.

- [Ginger] Yeah, and so once we make our exposure, all that we need to do to fix the image permanently onto our paper is to agitate it in a water bath and it releases the chemical that has not been exposed to light.

- [Shelley] So take me through what happens after exposure.

- [Ginger] So after the exposure, we take it out of the contact printing and we just place it in the water bath.

And then we just agitate it and it releases the chemical.

It's that simple.

- [Shelley] The art of teaching.

How fun is it for you to be able to share your talents with one who wants to explore this in a professional way?

- [Ginger] Yeah.

I'm very passionate about sharing the things that I love.

So it's, you know, I couldn't imagine a better job than what I have.

- Can I take my print home?

- Absolutely.

- Thanks for talking.

- Yes.

Thank you for having me.

(uplifting music) - [Announcer] Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of greater Kalamazoo.

(upbeat music)