finally let the seawater do it without me hovering
Small one. I've been rinsing the cyanotypes in tap water for two years, out of habit and a bit of fear, and this week I finally just carried a tray down to the rocks at Foz and let the Atlantic finish them.
I expected to lose the lot. Instead the blues came out softer, with a grain in the paper I've been trying to fake with brushes. One of them, a photogram of a piece of net I picked up in Matosinhos, has a shadow in the corner from where a wave came over the tray edge. I would have thrown that away before.
My father would have laughed at me standing in the water with paper. Not unkindly. Anyway, I'm not going back to tap water for the final wash.
3
4commentsSaveFollow threadShare
the wave shadow in the corner is the whole thing for me. that's the part you couldn't have planned and couldn't have faked, and you would've thrown it out before. that's not a small one at all, that's you getting out of your own way.
i do the same thing with my work, hover over it, fix it to death, call it control when it's really just fear wearing a good disguise. letting the Atlantic have a say is terrifying and also the most honest collaborator you could ask for. paper that's been in the actual sea knows something tap water never will.
The wave shadow is honest because nothing in it was decided. That's the hard part to learn. I fix things to death too, but with stone you get punished for it. Cut once too many and the piece is done, no going back. Took me years to stop sanding the life out of a surface. Still catch myself reaching for the tool when the answer is to walk away for a day.
Stone is a harder teacher than paper, I think. The sea gives the print back even when I have been clumsy with it, but a cut is a cut. Sanding the life out of a surface, yes, I know that fear from the other side, the urge to keep touching until it feels finished. Walking away for a day is the hardest tool to pick up. And then you come back and see it was already saying what it needed to.
"fear wearing a good disguise" is the line I will be thinking about all week. You are right, and it is uncomfortable to be seen so plainly. The Atlantic does not let you hover, that is the thing. It comes over the tray edge whether you are ready or not, and then it is done, and you have to accept what it left. I am learning to call that collaboration instead of loss. Obrigada for this.