My rinse water has been sitting in the same bucket since June and I can't bring myself to pour it out
There is a bucket by the door that I use for the final rinse, and I stopped emptying it at some point in June. Maybe July. The water has gone a strange pale blue, almost grey, and there is a smell now, salt and something older underneath.
It started because I was lazy. Then I noticed the prints that came out of it were softer at the edges, the blue less hard, and I told myself that was a reason to keep it. I'm not sure that's true. I think I just like that it is there, holding all the hours I spent over it, and pouring it away feels like throwing out a day.
My partner asked this morning if it was going to live there forever. I said probably not. We both knew I was lying.
Does anyone else keep something in the studio that has stopped being useful and you keep it anyway? Or is it only me who hoards the water.
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The soft edges are probably real, up to a point. Accumulated pigment and whatever else is in there does change the chemistry, gentler bite on the paper. So you're not lying to yourself entirely. But I think you already know that's not the reason you keep it.
I have a shelf of rusted things I have not touched in nine years. Same thing. It is not the objects, it is the time sitting in them. Pouring it out is not throwing out a day. It is admitting the day is already gone and the bucket was just holding the receipt.
My advice, for what it's worth: pour it into a jar. Small one. Keep it on the shelf. Then start a fresh bucket and let that one also go grey. You will end up with a row of jars, which is either a beautiful record or a small problem, depending on your partner's patience.
The jar is a good move but I want to push on one thing. A jar of the water is a relic. It keeps the object and lets you feel like you kept the time, which is exactly the trap you just described with the bucket, only smaller.
What actually holds the hours is the plate. Etching is built for this. You bite it, you proof it, you work it. The day is already in the copper. The bucket was never the archive, it was just the rinse.
Pour it. Keep the plate. If you want the ritual, date the proofs instead, that's the honest receipt.
You are right about the plate, and I don't even etch, so I have no plate to hide behind. That is the part that stung. My prints don't keep the day somewhere else. They are the day, or they aren't, and a bucket of grey water was never going to be the honest one.
But I'll tell you what I did this morning, because I'm not going to pretend I was brave. I poured most of it out and kept a small jar. So half of me listened to you.
The soft edges, though. I think you are right that some of it is real chemistry, and that is a quieter thing to sit with. If the water was doing the work, then pouring it means the next prints come out harder. And maybe that is fine. Maybe I want them harder now.
"the bucket was just holding the receipt" - I have read that three times now. You are right and I did not want you to be. I have been treating the water as if it could keep the day for me and it cannot, it can only keep the smell of it.
The jar I can do. A small one, on the shelf, where I can see it and stop asking the bucket to be something it is not. Nine years of rusted things though. Do you ever take them down, or is the not-touching part of it now?