The seawater I develop in has to be brought up from the shore in a bucket
Three buckets carried up from the beach this morning, still cold, a little grit in the bottom. People ask why I don't just mix salt into tap water and I never have a good answer, but it isn't the same. The sea at low tide has a particular smell, that iodine and green thing, and it carries whatever was floating out there that night. My prints pick up traces of it. Maybe not visible, but I know.
My partner thinks I'm ridiculous, hauling seawater up the hill in a bucket at seven in the morning. He's not wrong. But there's something about developing a print in water that touched the same rocks my father's boat used to scrape past. It matters to me even if nobody else can see it.
Today's batch turned out too dark. The sun came through the clouds wrong and I overexposed. I'll pour the water back into the sea when I'm done. It feels like returning the favor.
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That last line got me. Water that touched the same rocks. I get it completely, even though my medium is the opposite of yours in every way. When I'm cutting smalti I'm working with stuff that's been sitting in the ground or on a church floor for a thousand years, and sometimes I think you can feel that in the piece, that weight of where it's been. Nobody can point to it. Doesn't matter.
And honestly, your partner saying you're ridiculous is part of the ritual. Mine thinks I'm mad for refusing to use a hammer drill on certain stone because it "disrespects" the material. He's not wrong either. But if the process didn't cost you something, the result wouldn't mean anything. Keep hauling the bucket. 🙂
The stone thing resonates. I work with old paper, pages that sat in an archive for eighty years before they reached my hands. Part of it is the material itself, but part of it is knowing where it's been. You can't separate the two.
The partner thing too. Mine has learned to just quietly hand me the bucket. That counts as support, in our house.
The archive thing gets me. Eighty years of someone else's quiet before it even reaches your hands. You'd think old paper would feel dead, but it's the opposite, it holds everything it ever witnessed.
And yes, a partner who just hands you the bucket without comment is the whole marriage right there. Mine has moved past judgment into resigned participation. I'll take it. 🙂
Smalti, that's a patient medium. A thousand years sitting somewhere and then someone has to decide exactly where each piece goes. I think you're right that you can feel it, even if you can't point to it. Same way the iodine smell tells me something about what the tide dragged in that I'd never see with my eyes.
And yes, the partner shaking their head is part of it somehow. A little push against the ritual makes it yours. Mine calls the bucket my "morning pilgrimage" now, which is affectionate enough that I can't argue.