fort funston

at the south end of Ocean Beach in San Francisco is some beautiful dunes that rise suddenly out of the beach. at the top a fort was once built and garrisons were dug in and we were safe all during WWII. of course the army sort of tore the place up, but it's been turned into a park and many areas are being restore - with native plants and protecting nesting birds. I love to walk up from the beach, winding through the dunes and turn around and go back before it get crowed with dog walkers and deserted army structures. This is where i've been taking pictures on my morning walks.

do you shot like a fashon photographer?

recently someone asked me if i shot like a fashion photographer. They pictured me clicking away rapidly. i guess there thought was i'd be more likely to get the shot that way. It really gave me pause because i think it told me something about how my abstracts are perceived, or at least by this person, who seems like a regular person. I thought that the idea "photographer" for most people is a glamorous one, seems like an easy job capturing beauty. I know that even fashion photographers work very hard, i'm not saying i think their work is easy, i think it's perceived that way.
I think this may be because the average person taking a picture has a light weight point and shoot. they take pictures holding the camera in one hand, with out getting down on their knees or climbing up a ladder to get the shot. and they don't fuss over focus or aperture.
also for them it seems that the final shot must be due to sheer luck, because that's how it is for them. if the shot comes out they were lucky.
My work is not glamorous, easy, or a matter of luck!
I take a moderate amount of pictures very, very slowly. I usually have to hike to my subject, get up before dawn or go out in the rain, fog, windy storm to get the light and wetness i want. i get down on my hands and knees because the most interesting stuff is way down low, or it looks better that way. My cameras used to be so heavy, with my arthritis i could never do it now! I love digital for lightening things up, but still what i'm wielding weighs three or four times what the point and shoots do, what with lenses and all. So my wrists really begin to ache.
Some of my process i think is interesting. when i do macro i focus by moving my body the minutist amount. if i breathe the focus is lost. so i end up holding my breath alot. So i'm down on my knees in the mud or the damp sand curling up with a plant or rock or whatever, holding my breath and swaying tiny, tiny bits! Every now and then i exhale really hard - cuz i got the shot, but then that fogs up the camera's viewfinder. (then you may see me lift the camera over my head and wave it to clear it while i freeze the rest of my body to hold the place.
for me, getting the shot is not luck. i plan every shot i take. i take variations because it's hard to tell what exactly the shot will look like - how to best communicate what i'm trying to say. I compose the shot; as i teach my students, i look at everything in the viewfinder to make sure i have the subject where it should be and there's no distracting elements or relationships that will look weird in three D. (like a telephone pole coming out of someone's head!) i track the light so i know i need to change my f-stop or speed, and then i focus.
yes even with those blurry abstracts i spend a very longtime focusing. it's really hard to get just the edge of the leaf in focus! I work with an extremely small depth of field (which is why breathing can blow my focus). and with the lens baby i'm not twisting the nob i'm squeezing the bellows toward the camera, which takes more hands than i have to hold it perfectly still while i squeeze off the trigger.
I guess this explains why i get self conscious when i shot with other people around. I look strange working!

working with Hebrew letters

I with now that i had a Hebrew word processor on my computer. I've always relied on the very simple set up on my Mac to write in Hebrew, but now I am struggling with it's quirkiness. I have these cards that i want to add Hebrew test to, and it should be simple enough to write it up, print it on velum and put it on the card. however, even tho i have Hebrew fonts and a computer capable of typing backward, i'm pulling out my hair as it does weird things. mostly textEdit refuses to leave the punctuation where i put it and it messes up when ever it starts it's own new line. At one point i tried to see if i could use illustrator (it couldn't find the Hebrew fonts) or Photoshop. Photoshop is ultimately the right program to use because it doesn't even think about moving the test to a new line, it leaves that to you. but i'm going to have to retype everything i typed today, because it can't think in a reversed direction. so if i copy and paste a line of Hebrew text into it, the letters are all facing the correct way, but every word runs backward. I think it's because it took the sentence and ran it backwards.

in English it would look like this: !taht pots uoy yeH
so you can see that's a problem!

I've been want to make these cards for a while and now i have a show in my synagogue for Chanukah, so i have to get them done!

my biggest transfer yet!

this work still in progress. yet i really wanted to share because i feel it's going so well.

it is on a 16 x 20 canvas board with the transferred image on top of handmade paper that is very textured. the ink has been transferred from an image printed with ultrachrome K3 pigments onto Epson's enhanced mat paper with Golden's Soft Gel Gloss. additional technical aspects of this transfer are discussed on an earlier post, the link above (in the title) will take you there or click on "doing transfers again" in the side bar.

if you look closely you can see areas where the image is very clear and other areas of "distress". i hope i sharpened the photo i took of it enough so that you can see what's going on. there are several different kinds of distress. i have to decide what part is effective and therefore should leave alone and what part is distracting from the effect i want and therefore i should continue working on those areas.

When i'm done with that i plan to continue layering media. i have additional handmade paper, natural elements, and perhaps a cyanotype or cloth elements. i can't describe the final work and i'm not fixed on one result yet. but i want the viewer to feel as though they are standing under that mimosa tree in the rain with me!

Transfer Technology Workshop for Photographers and Artists

daydreaming arts' announces another
Transfer Technology Workshop for Photographers and Artists

Whether you are a fine art photographer or an artist who would like to incorporate photographic images into your work, transferring photography and other images to unique surfaces will awaken your creativity.

At this workshop you will try several methods of transferring inkjet images onto canvas, watercolor paper, wood, glass, cloth, and found objects. We will take a look at the methods that work best for photographers and mix media artists, preserving your color intent, creating archival works of art, and integrating transfers into your current work. Some processes require heat or water: some need a great deal of rubbing and some need none at all. You can mix media to create different effects on different surfaces.

You will learn the how transfer technologies work, what media and processes influence the results - and why. A process can retain a sharp image, or create a distressed look or even a stretchy emulsion. You'll gain information about the properties of the media and how too experiment in ways that work toward repeatable results! At this workshop you'll create several projects using different methods.

You will come away from the workshop with several completed projects and the ability to ask the right questions to develop a unique process that meets your artistic needs.

Come ready to experiment in a nonjudgmental atmosphere designed to inspire and motivate!

This workshop was developed at the suggestion of many visitors to kayla's show in June. During the October Open Studios this came up again. It's essential to keep the workshop small -- so sign up early! the workshop is likely to fill up fast!

Workshop details:
Cost: Early registration by Novemeber 10th fee: $65.00; materials fee $10.00*
When: Sunday November 19th: 11 am to 4 pm
Where: daydreaming arts studio in The Sunset district in San Francisco.
How: e-mail kayla at: kaylagarelick@mac.com

You will receive an e-mail with payment options and a list of tools to bring. daydreaming arts provides transfer materials and receiving surfaces. You may bring your own ink jet prints, use my images, and if you sign up early, you may send images that will be printed onto special transfer papers for use during the workshop. You may want to bring some surfaces with which to experiment.

About the workshop leader:
kayla garelick is a self taught photographer and mixed media artist who has shown her work locally in San Francisco, Berkeley, Albany, El Cerrito, and Richmond. She has experience teaching adults, teens, and children. She has a Masters in Education from Bank Street School of Education. For more information please see her resume at: http://home.comcast.net/~daydreamingarts/resume/artistsResume.htm
kayla believes in experimentation and problem solving. She shares her explorations in a running record in the blog: http://daydreamingarts.blogspot.com/ . Her mom is a scientist who has taught her the importance of record keeping and patience!


kayla garelick
kaylagarelick@mac.com
daydreaming arts
http://daydreamingarts.home.comcast.net
http://daydreamingarts.blogspot.com/

*a separate materials fee in necessary for retail tax purposes.

dizzy on the beach!

one year on Blogger!

i just realized that yesterday was the one year anniversary of my blog here! boy what a long year!

Walking on the beach with my lensbaby

I guess i'm feeling subdued. the weather is turning colder and the wind is picking up at the beach. each day the chaparral; changes. I don't think most of the plants loose their leaves, but they turn colors and die back. It's really beautiful. getting down on my haunches and sticking my camera and nose down into the low growing succulents too see them as we normally wouldn't, it's a magical feeling; like being inside a secret. with the lensbaby it's even more like fantasy. i see the lens breaking apart the light that the plants are reflecting back at me. I'm ever aware that what i capture is reflected light but when is see it being stretched and the light positively glowing i really feel that my subject is not the plant on the ground but something completely without material substance. the reflected light interacts with and is changed by the direct light and then i mix them both inside the lens as i move each element's position relative to the other. I've always wondered why the lens is a baby. i suppose the inventor simply thought of his creation as "my baby" but i now think that the lens is birthing the baby of the new manipulated light.

doing transfers again

I had stopped doing transfers for a while, i was so into printing on silk and so on. I did a few small one in my cloth book, including my first successful tape transfer - wow so easy! for a tape transfer you start with an image you can destroy, this is usually something out of a magazine, newspaper, or something you've made a copy of. I took an image of a toxic waste sign from a catalogue. So i cut it out of the catalogue and laid down a big piece of packing tape over the image. smooth it and burnish. then drop it in water so you can rub the paper off the back, leaving the ink from the image imbedded in the tape's adhesive. when i was done there was very little stickiness left so i used some acrylic gel to glue the sign to the cloth.
it's alot nicer than cutting out the paper and gluing the paper picture to the background, especially if you want to take advantage of both the shininess of the tape and the translucency. when i was done you could still feel the flexibility of the cloth. but is was very small so it had no big affect on the cloth.
Another transfer i did was with an image from my R2400 that had a tiny flaw in it. (the tiny ray of light is not a flaw but a feature of the way it was shot, in person it's cool) it's the image posted with this update. I took a 16 x 20 canvas board and used soft gel gloss to adhere a hand made paper to the surface. then, with plenty of gel on that surface, i laid my print face down onto the gel and burnished. then i ironed it! my poor little travel iron got such a beating these last few weeks. I was worried about the amount of work they was ahead of me because i know the next step was to get rid of the paper. because it was supposed to be a fine art print, i had printed on think paper. So when i peaked under to see if my burnishing and ironing were working i saw that the ink stayed down and the paper was lifting up smoothly! wow. i go very excited but unfortunately this did not last through out the image. I'm not sure what the variables were but there were big patched where i had to wet the paper and rub it off. my fingers got tired so at one point i employed a rough rag, which worked well. but it was easier to press to hard with the rag. I'm not sure about the result, where i like it. I'll try to take a picture of the canvas and post it soon.

silk panels

these were printed onto blumethal silk and suspended with wire inside two discarded kitchen cabinets that had their middles punched out when i found them. I love using found objects in my art and the contrast of the new silk with the old discarded wood cabinets is fabulous. you can't tell from the picture but the wood is smooth with a lovely grain.

working with silk some wall hangings

earlier this month (follow the link) i posted an image that i was working on to create silk wall hangings. i finished 4 variations. two were made from silk scarves that i printed on my R2400 and then hand painted. they became wall hangings because i painted heavily with the acrylics. even tho i had thinned the consitancy with acrylic medium i couldn't stop paintting it was so much fun. they are now too stiff for wearing -- but sturdy enough for the walls.

you can see my husband's vinyl collection behind the scarves!

my cloth book

this is the cover to my autobiographical cloth book. you can see the whole thing by following the link to my site.

a new window falls in my lap

i was coming home form shopping and there were more broken windows in the back of the truck where they're renovating the house a few houses down. I often look and see what they are dragging out of there. Usually things a re too busted up. but i could see at least one of them was in great shape. So i went and asked the construction worker if he was throwing out the windows. so he let me have the one that wasn't broken. It's huge! with two beautiful old handles.

at first the guy gestured like i should climb up there on his oversized pick up truck - you know the kind you can never see around when changing lanes on the bay bridge in a wind storm - and get it myself. so while i was looking for a way up there, he climbed up and started pulling it out from among the broken ones. I saw that the window frame was about to catch on the handle of the one next to it so i reached under the window as he lifted it and tried to push the broken one with the intrusive handle up and away. but there were so many other broken windows and doors that it was too heavy for me. so i called out to the worker "the handle!"

he kept yanking,

one of the broken windows broke some more! he started twisting the window to get it unstuck from the handle and the other window broke and glass fell all over the truck bed. I was pretty scared that he'd break the main window by now. he has it swaying over my head at a 45 degree angle - i moved fast! then with a great crash the offending handle let go and fell with it's window frame and glass into the truck bed shattering yet more glass. Now all i can say is "Oh my goodness!" (sounding too much like little orphan annie).

he swings the window over the side of the monster truck and hands it to me - and i'm grabbing it while the bottom edge is above my head! I was so scared he was just going to let go - assuming that i was as strong as he. but he moved it gently down to where i had it under control. I thanked him profusely and carried the treasure home having to stop 3 times to rest on the way.

how exciting.

this thing is 5 feet tall, comes up to my eyes!

finishing!

I finished all three windows, the cloth book, one more small handmade art book, and four silk wall hangings as well as some 15 new note cards, 5 new 11x14s, and 10 new 16 x20s, that's alot of work.

I solved the problems with banner printing on Epson's R2400 on my mac and ironing onto freezer paper and it seems easy now.
the trick with ironing onto freezer paper is to encourage the silk to be still and straight with pins or fabric tape or something. then lay the freezer paper over it and encourage that to stay in place too. i leave a two inch lead of freezer paper on the front edge to compensate for the apple/epson driver problem mentioned earlier of starting to print two inches after the beginning of the paper.

To get the banner printing to work on the R2400 with my mac OS 10.3.9, i define a custom paper sizes (in page set up) using 13.14 as the width and putting an extra couple of inches on the tale end to properly position the paper. (Note, be sure to actually select your newly defined paper after creating it cuz, at least on my set up, it doesn't automatically do that.

Then when i go to print, cuz my silk is not 13 inches wide, i'm sure to un-check "center image" in the first print dialogue box and give it a small margin because of the edge of the silk is not exactly on the edge of the paper when i'm done.

when i send it to print i make sure that the banner options are available and check "save banner" (or what ever it is) so that it won't draw a cutting line at the end of the image. I set it for thick paper which reduces smudging and black streaks form the stiff silk touching ink pads and what not. I set the ink density to =10% because my tests were light.

Then i feed it through the manuel roll slot. I brought over a chair that was slightly higher that the slot so that the silk when up and the headed down into the slot at a good angle. on the exit side i did not want the silk to drop down too quickly as this causes the stiff paper holding the silk to bow back up into the printer and increase the chances for dirty smudges. So i brought out the little arms in the exit slot and i built a soft slow bridge of scrap paper and books up and over my scanner. nice set up.
pictures soon

art by the beach

taken with my lens baby
i really enjoy the abstrations - makes it about color and form and they way i feel when i'm there absorbing the wind and waves and sand and the fog - let's not forget the fog!

my windows are almost done!

I 've been working like mad to finish my windows in time for the Open Studio. here's a picture of the first one completed. Sorry it's hard to see but what's there is a big beautiful old window that someone through out (they through out 4!) to which i have adhered silk on which i've printed and image leaves in a stream.

each of the for windows was to have a slightly different version of this image taken in wonderfully peaceful Laurel canyon in Tilden Park in Berkeley. But i no longer have four!

the other day i was working on what was to be the second window. I was doing layout , leaving tape as marks of where the panels should go. forgetting that i was working on glass i leaned to hard and POP CRACK BANG the window cracked right down the middle in a beautiful diagonal. bummer.

the good part is that i probably would not have gotten all four done on time anyway and instead i will have three - the complete series - done to present at Open Studios.

an another installment for the long list of sh*t that can and does go wrong.

mostly i have fun telling the tales of all the stuff that goes wrong. but sometimes it bugs me. like the other day. a clear example of the scramble my brain took from the chemo and never fully recovered! I had these wonderful brochures to go out about the open studios coming up. they were specifically for artists in the Sunset district of California - calling attention to how easy we are to see. I personalized them by circling my house on the neighborhood map, circling my contact info and securing a little insert about my new work. I spent hours putting this together and then dug up some stamps i had. They were lovely, each with a different building famous for it's unique architecture. I stopped and wondered, was the postage correct? I couldn't remember when i'd bought them, or when the last time postage was raised or what the postage is nowadays. So i had a brainstorm, i rifled through the mail that had come the day before. most of the mail had stamps that said "First Class" and not the amount. then i found one stamped with a meter that said 37 cents. Great! my stamps are 37 cents! So i stuck them on until i ran out and skipped down to the corner (OK I don't skip anymore what with one thing and another!) and happily deposited my first bundle of advertisement for the Open Studios. Whew glad to have that done it think - clueless as usual. well it came out the next day when i was sending my daughter to the post office to get more and i said to her - get a hundred 37 cent stamps - No my husband says 39 cents. 39? your kidding right??
well of course he wasn't and there was nothing i could do about tossing all that time and effort and money in the trash - cuz you know i won't get them back til after the open house and they will have ugly stamps all over them about how i have melting butter for brains.

But i noticed that i have a really different attitude about these things than i did when i was young. I used to have such a hard time with my art because i would visualize it and then things went wrong and it never came out like it was in my head, which meant i had failed to express myself and i likely tossed it out. Now i see that it's part of being in the material world that manifesting your vision is full of twists and turns and unexpected bends in the road. it's from these challenges that the art really gets made: in solving the problems, trying a different way or actually liking the way the materials took on a life of their own and created something maybe even better than your original vision.

I figure most of those people in that first mailing didn't really want to get the mailing so it all turned out for the best! Today i sent out over 100 more - with 39 cent on each one!

working wtih silk the saga continues

It's not the silk that's difficult it's the darn mac printer driver for my lovely r2400 printer.

it's not apples fault. the driver is made by epson and they were just plane lazy not including basic functionality that's in the widow's version of their driver etc. so the issue in this case is printing banner prints - and getting the printer to act nicely.
the driver does not include predefined banner sized paper. so you have to "define" your own paper. I made one up and ran a test print using my new silk scarf ironed onto the freezer paper (see below). it started the print in the middle and stopped after about 11 inches of ink. bummer!
so i did a little research and found this really helpful personal website called convolutedbrian (http://www.convolutedbrian.com/epson-r2400-custom-roll-paper-sizes-macintosh.html). The fellow is

I used his advise to use the specific width of 13.14 for my custom printer and then asked for 44 inches.

I cut up a roll of plain paper for the second test, rather than make a mess of my silk. based on his experiments i made the paper longer than 44 inches because the printing always starts 2 inches into the paper with this method.

And my test went very well - except that it never fully ejected the paper and attempts to force the printer to spit it out caused it to pull the paper back up into it's innards and spew it out the slot for the exiting of very think materials which one feeds through the front. this is not ok cuz it rumpled it and put smudges on the paper. so i guess that's another step to research cuz mr convoluted doesn't mention this problem, he's working with rolls that he cuts off as the prints come out.

I will not be beaten - i will get this printed as i want it!

(BTW it looks like I'll need to pump up the saturation to get the colors i want on the silk.

SF Open Studios in the Sunset featuring kayla's daydreaming arts

Hi Everyone:

I'm very excited to announce the upcoming SF Open Studios run by Artspan http://www.artspan.org/open_studios.php

Each weekend different neighborhoods participate in this city-wide event so that you can plan a tour of studios near each other.

October 21 and 22 is the weekend for The Sunset where my new daydreaming arts studio is located, so I want to invite everyone to come for a visit.

It's worth the trip to see my new work (http://daydreamingarts.home.comcast.net/) as well as some of my classics. My latest work has taken an excited bend in the road toward more abstraction in my photography while utilizing more mixed media
work. In addition to framed art in 16 x 20 or 11 x 14 sizes I will be showing handmade books, cloth books with handmade dolls, image transfers with mixed media, note cards, tiny framed art, works on silk and on found objects -- including my pride: silk and acrylic on several beautiful windows.

My new studio on 19th Ave in San Francisco has fantastic light and room for multiple simultaneous projects in a comfortable and safe environment. Download this brochure http://www.sunsetartists.com/os2006.htm which shows my studio as #10 on the map: 2169 20th Avenue - just off of Route 1. It is a real working studio so you can see my process, not just my product.

The Artspan website has information concerning the Open Studios event: http://www.artspan.org/open_studios.php ; a search engine to find artists' studios by numerous criteria: http://www.artspan.org/search.php ; and information about the exhibit of some artists' work (including mine) in a SomArts Main Gallery in SOMA: http://www.artspan.org/open_studios_exhibit.php

Come see my latest work and my new studio October 21-22 from 11 am to 6 pm.

kayla garelick
daydreaming arts

kaylagarelick@mac.com
http://daydreamingarts.home.comcast.net/
http://daydreamingarts.blogspot.com/

working with silk

I'm starting to work with that wonderful silk from Jacquard my friend gave me.

She gave me 2 packages, each with one long thin silk scarf. SO SOFT!

I'm trying to press it before putting it on the paper to print and i can't get the creases out. should i: 1) be more patient and keep ironing; 2) turn up the heat past the silk setting; 3) hand wash the silk to get the creases out; 4) other?

well after extensive use of 1 and 2, i finally I got to 3 and got the creases out by wetting the scarves and pressing them again.

then i ironed the long silk scarves onto a very long sheet of freezer paper. This will allow me to feed the silk through my printer and print directly onto the silk with the paper holding it steady.

boy was that hard. in the end i convinced myself that all the imperfections are what will make the scarf special, not your K-mart reproducible fake painted scarf. but i'm rationalizing in part cuz i really found it so hard! nothing wanted to stay put.

i had imagined being able to iron the silk on nice and straight. instead it wiggles like trying to put jello thru a pasta machine!

I may start all over tomorrow ironing on a table top, not using the ironing board like my friend suggested.

I will do my first print tomorrow.

the image is the one i made for the scarf. it's a composite of several of my images. see how talented i am!