To continue my December 27, 2010 post, a showing of my “Relics” is scheduled for December 2011 at a local gallery (Frame Shop and Gallery, Hamilton, Montana). But the effects need more work. Blacks blocked up. Lighter areas looked bleached. Earlier this summer, I plunged into an intensive digital photography upgrade to get a better handle on the editing software, Photoshop (Rocky Mountain School of Photography, Missoula, Montana). Now I can understand the problems evident in my “Relics” series.
While in the program, I took every opportunity to manipulate an image in Photoshop, specifically to duplicate, flip, and blend a single image – which works better than trying to blend several different images. In one class, the instructor asked us to think in terms of a concept and produce a series based on that concept.
Mine: commemorative roadside crosses disintegrate and are forgotten. I wanted to conjure up a way to make these sad warnings permanent. As four-way symmetry is a metaphor for eternity, from each photograph I took of a roadside cross, I designed a square made up of four blended layers, each lying at a different 90-degree angle.
Scarves can be permanent, handed down from one generation to the next. I converted the above square into a silk scarf, and it looks just fine.
Please don’t drink and drive.
