Crossing boundaries between art and craft, interior treatments and exterior views, is part of recognizing that what’s out there is connected to what’s inside. We are not insulated from the social and ecologic web of our world. Clothing is our primary insulator against the environment. I use fabric as a support for my images for the tactile qualities and for the added dimension of relating to the way we live. Rauschenberg said it better, that art relates more to life when it is taken from life. The attraction to repairing what we do have is echoed in the use of patchwork quilting techniques, and frequently, the recycling of materials. An art from we can live with, lean on, cover ourselves with, reuse, store easily, all these are important supports for the subject of the work.
Process:
Cyanotype is a 19th century photographic emulsion in which the light sensitive metal is an iron salt, ferric ammonium citrate, similar to the iron supplement we consume. The images are developed in water, so the unexposed emulsion is washed away, and the effluent is non-toxic to the environment. The photograms are made with objects casting shadows, combined with photographs from large transparencies of images.
—Mallory Cremin, 2013