New triptych featured in the MCAD 2013 Faculty Exhibition, Just Curious. Exhibition and Reception images here! 

Copper, Hair, House, (digital mock up),  2013, Archival Pigment Prints

Copper, Hair, House, (digital mock up),  2013, Archival Pigment Prints

Similar to an earlier series I did, I wanted to play with transparent photographs. Instead of cyanotyping the back, I printed on both sides of watercolor paper.

The text is legible when the light hits the piece right, and can be read only through the photograph. The words are by Georgiana Houghton from her book Evenings at home in spiritual seance, 1882. 

Black and Blue - The Memory Shadow

Was fortunate enough to be featured in the faculty exhibition Artists for All Ages. Though, was more excited to try something new.  A triptych of Silver Gelatin Fiber prints with Cyanotyped backs.  

 

(they are difficult to photograph)

It's really great because depending on the light they look like normal photographs but when the sun is hitting them just right you see the ghost image.The memory shadow.  Big thanks to MCAD for figuring out how to hang them so cleanly and uniquely.

 

The inspiration for the form was Carol Mavor's book "Black and Blue" (which I've spoken about before.) 

It came about thanks to a serendipitous moment while I was reading the book one morning.  The sun illuminated the Anna Atkins print on the inside cover and projected it on the front...and it was beautiful.

Tons of great Northern Spark information!  Tomorrow is the big day!





SO! We spoke on 6/1 at the McNally Smith for a Pre Northern Spark Artist talk. It was a really fun event, and big thanks to the attendees, artists, and of course Sarah and Steve.

It was such a great conversation that we didn’t stick much to script, but here are some of the things we prepared for:

The idea for your project and where it came from:
This is our first collaboration, and it came out of a chance meeting revolving around talks we were both doing at the MIA surrounding work we each did for their photography Art Cart.  We got chatting about photography, ghosts, and the paranormal and quickly discovered we had very similar interests artistically, historically, and aesthetically.  Beyond our art practice, we both do have a stake in the subject matter sharing a life-long interest; Lacey has studied to be a Spiritualist medium and healer and Nathan has been involved with a paranormal investigation group for many years. In terms of the topic, we’re not outsiders looking in, we’re insiders trying to get people to join us.
Above all though, we owe Kerry Morgan and MCAD an immense amount of gratitude as she is one who gave us the opportunity and support.

What inspired you to make your artwork :
The love and curiosity of Spiritualism and all things otherworldly.  We’re very interested in the role that photography plays as a tool to simultaneously prove and disprove, prophet and denier.
Photography can “convince the unprejudiced inquirer or the rational and sincere believer, that is is impossible that his faith be false” - George Stein Keith, 1844. We talk a lot about photography being the closest thing to encountering those that have passed.


Whether Northern Spark inspires you to work in a different way:
The scale is the most exciting part, it’s a very interesting thing to prepare for tens-of-thousands of people to visit your project within hours.  It’s quite a task to figure out how to have a collective participatory event that also allows for individual experience and connection with the work. It’s funny, because so much of the materials we’re using, we already have in our own homes, so building this parlor is like inviting the entire Twin Cities denizens into our living rooms…or fantasy living rooms. We are looking forward to playing off the group-energy of a crowd and watching them paw through the installation.

How does this project fit in with your other work:
We’re both avid makers and collectors, so in some ways this a chance to explore all the facets of our larger interests outside of photography and/or the things that inspire us to make photographs. Both of us draw on history and historical photographic processes.

What do you hope people will experience with your artwork:
A sense of wonder, a sense of reverence for those who came before us and put energy into making and building structures, lives, histories that still influence us today.  A feeling that they’re not alone in this life, that they know they’re magical beings.

Why it was made for an all-night, public audience platform:
Séances, ghostly encounters, photography—these things are known to take place in the dark (room).  The photograph has to be disclosed in the dark, and before it can be introduced to the light it has undergo a transformation, an interpretation by a medium.  The connection of the medium and spiritualist beliefs are undeniable, One intends to the revive the dead, whereas the other attempts to stop one from ever dying.  As an anonymous spectator noted in 1839, Photography was:
More like some marvel of a fairy tale or delusion of necromancy than a practical reality.
Which is funny because Henry Fox Talbot often called his Calotypes, Fairy Pictures.


We were also lucky enough to be featured in Vita.MN's guide to Northern Spark:



...and doubly lucky to be given a shout-out by l’étoile! 

Can't wait for tomorrow night...Northern Spark 2013!!!

Spirit Telephone

Have you downloaded the Northern Spark app for your smart phone? Cool way to plan your night, make sure to include multiple visits to us!

Speaking of phones, what do you think of Thomas Edison’s “Telephone to the Dead”?

“I have been at work for some time building an apparatus to see if it is possible for personalities which have left this earth to communicate with us.” - Edison 

“Now what I propose to do is furnish psychic investigators with an apparatus which will give a scientific aspect to their work. This apparatus, let me explain, is in the nature of a valve, so to speak. That is to say, the slightest conceivable effort is made to exert many times its initial power for indicative purposes. It is similar to a modern power house, where man, with his relatively puny one-eighth horse-power, turns a valve which starts a 50,000-horse-power steam turbine. My apparatus is along those lines, in that the slightest effort which it intercepts will be magnified many times so as to give us whatever form of record we desire for the purpose of investigation. Beyond that I don’t care to say anything further regarding its nature. I have been working out the details for some time; indeed, a collaborator in this work died only the other day. In that he knew exactly what I am after in this work, I believe he ought to be the first to use it if he is able to do so.” - Edison 

The “Telephone to the Dead” is the name that was given to the device Thomas Edison was working on in the last decade of his life. In multiple essays on spiritualism written during the early 1920′s (all are available in the book The Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Edison by Dagobert Runes, 1948*), Edison tried to grapple with the concept of how the spirit could exist after death. He thought that the “life units” that were unknown by science joined together to create every animate (and possibly inanimate) object. Upon death, these life units broke up into their respective individual units and joined another form after human death.

This instrument has been dubbed as the “Telephone to the Dead,” and currently, this instrument that Edison was working on has never turned up. Edison never referred to his device as the Telephone to the Dead; it is a name that has been given to this device by paranormal researchers. In his essays, the item he was working on was likened to to a valve that would amplify the ability for the swarms to manipulate the object so that “it does not matter how slight is the effort, it will be sufficient to record whatever there is to be recorded.” Until this day, the plans for Edison’s device have yet to be discovered and the Edison Estate (and many skeptics) claim that Edison must therefore have never worked on a device to communicate with the dead despite these essays saying the exact opposite. - Woolworth, 2011

Cross post from Spirit Manifestations! 

More Manifestations news!!

Anna Ruhland did a really fun interview with us:

#1: What will people experience at Manifestations?

Manifestations will provide the experience of a 19th century spiritualist séance parlor.  Visitors will be free to interact with our ethereal installation and will help to conjure the spirits of St. Paul and beyond.  Attendees will have the option to participate in several activities including: foretelling their own fates with divination cards and planchettes; viewing 3D spirit photographs; reading tales from St. Paul denizens (of days gone by); interacting with a medium; entering the Spirit Chamber to collaborate on a unique photographic take-home memento; and more!

Original work by the artists will be incorporated throughout the installation—much of it produced using processes popular in the 19th century.

#2: What inspired this project?

This is our first collaboration, and it came out of a chance meeting revolving around talks we were both doing at the MIA surrounding work we each did for their photography Art Cart.  We got chatting about photography, ghosts, and the paranormal and quickly discovered we had very similar interests artistically, historically, and aesthetically.  Beyond our art practice, we both do have a stake in the subject matter sharing a life-long interest; Lacey has studied to be a Spiritualist medium and healer and Nathan has been involved with a paranormal investigation group for many years. In terms of the topic, we’re not outsiders looking in, we’re insiders trying to get people to join us.  Kerry Morgan and the MCAD gallery gave us the amazing opportunity and support to embark on this project that’s been evolving for months.

Also the love and curiosity of Spiritualism and all things otherworldly.  We’re very interested in the role that photography plays as a tool to simultaneously prove and disprove, prophet and denier.

#3: Do you think there are ghosts at Union Depot? Do you think the stage of a historical building holds some weight for this project (aside from the obvious: but more so the structural aspects of the building and the experiences that NS attendees might have with it)?

Hmm…there must be. Any place that took so much labor and energy to build, and has housed so many people passing through retains that energy. Traveling is very emotional for many people– meetings, reunions or tearful goodbyes are played out over and over in these public spaces that travelers have no choice but be comfortable showing their emotions–much more so than at the grocery store. We like the idea of Northern Spark participants walking the same halls, interacting with the same materials that thousands of travelers have.

Something else–often when buildings are renovated or have construction going on, ghosts and paranormal energy will rise to the surface, after being stirred up after sitting dormant. If there are ghosts at the Union Depot, we bet they like seeing it in its restored glory.

Check out Manifestations blog, here: Spiritmanifestations.tumblr.com

Also, Northern Spark is still needing help with its Kickstarter campaign.  Receive an original cyanotype by us while supporting this great organization.

Spirit Trumpets

Cross-post from the Manifestations blog, but, that's ok.

The Art and Crime of Illusion, Saturday Evening Post, 1951

Spirit trumpets are long, cone shaped horns used to communicate with ghosts at seances. The instruments were first made popular in the late 19th century by Spiritualist mediums like Etta Wriedt and Johnathan Koons.

During seances, trumpets typically float about in a dimly lit room. A luminous band and the end of the horn helps participants distinguish its movements in the dark.

Spiritualists believe that trumpets work as an amplifier for psychic energy and can increase the volume of a ghost’s voice. Younger and weaker spirits are thought to almost always use a trumpet to communicate with humans.

Johnathan Koons is widely credited as the first medium to use a trumpet for spirit communication. At his spirit room in Athens, Ohio, ghosts would begin seances by saying “good evening friends” through the trumpet and would then ask participants what type of materializations they wished to see.

The first spirit trumpets were often homemade and produced from an assortment of metals. It was not until the early 1900s that E.A. Eckel began to offer commercialized spirit trumpets from his tin shop in Anderson, Indiana.

Today a typical trumpet experience lasts about two to three hours with cones levitating and vibrating on several different occasions. Once a spirit has left the room the trumpet will crash to the floor marking the end of the seance.

Via Museum of the Macabre

Minnie Harrison

Margery (Mina) Crandon

Museum of the Macabre

We have a Spirit Trumpet thanks to Modern American Spiritualists in St. Louis, MO. It will be at Manifestations.

 

Jennie Jones Baily (right) with a friend, mourning for her father, 1873.

Digital negative from a Ferrotype.

Manifestations News!!
  
We have been invited to speak at the Northern Spark Pre-Festival Artist talk.

Join us for an evening of short, rapid-fire presentations by several Northern Spark artists.

Using a Pecha Kucha format each artist or team will introduce the project they are preparing for the festival. Representing a diversity of disciplines from architecture and design to music and video to participatory dance, together these artworks are emblematic of Northern Spark as a whole: multi-media, interactive, and up all night.

The program will conclude with a Q & A moderated by festival Artistic Director Steve Dietz that aims to reveal what it means to present work in the public sphere, overnight, for thousands of people.

Presenting artists include: John Keston, Jennifer Newsome Carruthers and Tom Carruthers, Nathan Lewis and Lacey Prpic Hedtke, Ananya Dance Theater, Seitu Jones, Pritika Chowdry and more TBA.

6:30 pm Cash bar open
7:00 pm Presentations
8:00 pm Moderated Q & A

Check out the FB group here! 

Also, we made a Tumblr....so we're firing on all cylinders now!  The page promises to continue to haunt well after the NS event.

SpiritManifestations.Tumblr.Com

Excited to announce participation in this year's Northern Spark! 

Northern Spark is a portal to a new experience of the Twin Cities. Throughout the night we each pick a route accompanied by friends or in the companionship of familiar strangers. Together we look at art, experience community in a new way, and see the cities in a new light.

This is the 3rd year of the all night art festival. 2011 was throughout MSP, 2012 was in Minneapolis (which I was grateful to participate in.), and this year it's in St. Paul, with the newly renovated Union Depot acting as the central hub. 

Such a beautiful building!

I am lucky enough to be doing a project with fellow artist, historian, and paranormal enthusiast Lacey Prpić Hedtke. Thanks to MCAD, the gallery, and director Kerry Morgan for this awesome opportunity! 



Manifestations
This project will provide the experience of a 19th century spiritualist séance parlor while contextualizing and paying homage to the history of the Depot’s transitory space. Artists Lacey Prpić Hedtke and Nathan Lewis will be the guides through this ethereal installation and will help to conjure the spirits of St. Paul and beyond. Attendees will have the option to participate in several activities including: foretelling their own fates with divination cards and planchettes; viewing 3D spirit photographs; reading tales from St. Paul denizens (of days gone by); interacting with a medium; entering the Spirit Chamber to collaborate on a unique photographic take-home memento; and more!

This event serves to connect visitors to people and neighborhoods of the city that have disappeared, and inform them about the once thriving phenomena of Spiritualism practiced by all strata of the American public – from presidents to peddlers.
Original work by the artists will be incorporated throughout the installation—much of it produced using processes popular in the 19th century. At key hours throughout, the event will be punctuated with ghostly surprises!



Our space is right off the main Depot entrance, a former office space that will undergo a HUGE transformation.  It has been an incredibly fun project so far! One of the features will be a newspaper we're creating using historic and true Minnesota/Midwest ghost stories (the research alone would make this project worth while.)



The Northern Spark Page
MCAD's Page
The Facebook Event Page!

This is the story of a man, marked by an image of his childhood. 


Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments. 

Later on they do claim remembrance when they show their scars.



She calls him her ghost.

Black is the color of the darkroom...

Sherrie Levine, Black Mirror: 8, 2004

Black is the color of the darkroom, of desire, "of the black milk of the nocturnal goat" (Rilke), of cinema, of being underground, of a fall through the hole of the pupil of the eye, of a bomb shelter, of a cellar, of a pile of coal, of dirt, of sweet, thick, dark molasses, of bad-luck cats, of the velvet dress of John Singer Sergeant's Madame X, of the mourning coat, lined in fur, with matching skull cap, worn by Han's Holbein's Christina of Denmark, of Laurence Sterne's famous all-black page in Tristam Shandy, of rare tulips, of the paintings of Ad Reinhardt, of night, of caves, of melancholia, of the black sun, of the sunless sky (after a volcanic eruption or after the dropping of a nuclear bomb) and of beauty. -- Black and Blue: The Bruising Passion, Carol Mavor

Ad Reinhardt, Black Painting

Ruben Nusz, Black Polaroid, 2009

Matthew Booth, Untitled Black Photograph, 2009

Andrey Lev, Untitled Black Painting, 2008

I like space that never stops...Black is like that. —Lee Bontecou

Nathan Lewis, Wolf Lake, 2013

Esther Bubley

They didn’t realize she was there, she wasn’t invading them, she was sort of floating around.  And all of the sudden they saw themselves, not unpleasantly, yet with her discernment…and they said “My God, it’s interesting.” - Roy Stryker

Way back in June 2012, MCAD had an exhibition entitled About Change: MCAD Alumni and Acts of Transformation.

What does it mean to “transform the world through creativity and purpose?” Using the college's vision statement as a point of departure, this exhibition spotlights the myriad ways in which MCAD alumni have contributed to the transformation of the cultural landscape, in Minnesota and beyond.

The creative practices of a dozen individuals working in the fine arts, graphic design, illustration, film, and interactive media are featured, including Norman Andersen '76, Charles S. Anderson '81, Esther Bubley '41, Keetra Dean Dixon ('99), Wanda Gág '16, Dan Jurgens '81, Karolina Karlic '05, JK Keller '99, Kathleen Laughlin '68, George Morrison '43, Mike Perry '03, and Peter Williams '75.

One of my favorite photographers, Esther Bubley, was featured, and it was awesome chance to delve into her history as I had always felt a strong connection to her. The show required a lot of research, and it was a joy to spend day after day flipping through old magazines, books, and learning anything I could.  Amazingly it resulted in an opportunity to lecture about her life and work as part of the exhibition programming, Silent Witness.  The title of course being a riff off the book Silent Witnesses: Representations of Working-Class Women in the United States, which not only features Bubley, but is an awesome read by itself.

Long story short, here are some great quotes about/by her and some work!

In the opinion of some people, the creative ability and success of a professional photographer are directly related to the Photographer’s Qualities.  These are:  accent, goatee, monocle, creative corduroy suits, paratrooper shoes, commanding voice and a keen sense of how ride roughshod over people.

Having none of these qualities to any discernible degree, Esther Bubley has been doomed many times to a far duller and less rewarding life than she actually leads.  Those who have so doomed her by proclamation include two teachers, government officials, several “famous photographers,” and at least one picture editor of a well known picture magazine.

In her path, past these various portents and prophets of her doom, small, quiet, unassuming miss Bubley has managed to raise her price per picture by one of the most astronomical multiplications known in photography.  She has also managed to achieve a photographic life combining elements of amateur and professional attributes in proportions that other people envy.  - Modern Photography, 1952




















Girl sitting alone in the Sea Grill, a bar and restaurant waiting for a pickup. "I come in here pretty often, sometimes alone, mostly with another girl, we drink beer, and talk, and of course we keep our eyes open--you'd be surprised at how often nice, lonesome soldiers ask Sue, the waitress, to introduce them to us"

  

John Edwin Mason made an awesome observation contrasting Bubley and Cindy Sherman.

Which is kind of funny as Bubley said:

I like to read about the new trends…but I don’t like them.  Cindy Sherman takes pictures of herself dressed as anything from a bag lady to Marilyn Monroe and makes enormous six-by-eight foot glossy prints.  I feel photos should be more of a recording of what is going on in people’s lives, I don’t think they should make them up.  Sherman and other photographers with this style should be painters, except they probably can’t paint.

The Realta Hotel in a white room with watermelon curtains. I think that the wonderful thing that is happening or has happened to me is that I am growing up; or I am grown up and enjoying it. I have found the human race. It is like finding one's family at last. I have no more silly questions about what is art or why is art. Seeing the great works of the Italian Renescance [sic] has answered them. It is a personal thing. These people are my ancestors in spirit if not in fact. I think feeling like this must be akin to feeling religion although it is different. No questions are answered but they need not be. - Diary entry, 1952

Her body of work is so vast that it's almost insulting how little I've shown here.

Some great further reading:

Personal website run by her niece

Secondat: Esther Bubley

Museum Syndicate: Esther Bubley

John Edwin Mason - TONS of great info and commentary about Bubley