Tangled Up In Blue

Tangled up in Blue is a deeply personal self-portrait series that took several years to complete. The majority of the work was produced in an intense, short period of time, then it had to rest for a couple of years before I could complete and show the body work. That I allow it up on my website is not an easy choice for me because the images are all born from vulnerability, from trying to come to grips with difficult emotions and states of being that stemmed from my struggles with depression, which were made worse by long Alaskan winters.
The process I used to make these is special and was difficult. It is a combination of technologies and processes that are very new and very old. First I took digital portraits of myself, and in photoshop merged them with other images of objects or landscapes. I then used a digital printer to print out a negative, which was used to make a print on fabric. The fabric was treated with cyanotype, which is a very old chemical process that dates back to the 1840's. When exposed to UV light, It creates a rich, gorgeous shade of blue. Cyanotype was once used to make copies of blueprints- which is actually how blueprints got their name. The color images were printed on fabric as well, but were treated with a special coating, and was then run through an inkjet printer. The frame of each print was created separately from the print, and are also fabric treated with cyanotype. The images were then stitched into the frames.