Interconnected | The Big Cyanotype! – TexasGirl Photography

Interconnected | The Big Cyanotype!

If you follow my blog, you’ll have seen this post about the community project I concocted for World Cyanotype Day. In case you missed that, here’s the opening blurb.

2020 is an especially unique year, one that highlights just how interconnected we are all. From one person to another, one house to another, one town to another: the connections branch and grow, reaching into every nook and cranny of this beautiful place we get to call home. Earth has been called the Blue Planet – blue sky, blue sea, blue the hue that the light of the sun turns the natural salts of a cyanotype when it’s placed outside beneath those stellar rays.

To celebrate World Cyanotype Day this year, I need a hand – LOTS of hands – and I would like for you, dear people of Round Rock, to lend them to me. On Saturday, September 26th, I will be making a large scale cyanotype collage at my home, but I won’t be alone: you will be there with me, represented by paper cutouts of your handprints, and whatever unique piece of you makes you feel connected to your community, to the world.

Well, guess what: WE DID IT!

YOU did it. YOU made this happen – all of you! Weeks of promoting the project on social media, with the valiant help of Round Rock Arts – special shoutout to Christina, for having all the necessary supplies at Downtowner Gallery and making sure everyone who entered left behind a handprint. HUGE thanks also to Create to Donate for the awesome blog post about this project. And even more mega thanks to all my family and friends, including all my Shootapalooza sisters (and brother!) who threw in by mail.

If you click on the Shootapalooza link, you’ll see a photo of the whopping humongous cyanotype that started this whole fun ball rolling, back in 2015.

The hands came in slowly at first, which was fine of course and what I had expected. I gave myself plenty of time to collect a few and do a test run, because I only had one good piece of fabric (ordered from the talented Linda Stemer at Blueprints on Fabric ). For the test, I used a plain old white flat sheet that I treated with cyanotype chemistry (hastily) and dried (poorly) in my garage. I don’t know how Linda manages coating the fabric she sells; I would love to be a fly on the wall in her shop because I can’t even coat a t-shirt without making a gigantic mess. But I digress.

Being more concerned than normal with not “messing up,” I was only comfortable dealing with both the test fabric and the final product fabric at night, or at the very least in a carefully sealed up darkened room. This meant taking over the bedroom for the better part of 2 days, but I seem to have been forgiven.

I would consider the test run a success, especially since it taught me a great deal. For example, I learned that the grass in my backyard was too fluffy to make a decent print upon, and also that I should wear more than just a bathing suit when making the final product because lying in the Texas sun for a sustained period is sweaty business (and sweat does things to cyanotype fabric that might or might not be desirable). The test also helped me work out the final design; I didn’t need to have my legs on it, just my torso and upper body was plenty to make a “trunk.”

Here’s some photos from the test process. . . .

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Photos from the preparation process are below. I pinned all the hands in place, since I couldn’t think of any other way to keep them where they needed to be during the transportation from the house to the outdoors. Arranging all the hands on the fabric was really fun!

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Thus educated, “all” I had to do was keep badgering people for handprints and wait for the Big Day, which dawned CLOUDY but managed to clear at exactly the perfect time. I carefully set the stage – in the front yard this time, since the grass is woefully puny there but the sun is plentiful. I put down a tarp so that any moisture from the ground would not interact with the coated fabric. I set my phone up on the tripod we received with a set of Stik Bots, armed my family with cameras, rounded up the neighborhood kids, and BOOM it was showtime.

Here’s some stills from the 10 minute exposure, plus the time lapse video which you might have seen on my Instagram

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