It’s been over a week since my last post and so much has happened between then and now and I don’t even know where to begin. First my personal life has take a huge hit. Working on recovering from that – but I’ll know we’ll come through it ok – stronger and better.
Second I have been crazy busy. And I have even been making any art! And the weird thing is that I don’t even care at the moment. I have a new obsession.
I have been wondering for a while the origins of the glass negatives that I have in my possession. I decided to make an appointment with the photoarchivist at the Albuquerque Musuem of Art and History. Said appointment was last Wednesday. The archivist, Glenn, was very enthusiastic about my finds and was amazingly helpful. We looked at old phone books and found a few of my people!! We established that the numbers written on some of them are definitely dates. We also sifted through some of their own glass negative archive – so many amazing images! He also gave me some online resources to look through. Looking online I believe I have discovered the studio that produced my images. And researching further I believe these were taken by a woman – who owned the studio during the time the photos were taken. I shared my findings with the woman I bought the negatives from and my lovely friend Paula and I ran up to Santa Fe on Sunday to buy the rest of the negatives. Based on the info we have so far these negatives are from a “missing” period in Albuquerque’s photographic history. We don’t want the rest of these to become more scattered. I have been obsessively scanning my half of the negatives. I am planning on going to a few places next week and doing more research – on the studio I believe these are from and on the people who are named in the negatives. My goal at this point is to find descendants of at least one person and see if they have an actual copy of the photograph I have a negative for. Most photographs from this time would have a stamp from the studio on the back and this would be ultimate confirmation of the studio they came from. As it is I am already 95% sure I am correct – this would be the cherry on top. Goals for the future are getting a show together showing the negatives themselves, prints of the images on them, and the artwork that has been created using the negatives (there are about 2000 negatives that went through my friend in Santa Fe to artists all over the state) – hopefully a joint show with several museums involved and a book. Today I have to write a small article about the research I’ve been doing that will be published in a local magazine.
Besides going to Santa Fe my weekend also included selling at an art market on Saturday, going out with my friend Susan Saturday night and drinking, going to another friend’s birthday party on Sunday, and helping another friend design biz cards and postcards (on Sunday also). By Monday I was exhausted!

For Bridgette – here’s some more of the glass negatives I have. I believe the first two are siblings – the baby and the two older children – they have the same last name and dates are the same.

I have been a very busy bee this weekend. We went to a birthday party, a wedding, bought plane tickets for my brother’s wedding, did some art, went to a museum, and took tons of photographs of everything – plus the usual weekend errands. Check out my photoblog to see LOTS of cool stuff. You can definitely tell that I’m feeling better as I’ve gone kind of mad with new photos. We are completely broke from buying the plane tickets – traveling with a family is soooooooo expensive! This is our first time all traveling together – before Chris or I have taken the kid(s) by ourselves. Eeesh – that means Chris and I haven’t had a vacation together since….January 2004 – right before Will was born!! Gosh – we need to get a life!

So here is my very first official encaustic piece. It has an image I used from the glass negatives I’m obsessed with. I love the textures in this piece. It looks molten. I used copper, pearlescent rose, and black.

After two weeks of being horrifically ill in various ways I finally feel like a human being again. This piece has going through many permutations (at one point she was covered in hot pink polka dots) but I think it is done now. Much more realistic than other glass negative work I’ve done – but I like her – and felt she needed a simple background. I also completed an encaustic piece that I am scared to post – maybe later.

This is one of my most prized possessions. It is my great-grandmother’s Cook’s Guide to Paris. It is from her grand tour when she was a young woman. I never met her but have her postcard collection and lots of travel ephemera and I feel like a I have a good idea of her personality. She was definitely independent – married later in life – after a lot of travel. My grandmother, her daughter, was the same way – lots of adventures before settling down and getting married – and lots of adventures after that – but then with husband and kids in tow.

and it’s called encaustic painting! These tiny lovelies are all 2 1/2″ x 3 1/2″ and are done on artboard. I first attempted encaustic at Artfest where I took a class with the amazing Patricia Seggebruch and I felt an immediate connection with the medium. I finally got the last bits of the supplies I needed to get started and these are what I cranked out in a frenzy last night.