Paul Kleinman enters the darkroom

I've known Paul for just about five years, not long as things go.  He's an upriver neighbor of mine if you stretch it a little, in the Hudson River Valley north of New York.  I didn't know it at first, but he's an old friend of the great etching teacher at Manhattan Graphics, Vijay Kumar.  Occasionally Paul would come around and show me his ink drawings, landscapes mostly, long lonely lines of dim trees and shadowed hills under a deft touch.  They had a sparse poetry, so unlike the grinning, affable man I knew; I liked them enormously. 

To return the favor, I invited him one day into the darkroom to play with photo paper and light.  After trying first this and then that, he began to settle on a halting, inky language of blurred signs, which I took as another way of expressing the loss and longing (if that's fair) implicit in his spare landscapes, another of his voices.  Here are a couple of pictures from that day; whatever their genesis, for me they deliver a nice shot of glassprint charm and tag.

Kleinman, Glassprint, 2010

Kleinman, Glassprint, 2010

glassprint & chemigram workshop in NYC starts soon

Collins, Creation of the World, Part 1, 2010

The annual workshop in glassprints and chemigrams will be held earlier than usual this year, on two successive Sundays, January 30 and February 6, 2011 - so this is your chance to reserve a spot.  Contact Manhattan Graphics Center right away if you're interested, by email or phone.  Because part of the instruction takes place in the darkroom, space is quite limited.

chemistry room, MGC

There aren't many places where you can learn these unusual techniques, which lie at the boundary of photography and painting (with a little alchemy thrown in), but one place certainly is MGC in the Soho area of lower Manhattan.  If you're from out of town or abroad and have always dreamed of coming here, let us know and we'll help you find accomodations that suit you.

By the end of the workshop, you'll feel yourself beginning to develop a personal visual language that will lead to a deepened expressiveness, and you'll be given tools to continue your explorations on your own.  Meanwhile, your best work will be featured in a project-space exhibition in April at the center.  So join us next month to embark on this special adventure.

chemigram workspace, MGC

New student work

Huebsch, untitled, 2010

We finished our annual class in Glassprints, Gum Bichromates and Chemigrams at Manhattan Graphics Center in a great splash of chemistry, as the popular chemigram section, held last, took off like a party. As soon as theory was dispensed with - so tiresome! - and notebooks stowed, the now unfettered students were free to plunge their photo paper into developer and fixer again and again, altering their movements at will, letting the forces of gravity, inertia and diffusion exercise their magic. Results were predictably ecstatic and the best ones saved.

This piece by Rand Huebsch, a book artist of note, displays an almost classical use of soft resists, in this case tape, interleaved with fixer applied by brush. It recalls in a perhaps more controlled and lyrical way the early work of Chargesheimer in the 1940s, now at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.

The next class is scheduled for Spring 2011.