some notes on the darkroom
+ part of my undergrad thesis? + jumping joker: vol i, the lowes on 12th, abq, nm
First of all, new zine.
The next series that’s emerging from my silly little publishing imprint is that of the jumping joker. jumping joker features (relatively) short pieces of writing about the unexpected places that make me happy. The first one is about the Lowe’s Hardware Store on 12th St in ABQ, NM.
Details + images + excerpt is below - if you reached out for a copy of barely there, vol i and didn’t get one, this guy’s on its way to you. As usual, shoot me an email with your address and I’ll send off as many as I can before they disappear, but I’ll probably have some in my tote bag if you see me IRL.
* * *
jumping joker: vol i, the lowe’s on 12th
6 pp (unpaginated) on cardstock with fold-out duotone print
Hand-folded, hand-stamped with linocut, inkjet printed
Edition of 44 (numbered)
living independently as an adult, i realize that my initial understanding of the hardware store as a place bereft of fun and doomed to hostile masculinity isn't a hard truth, but a soft one. the hardware store is full of useful, specific things but specialization is often intimidating. before my increasingly frequent trips i would scrounge through digital inventories and watch enough youtube videos to understand my options in preparation for my targeted shopping operations which usually sounded something like:
hello ma'am can i help you. no thanks i'm good. are you sure? yes i'm sure. well what is it that you're looking for? i'm looking for _____ which is why i'm in the aisle for it. well did you have any questions or (insert something materially relevant)? no i'm actually good thank you so much. what are you picking this up for? oh just for an art project. oh an art project, what a funny art project, we have a crafting supplies aisle. yeah, i know about that aisle but this is what i need. are you sure? yes, i'm sure that this is exactly what i need, and this is why, and i don’t need anything else in addition, no really, i don’t, thank you for your help, i’m sure i found everything that i came for, thank you.
Somehow, I’ve managed to hold on (cling to) a darkroom since I graduated.
If I’m being honest, holding onto a darkroom has been a Priority (you Bet there’s a capital P) since getting my BFA, and it’s been a Priority that doubles as a Pain in my Ass. I’ve made prints in a defunct bronze foundry, a community school basement, The University Of New Mexico (somewhat surreptitiously) (good luck getting rid of me, fuckers!), bedrooms and bathrooms across Santa Fe and Albuquerque before finally landing at Quelab.
It’s always been difficult for me to provide a concise answer when people ask me why I do things this way. Part of it is that I like having something to do with my hands; I’m a big fidgeter and repeating the same series of movements around a room for hours is helpful in moments of high anxiety. Often, when I don’t feel good, I’ll retreat to the darkroom and listen to my favorite episodes of This American Life or an old Michael Hurley album. This is a sort of vulnerable answer to give in passing and doesn’t quite get at the heart of the thing, but the basic version is that darkroom printing is the meditative, intuitive part of my practice and I think that the pictures would suffer if they didn’t come into the world this way.
I rarely refer back to things that I’ve already written, but I decided to toss in a couple of paragraphs from my undergraduate thesis which was written almost exactly three years ago (I honestly still can’t believe that Meg let me turn this in):
Printing in the darkroom is proving itself to be a vital1 part of my process within this body of work and others. This is because it makes me feel like a Witch2.
All that a conspiracy needs to be enacted is two actors and these are myself and the image - my pictures are my children and they are active in the creation of their own meaning after I push them out and away. Under red lights and the ticking sounds of timers I am responding to what the picture needs because I know it better than anyone else . There is a randomness and an3 impulsivity that is enabled by the movement that the darkroom commands, I cannot be more responsive, mobile or perceptive. Working and printing with this bent at the forefront also encouraged experimentation because my ears and eyes were Open; thinking about the role of borders and containment as a way of constructing meaning pushed me to abandon the 6x9” print on 8x10” paper . Together, my images and I construct an ideological pedestal on which to4 crouch that is held together by events that we believe to be tangentially connected; we form the spider in the center of the web that feels every tug and rushes to it in the spirit of inclusion, integration, inseparability.
Also - I’m breaking my playlist tradition just this once, but here’s a really cute song.
By this, I mean that as the West is performed, contemporary experiences are constructed in a way that aims to “mirrors” those of frontiersmen, cowboys, etc (ex: Tombstone, AZ, Madrid, NM’s revival, The Museum of the American West in Ruidoso, NM), though represented narratives are narrow in scope.
A Witch being a “Feminine Body” (loosely) whose beliefs in their own actions enable a Channeling, a Happening, a Manifestation, in the eyes of the body enacting the actions and maybe in others as well (not necessary).
It is important to note that my closeness with my images does not mean that their meaning does not change to me over time; they are autonomous actors and I am always capable of being convinced.
Though some prints are close to these standardizations, it is impossible for me, at this point, to entirely abandon convention.