Our final resident artist for 2013 was San Francisco based photorapher Chris McCaw.
He has made an enormous splash in the photography world recently with his Sunburn series. This series employs a fundamentally new photographic process of his design where expired photographic PAPER (rather than film) is exposed in large format vintage cameras with large optics and exposures up to 24 hours to produce unique paper negatives where the arc of the sun is physically burned into the paper. Do take the opportunity to read Chris's full explanation of his process on his site and see some of the amazing images like the one below in the series.
He has taken this notion to quite a large scale as you can see from some of his homemade cameras!
We really enjoyed meeting Chris' girlfriend Rachel, also an artist, who had just come from an opening in Houston and spent a few days with us at the beginning of Chris' stay. We weren't sure we were going to be able to get her out of the Durham Scrap Exchange. She quickly filled up a full sized shopping cart for her next body of work. We cracked open our first bottle of Carolina CatDaddy Moonshine, a gift from our photographer friend David Simonton.
When we invite artists to Cassilhaus we encourage them to take on an ambitious project, maybe one outside of their comfort zone, to work on during their time here. We offer to connect them to resources and scholars in the area that might help them realize the project. There has been no better example of this type of collaboration than with the project Chris proposed. He had purchased a Cirkut camera from the early 1900s on eBay and wanted to modify it and motorize it to track the sun automatically for 24 hours or longer taking into account the earth's rotation.
He didn't have expertise in electronics, motors, or astronomy and was looking for some help. I had no knowledge in these areas either but after a few dead ends I scanned the faculty website for the UNC Department of Physics and Astronomy and sent a cold email to the chair of the department, Dr. Christopher Clemens, whose bio said his research interests included astronomoical instrumentation.
To my complete astonishment, Chris (the astronomer) not only responded but was enthusiastic about helping us with the project! His response was basically, "what Chris proposes is likely impossible. When do we get started?" Within two months of this initial contact Dr. Clemens was teaching a for credit seminar class in his department with graduate and undergraduate students specifically to develop Chris' camera. We were all flabbergasted at how all in he was. Ellen and I visited the class one day. These kids were ridiculously smart.
Chris M went from hoping to start a conversation about how to approach the project to the prospect of having a working prototype before he even arrived! He sent the camera in advance and when he got here he started working with the students to work through issues with the hardware and software. What a difference it makes to work on an actual real problem where you can see the results both good and bad immediately after you have tried something.
He had also sent his monograph on the Sundburn series along for the students which added another amazing aspect of the collaboration as these students had little or no exposure to the world of fine art photography. They were totally energized by his work.
While software glitches and an unusually long run of bad weather (Chris can only shoot when the sun is shining!) in Chapel Hill kept him from being able to fully utilize the camera while he was here, the experience was life changing for the students and a major step forward on the project for Chris. We are incredibly grateful to both Chrises for this singular collaboration.
Chris M was so generous with his time while he was here. He gave an artist talk at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University and also gave informal presentations about his work to student groups.
Chris drove here from San Francisco in his amazing tricked out van--the same van he drove all the way to the arctic circle. It has bedroom, kitchen, dining room, living room, storage room and dark room all in one!
While he was here he was also experimenting with new variations on the Sunburn technique including this crazy rig with 63 50mm SLR lenses mounted on a board. Note he can change the size of the image by selectively installing lens caps!
We ask each of our visiting artists to leave their "mark" on the inside of a closet door in the artist's apartment. It is a very special "wall" of rememberance. We have had some fantastic offerings. We were pretty curious about what Chris was going to come up with and the answer came when he called to ask if he could take the door off its hinges. But first he had to conjure the Sun God.
Then he went to work.
There is still a little scent of burnt paint in the room.
Ellen and I were just in San Francisco over the holidays and we rung up Chris to see if we could visit. He was, of course, out with the van on the stunning coast near Pacifica doing a multi-hour exposure. It was great to see him at work in his home environment. Can't wait to see the finished product. Thank you Chris for a fantastic adventure.
Addendum 4pm 1/3/14: This just in from the Mojave Desert
"Rachel and I just got back from 5 days in the Mojave using the cirkut camera!
There is a giant learning curve and many technical hurdles to tackle, but in short...it works!"
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