Cyanotype Workshop with Julia Whitney Barnes

This workshop will start with the basics of how to make a cyanotype print from mixing chemistry, coating paper and/or fabric and developing the print using the sun!

We will cover how to print using fresh and pressed plants, printing with three-dimensional objects (string, plastic bags, glass jars, jewelry, etc.), printing with paper cutouts and how to create and print with photographic negatives. We may also play with experimental techniques including wet cyanotype. This medium is infinite in ways to combine techniques during the creation of the print and after it has been printed. The workshop does not require any previous experience in cyanotype.

About the Instructor: Sometimes considered a printmaking technique, sometimes a photographic technique, artist/educator Julia Whitney Barnes approaches the medium as someone painting with light. She is interested in creating objects that feel both beautiful and mysterious. Each of her cyanotype paintings recall something familiar yet slightly outside of time. Given that sunlight starts the exposure process with cyanotype chemistry, she carefully arranges elaborate compositions at night and utilizes long exposures under natural or UV light to create the final prints. She manipulates physical impressions of plants grown in her Hudson Valley garden and other nearby areas, along with intricate negatives that are created as digital renderings or photographs printed in reverse onto transparencies.

Julia Whitney Barnes is an artist living in the Hudson Valley who works in a variety of media from cyanotypes, watercolor, oil paintings, ceramic sculptures, murals, and site-specific installations. She has exhibited widely in the United States and internationally. She was awarded fellowships from New York State Council on the Arts administered through Arts Mid-Hudson, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Abbey Memorial Fund for Mural Painting/National Academy of Fine Arts, and the Gowanus Public Art Initiative, among others.

Born in Newbury, VT, Julia Whitney Barnes spent two decades in Brooklyn, before moving to Poughkeepsie, NY in 2015. She received her BFA from Parsons School of Design and her MFA from Hunter College. Whitney Barnes has created site-specific installations at the Albany International Airport/Shaker Heritage Society, Albany, NY; Brookfield Place/Winter Garden, New York, NY; Arts Brookfield, Brooklyn, NY, the Wilderstein Sculpture Biennial, Rhinebeck, NY; The Trolley Barn/Fall Kill Creative Works, Poughkeepsie, NY; GlenLily Grounds, Newburgh, NY; ArtsWestchester, White Plains, NY; Gowanus Public Arts Initiative, Brooklyn, NY; Space All Over/Fjellerup Bund i Bund & Grund, Fjellerup, Denmark; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council/Sirovitch Senior Center, New York, NY; Brooklyn School of Inquiry, Brooklyn, NY; New York City Department of Transportation, New York, NY; and Figment Sculpture Garden, Governors Island, NY and among other locations.

What is Cyanotype?
Cyanotype is a camera-less photographic printing process invented in 1842 by scientist and astronomer, Sir John Hirschel, which produces a cyan-blue print when a chemistry-coated surface is exposed to sunlight. It is also known as a sunprint, photogram or blueprint. The first artist (who was also a botanist) to use it was Anna Atkins. She is cited as the very first female photographer (though made without the use of a camera) and her family was friends with William Henry Fox Talbot (credited with inventing photography) and Atkins learned techniques from him and then made her own path. She published a book Photographs of British Algae in 1843. The medium has made a resurgence in the past twenty years with artists from all over utilizing cyanotype in various capacities.

Tickets are SHS Members $75, General Public $100.

Admission to the Planting Utopia viewing and garden tour is included in your cyanotype admission fee!

Register online at Eventbrite.

Category: Workshops