Arty arternoon

Well, an outing at last! She took me out to do art this afternoon. We learned about Polaroid Transfers. What fun! You take an image of a slide using a special Polaroid machine and then transfer the partly processed emulsion onto paper or fabric or somesuch to make a pretty groovy picture. Robyn used to do this with some of her amazing travel slides from around the world, and Miriam brought some old family photos to play with, as well as a Mt Isa shot from the sixties by her Grandma Cathy.
She took me out of the (damn) sock and let me help. Yaay! Our tutor for the afternoon was Wave. Cool name, eh! He let us do the workshop in his little place in the West End of Provincetown. It was set up like a little photographic laboratory! I got the job of checking the water in the plastic bucket. It had to be within a pretty strict range of temperatures.

MZ tried wet paper and dry paper. For the wet paper she had to put it in this container for a few seconds. And I had to supervise. After all, it's not as easy as it looks. Nothing is, really. And it is Miriam we're talking about. She needs constant watching.

Luckily Jim was there, taking care of the details. He's working here on one of the photographing machines... you put some Polaroid film in the bottom and a slide in the top, then push a few things in and pull a few things out and peel the thingy off the whatsit and roll the black thingy (face down) onto a sheet of paper. Easy!

The bit they let me help with, other than paper-wetting, was the rolling. Great. The roller is bigger than I am. "Press harder!" was all they could say. "Press harder! Work evenly! Don't let the Polaroid slip!" Ye gods. I did a great job and don't you let anyone tell you different. Here's proof.

Here are a couple of bits I did and really like - they are on silk.