On Reflection is a collection of print based work presented as an attempt to document urban interactions with the sun in the increasingly shortened daylight of early Estonian winter. Images, text, and textures printed primarily through silver gelatin photography and the near obsolete method of mimeograph printing offer alternative and experimental approaches to capturing the ephemeral nature of light and the difficulty of language to describe it. Existing as a document of the passing of days, work created within this collection was made through November and December 2024, while an Artist in Residence at TYPA Centre, in Tartu, Estonia.
This exhibition includes two unique bodies of work, the eponymous “On Reflection”, as well as the process journal “Mimeograafide Trükkimine Typas”, documenting my initial interactions and experimentations with Typa’s Gestetner 360 Mimeograph. On Reflection, featured on 3 sides of the gallery, is composed of text and texture based mimeograph prints which you are encouraged to touch and interact with to reveal the photos underneath. Mimeograafide Trükkmine Typas is presented as a booklet you are also encouraged to handle and read, as well as a wall of the used mimeograph stencils created to make the work in the show.
As with many of my larger projects, a companion playlist can be found here.
I have traveled the 5000 miles to Tartu for two seemingly unrelated reasons. The first being the mimeograph I made the work in this show with. A mimeograph is a stencil based duplication method very similar to Risograph and somewhat related to screen printing which for a brief moment in the mid 20th century was ubiquitous within office settings for making copies. Back in California, I run a Risograph studio and publishing house and have always been interested in these machines that paved the way for my primary medium, however they are incredibly difficult to find in working condition.
The second, less tangible reason, was a desire to experience the darkness of winter in this part of the year. I have spent several summers in the midnight sun of the North and wanted to know what the other end was like. I have spent the last year paying more attention to the daylight of my surroundings preparing to come, but much like poetry translated from it’s native language, found myself wondering if I could really describe the light I was only a visitor in for a moment in time. Can one describe a darkness without also knowing it’s light?
I found myself equally confounded by what to do with an antiquated office machine that offered little in superiority to other printing methods. However, through experimentations with printing and language and walks around town with my camera, the two motivations began to come together. The mimeograph’s most unique quality is it’s reliance on texture and abrasion to make stencils, essentially being a way to reproduce rubbings. In terms of the light, I may not be equipped to describe it faithfully, but I could capture the way it bends and reflects through space in to unexpected places. These ideas come together to create the work shown here, in which a photograph is taken of a shadow or reflection of light, and a rubbing or drawing is made of the surface of which the reflection appears, accompanied by the address, date, and time, providing a documentation of the ephemeral moment.
