Using camera-less photography gives me the the ability to combine objects and collaged photographs. These need processing to stop them developing so have to be kept in the dark until then. I scanned them in the printer to give me the image. The paper is particularly light sensitive and detail of the features appeared. The process is known as Lumay.
The above image is glass and a wall tie with a cut out of a photocopy of the girl in the photograph. This re-organising of people and objects presents us with size, time, the human and the fabric of buildings as they deteriorate and still exist in a different state quite beautifully together.
Acrylic mono print imagining the destruction of the wrecking ball reversed out in PS
Acrylic Mono print using found object from the site and imagining the movement of the wrecking ball
Above are some examples of working in wax, photography in a black box,Photoshop and collage.Images in repetition and layered as a metaphor for memory and the dark box was as if seeing where we should not see. The top left image was moving, this was to emulate the movement of the objects hit by the wrecking ball and the kinetic energy withing them.
My work considers the significance of scientific imagery as metaphors for human existence. I draw from both the microscopic and scientific images in a micro to macro process of making. I believe this brings a subconscious connection through which we can communicate.
Scientists agree that everything is energy, and everything is connected. I feel this passionately in my work and indeed my life. In my work I am exploring the crystallisation of tears as a process that occurs beyond our sight but once demonstrated it forms a portal to communicate with the viewer on a subconscious level.
Ideas come from momentary human interactions such as the response to Voyagers iconic blue dot image which began my journey into the study of the human visceral response of crying and the crystallisation of tears. I have developed the memory of a rock climb into a sculpture and a tear into a tactile object that sits in the hand.
As a multidisciplinary artist my choice of medium is key to resolving the work. I develop subjects often through print processes to ultimately create sculpture. I use many different materials such as paper, metal, Perspex and resin, often pushing them to breaking point as I explore their connection with narrative further. The process becomes the art, it is not always aesthetically pleasing but it is a direct result of my practice. The end result morphing into a piece of work that I could not have envisaged at the start of the process.
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Babs Smith Multidisciplinary Artist 