Hello there! It's Jocelyn Mathewes from my studio in Appalachia. And right now I’m soaking up the very last of the summer sun.
When the UV index drops below 5 and the weeds in my garden slow their growth, my studio practice starts to move indoors. The lack of insulation in my garage workspace means that eventually even toning prints will become impossible; the mountain winter will become too cold for both those processes and my body.
The seasonality of my practice is both friction and feature of how I work. Early in my love affair with cyanotype, it was another item in a long list of explanations the medium seems to require. Yes, it always comes out blue, at least in the beginning! No, it’s not indigo dye. Yes, it is photography! No, I can’t print after the sun has set, at least not without special equipment.
So I watch the sun rise and fall at a different azimuth and time each morning. Each sun-filled day I grab what time to print I can; the long goodbye to the season of outdoor printing.
in the studio
One of the key principles I operate by is when in doubt use what you have. While my darkroom sink was out of commission, I dove back in to other materials I tend to collect around the studio.
The house was taken from a phase My daughter went through a phase of making elaborate paper houses, complete with accessories and characters to go with it. I kept them in my studio, because they connected me with something I couldn’t identify with words. Then I asked myself, What would my paper house look like?
I draw inspiration from my children, but also from my childhood—which is where the vintage recipe cards come into play. Food is just one of the things that home can be to a child. Food can provide safety, comfort, and security. Food as container; home as container.
Then I turned from creating a container to a ready-made container—
A matchbox can contain more than just matches, and even the matches themselves can mean more than just their pure utility. They contain the possibility of cooking, community, and connection through fire.
But what happens when the fire is gone? We deduce what the matches mean by seeing where they fall. These matches, latches lit from nightly prayers at my icon corner are stuffed back into their box, which is wrapped in prescription sheets. The matches are a record of my prayers.
Every day I pray for health. Every day I eat my food. Every day I take my medicine. Every day is fed and nourished through these actions.
in the wild
I'm thrilled to be one of three artists participating with Angelica Kauffman Gallery in the TERRAIN Biennial—a grassroots public art festival that brings artists and neighbors together to put public art on the front lawns (and porches, windows, and rooftops, too!) of neighborhoods across the world. Fellow artists Aparajita Jain Mahajan and Bryan Northup are a part of the exhibition as well, all three of us invited by the indomitable Elaine Luther.
Here’s a sneak peek of what I’m working on for my first-ever exhibit in miniature—
xo,
jocelyn
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This is such a welcome breath of fresh air of a newsletter. It's nice hearing about your process.