Homework is an ongoing series that I began in 2004. I was gutting and renovating a tiny house in Provincetown, going back-and-forth to Boston to teach. I had no time to get into my studio and thought, I’m just going to do something with the detritus of my days. Small pieces of what was left from working on the house, preparing food or teaching a class were organized between two pieces of packing tape creating a “negative” that I could use for my Cyanotypes. Enjoyed them so much that I began doing them on a larger scale using contact paper instead of tape. What’s kept me engaged with this series for so long is the excitement of not knowing what the final cyanotype will look like since the objects I was use are different densities and light would pass through them at different levels. In the end, any color or content in the material I use is lost and all that remains is a silhouette.
(Home Work Series Carpet – Ron Pizzuti Collection)
Materials I’ve incorporated include:
35mm film
Aluminum foil
Band-Aids
Book clots
Bread tags
Candy wrappers
Cardboard
Cassette tapes
Chopstick wrappers
Christmas ribbon
Coffee stirrers
Construction debris
Cut up credit cards
Duct tape
Fabric
Feathers
Gift wrap
Hospital bracelets
Maps
Masking tape
Pages of braille
Paint samples
Painters tape
Paper reinforcements
Petrified rubber bands
Plastic strapping
Postage stamps
Price tags
Salt packets
Scrap paper
Shredded documents
Tarpaper
Tea bag labels
Unpaid bills
Used matches
Vintage wallpaper
Window screening
X-rays