Praeterita

Luminaries outside Mount Carroll History Center, IL Despite my left-leaning politics, I generally try only to post art and art-related stuff on my blog or social media. After the events here in the USA yesterday (January 6th, 2021), that is proving a difficult thing to maintain. But here is something that might speak to both urges (please bear with me to the end). A public art project The photos in this post show a public art project that I did in collaboration with @patricia.a.mcnair.7 at the end of 2010. We spent time in a small town in northwest Illinois, named Mount Carroll, on a community memory project. The request: people of all changes supply an old family photo, together with a page of memories they associate with it. What was nice is that we gathered the memories of some of the youngest and the oldest people in the town, ending up with one memory for every decade of the twentieth century. Luminary with phototransfers Phototransfers I then printed the photos and one line of me...

I can't believe that it's exactly one year since the conclusion and opening event of the Mount Carroll Community Memoir and Public Art Project -- the unveiling of four giant luminaries, imprinted with photos and phrases from community participants: There were four luminaries, constructed out of wood from a sustainable tree farm, put together by a local furniture maker. They are currently being displayed indoors at four locations around Carroll County in northwestern Illinois. Looking at the pictures again, I remind myself that too often I rush on to another project as soon I've finished something, too quickly, sometimes. In 2012, I intend to make a better effort to bring the luminaries together again to find a permanent display site for them.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

I was snowed in yesterday in Chicago and didn't get to the studio, so I spent the day working on some proposals for public art projects. In the meantime, the luminaries from last year's Carroll County Historical Society project have been moved to different indoor locations within the county, both to protect them from the harsh Illinois winters, and so that they can be seen by more people: The one on the left is at the Kraft building in Mount Carroll. Formerly a clothing store, the building was struck by lightning and gutted in the subsequent fire about six years ago. It has since been rehabbed by the local Community Development Corporation and will soon reopen as the town's Visitors' Center. The photo on the right shows a luminary at the public library in Lanark, Illinois. The other two have also gone to county libraries, and I will post photos of those when I can.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

I drove the 136 miles to Mount Carroll the other day to check on the luminaries, and to discuss with the Historical Society the idea of moving them indoors during the winter to different locations around Carroll County. Here are a couple of low-res cellphone photos of the luminaries in the snow: They are surviving the first blast of Illinois winter remarkably well. More than six inches of snow fell in the last week, and temperatures at night having been getting down near zero Fahrenheit. For you centigrade-thinking people, that is what we scientists refer to as 'fucking cold'. Yet, apart from a slight bowing to the lids, the wood of the frames looks fine, as do the plexiglass panels. But I don't want to push our luck by leaving them out all winter, so I'm going to arrange for them to spend a few months at a time in public buildings in the area.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

(Apologies to email and Facebook friends who have already seen this). A short article about the giant luminaries for the recently-completed Carroll County Community Memoir project has just been published in InHabitat, a great web magazine devoted to all things green in architetecture, design, art, technology. http://inhabitat.com/2010/11/12/giant-solar-luminaries-highlight-a-communitys-history / I've been following Inhabitat for nearly a year now, and it publishes information on the most amazing things. I guarantee that if you spend a few minutes reading its pages, you'll discover possibilities with sustainable design that you've never even dreamed of. The things that artists do, too, can be spectacular, so I'm quite chuffed, as we Anglos say, that the luminaries created by me, Michael Johnson, and Ryan Bess have been included.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

I just completed creating a playlist of YouTube slideshows for the whole community memoir/public art project, starting with the workshops, then the construction of the luminaries, the inauguration event, and then showing photos of the luminaries by day, and lit up at night. You can also see them on the 'Project Videos' page of the updated project website .   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

As part of the community memoir and public art project, I arranged to have a glossy, 40-page photobook printed with an online publisher and book distributor, Blurb.com. If you look in the left hand column, you'll see a 'Badge', as they call it in internet-speak, for Illuminating the Past . Click on the image and you'll be taken to Blurb.com to see a preview of the book and information on how to buy it. Four dollars from every sale will go to  help the Carroll County, Illinois, Historical Society maintain their collection. There's also a website for the project with its own dedicated address: www.illuminatingthepast.com . This will be updated with more news about the luminaries as they begin their progress around Carroll County in the next few months.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Click on the above photo to go to a Picasa web album showing the luminaries the first day after the inauguration event, including the first daylight visitors to the site.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

So on Saturday night, after ten months of work, the community memoir and public art project for the Carroll County Historical Society was unveiled to the community. We installed the luminaries outside the Owen Miles Museum in Mount Carroll on Saturday morning. At 5:30 in the afternoon, we went over there to start setting up. At 6 pm, people started arriving. And more and more kept on arriving. Honestly, we had no idea how many people would come, despite the fact that we sent out nearly a hundred invitations, and had articles published several times over in the local press (and also, apparently, the Chicago Tribune). We were steeling ourselves for a turn-out of about ten people, but by about 6:20 it was clear that all the chairs we had put out would be filled, and that people would have to stand in an adjacent room of the Museum (looking through an arched doorway). By my count, there were between 40 and 45 people there in the end. Sue Appel, the President of the Historical Society, ...

Fuller post on Monday morning, but here is a photo from Mount Carroll after the giant luminaries were unveiled, with help of Mayor Carl Bates and Patty McNair, on Saturday evening:   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

It's only two days until the luminaries will be unveiled to mark the culmination of the community memoir and public art project. I thought it might be interesting to post some pictures showing how the ideas for the luminaries evolved over the course of the last year. It started with paper-litho transfers to paper-bag luminaries that I created over a year ago: The first idea for the Carroll County project was to do transfers of photos of people's faces onto four-sided plexiglass columns: This idea seemed like it would be too bulky and costly, so it was changed to large intersecting panels of plexiglass without frames: After the workshops ended, and after discussing it with my collaborators Patty McNair, Pati Johnson, and her husband Michael Johnson, we reverted to the idea of the column format, shown in this rough plan drawing: And then a watercolour to help visualise how they would be placed: This is the idea we finally agreed on, and that's how they were constr...

On Saturday Patty and I went to Mount Carroll and took the panels with the Lazertran prints on them to the workshop. There, I oversaw my team as they slid the panels into the frames, drilled holes into the lids, and fitted the solar lights into the lids. Here is a short slideshow of the whole process, which only took just over an hour to complete: Ryan, who is the extremely talented wood craftsman who constructed the frames for the luminaries, is recovering from a recent bout of flu, so it was a sterling effort on his part to drag himself out of bed on Saturday. His skill in getting the frames ready meant that the panels eased into the grooves in the frames in a matter of seconds, and in no time at all we had the first luminary ready to go. The local press is starting to publish articles about the project, and I'll post copies of them as they appear.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

So here is a collage of 90 of the photos submitted for the Carroll County Community Memoir and Public Art Project. I'm presenting it not necessarily for legibility, but to give some sense of what we've achieved through our persistence in hounding people and shaking trees over four months: If you click on the image, you can embiggen it and see more details.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

We went out to the house on Friday, and spent Saturday and Sunday putting the Lazertran images onto the plexiglas panels. We were joined by our friends Ted and Jana Dawson, for a weekend of guitar playing, pizza eating, laughing ("pink or regular?"), and enjoying the warm autumn sunshine. Together with Patty, they also  formed a three-person team to clean up the panels prior to printing: I then began transferring the images by first soaking them for 30 seconds in a dish of water, then sliding the image off the backing paper and onto the plexiglass: Here is the first panel after I had done the first few transfers: Thanks to the help I had, I was able to complete all 12 panels by the evening. Here they are lined up on the sun room at the back of the house: And here are three of the panels being held upright in column formation. This is the closest yet to how they're going to look when they're assembled, which takes place next weekend: It's all starting t...

I took the test piece of plexiglass with the sepia and blue tinted Lazertran photos on it and lit it with the solar light, like so: I think the sepia tone is the one I'll go with. It looks more like an art print than the blue, which leaves it looking more like a photograph and thus slightly unchanged. And on another note, the great Joan Sutherland died yesterday at the age of 83. In memoriam for La Stupenda, here she is in 1972, singing from the role that made her career when she sang it at the Met in 1959:   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

I spent all day Monday processing the 33 images that I'm going to print on the plexiglass side-panels of the luminaries. I'm writing this on Monday evening and I feel rather tired, so I'll just post a picture from the set and leave it at that. Except to add that I can't decide between printing all of the pictures with a sepia tint: Or a light blue tint: I think that the blue tint will be more visible at night. Maybe I'll just test it with the solar light that I bought last week, then post the result of the experiment here later.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

I'm going to Mineral Point Wisconsin today for the weekend Journal and Sketchbook workshop. Before I go, I thought I'd post the final Photoshopped rendering of the luminaries for the Carroll County Community Memoir project, as they will be installed in front of the Owen Miles Museum at the end of October: A lot of people from Carroll County have been contributing photos on the Facebook page this week, so it's all coming together nicely. UPDATE: Here is the text of the press release. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Illuminating the Past: Chicago Artist and Writer Collaborate on Giant Luminary Project in Rural Illinois MOUNT CARROLL, Illinois, September 30th, 2010---Imagine the luminaries that light up gardens and paths during fall festivals. Now imagine a series of luminaries six feet high, lit from within by a solar light fitted into the top. These impressive structures have been created by Chicago artist Philip Hartigan, working with local craftsmen in Carroll County, Illin...

We received the following picture from a Mount Carroll resident last weekend: It shows the chap's grandparents, sometime in the 1930s. Strictly speaking, we can't use it for the project as it doesn't show the person who contributed the photo. But I thought it was such a good picture that I would post it here anyway.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

I took some more pictures of the luminaries in the workshop in Mount Carroll the past weekend: As you can see, each one will be about six feet high. All I have to do now is to transfer the images to the plexiglass panels, before final assembly a week before the unveiling on October 30th. To that end, I experimented with using Lazertran on small pieces of plexiglass. Lazertran comes in sheets that you can run through an inkjet printer, thus printing out any image that you've stored on your laptop. You soak the Lazertran in warm water for about 30 seconds, and then the image is released from the backing paper, enabling you to slide it off onto the plexiglass (or any other surface). The gum on the back of the image is enough to adhere it to the plexiglass surface. It's basically a high-quality decal. To test the bond and to subject it to temperature similar to how it'll be outdoors in northern Illinois in November, I left a couple of pieces of plexiglass with Lazertran-sfer...