Barn Raising, Acrylic on Instant Film

 Here's a round-up of the final paintings that I created for the CSA exhibition-- enjoy!  View larger images and details on my website: jamieribisi.com

The Next Generation, Acrylic & Ink on Instant Film

First Frost, Casein & Wax Pastel, 18" x 18"

Wilted, Casein, Wax Pastel, & Graphite, 24" x 24"

Milk-fed, Casein & Graphite, 24" x 24"

Erasing the Land of the Arches, Casein & Wax Pastel, 18" x 18"

I went back to the farm on the 4th to see the progress of the clay pizza oven...it's coming right along!! Fully modeled and the opening has been carved out with some wooden supports to keep the shape while it completely dries.  It looks as though they've lit a few small fires in it to dry the inside at the same rate as the outside.  I can almost taste the pizza!!

Pizza Oven I, Acrylic & Ink on Instant Film, 3x3"

Apex, Acrylic & Ink on Instant Film, 3x3"

Continued with another painted instant film image of the barn.  After a great artist's meeting at the Harlow tonight, I've been inspired to attempt some larger versions of these pieces.  I love the intimate size of these current ones but think it would be nice to work in a slightly larger size, as well.

Kabobs

Also wanted to share these images of some of the meat I've been enjoying from Wholesome Holmstead.  I picked up a package of kabob meat and we had more than enough for 4 people.  SO tasty!!  We put onions and red peppers on for 3 of us and, for mine, I put granny smith apples and broccoli.  YUM!!

We've been barbecueing every night with meat and chicken from the farm (and the bacon...OH THE BACON!!)

Kim's painting of the WH sign

Kim and I had planned on going back to the farm on June 23rd to help them build their pizza oven...but nature had other plans! Heavy rain was in the forecast so the farm rescheduled for the following week.  But we figured we would get a few hours in before the droplets started so we packed the car and headed to a shady spot in the grass.   It turned out to be very hot before the rain started but we stuck it out for a couple hours to paint.

Kim wanted to paint the Wholesome Holmstead sign that sits at the opening to the driveway at the farm stand.  This is the first piece she made- mixed media on paper, 9x12"

Just Like Home,  Acrylic & Casein, 10" x 10"

I'm still fascinated with all the structures on the land.  This time I focused on the silhouette of the house.  The structure and layout of this building is really similar to my house, which used to be a farm back in the day.  I think that's why I'm so drawn to it.  This is a smaller painting (10x10") that I had started in the studio for a different purpose but it just wasn't jiving.  So I decided to take it along and paint on top of it.  This piece ties in my painting with the monotype imagery I've been working on.

To take a break from the paint and explore the farm some more, I walked towards the area where the pizza oven was going to be.  Behind it, I found one of the red barns that I love so much and leaning up against it was a beautiful wooden apple ladder.  It appears to be old and I imagine it's been used on the farm for decades...maybe just my imagination but I like to think that!  I had some old Polaroid cameras with me but the experimental film inside of them just wasn't capturing what I was seeing through the lens.  TTV was the next best thing so I made an intricate set up of a milk crate and cameras stacked on top of each other to steady the image.

When I got back to the studio I monkeyed around with the instant film images that were not developed correctly.  Some were too light to be anything or had thick blue lines through them or patches of undeveloped film.  (I've been using Impossible Film and some are breathtaking in the experimentation yet others are frustrating.)  Taking some ink and acrylic to the film, I recaptured the images and, in some cases, re-imagined what was there.

First couple of shots with the Impossible Film

Ready for some fun!

I must have spent a small fortune on Polaroid film back in the day. But the satisfaction of an instant image spitting out of that camera and knowing that it was the only one of its kind was fantastic.  As a painter, I really enjoy the unexpected color and light that a Polaroid camera and film capture.  I can't tell you how sad I was when they closed their factories and stopped producing film.  But I hung on to most of my Polaroid cameras hoping that the film would make a comeback one day.  Well, that day has come!

The Impossible Project is now producing film to be used in Polaroid cameras.  They purchased an old Polaroid factory in the Netherlands and have resurrected it to make artists like us happy.  You can read all about their story on their website here.

They had an in-person only sample sale of their expired film a little while ago and I begged anyone in the NY area to please stop by their studio and pick me up some....through the fate of "putting it to Facebook," as my family and I now say, my friend happened to be walking down the same street and checking FB from her phone.  So she called me, went in, and mailed me my purchase!!

I've only taken three photos. The first one was a complete dud but the next two came out ok (above.)  This pack had an expiration date of August 2011 so they're not very much past their expiration date yet they had some neat effects. There are some areas of high grain which is pretty interesting.  The brown areas at the top may be from my rollers needing to be cleaned; I'll experiment with that for the next photographs.

I'm very excited to work with this film again-- it handles differently than original Polaroid film so there's going to be a slight learning curve but I'm ready to dive in and see what happens.