Micah Fitzgerald

I think about letters

I recognized this project as an opportunity to return to a space of making whatever interested me, without thinking about an outcome. I began experimenting with materials and bringing in thoughts about writing and overlapping text. I drew from several pieces of text: asemic writing, stream of conscious writing, and snippets of wikipedia articles or poems, focusing on the form of the text rather than creating a cohesive narrative.

I began experimenting with cyanotypes, a photography process using exposure in sunlight. I was inspired by the blueprint making process, which involves drawing on tracing paper with ink, so I began handwriting text directly on tracing paper to be exposed. Cyanotypes are beautifully unpredictable, the sunlight and wind on a particular day will impact the final print and I found joy in the unexpected moments that emerged in working with this material. In addition to cyanotypes, I experimented with a digital embroidery machine, treating it as an alternative printer or typewriter. I emphasized the clunkiness of this process by leaving the text exactly as the machine sewed it, not trimming excess thread.

After creating these experiments with cyanotypes and the digital embroiderer, I decided to create a book to house the work. I bound each edition of this book myself, using a perfect binder machine, so that each book could have a unique cyanotype cover. When viewed as a collection, these books highlight the variation which is inherent in working with cyanotypes.

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micahfitzgerald17@gmail.com