!28-300-
1 - Star
July -2004
The Mud
Images and Commentary
By Michael E. Patnode
Introduction
The “MUD” project began several months after my son Albert J. Patnode was born. A.J. came in to my life to change every thing I understand about life. born Dec. 17, 1998 at 36 weeks gestation. He weighed 3.7lbs. He is a kid of special needs. He was born with broken femurs although he was born by cecearian. He has scoliosis of the back. His legs do not move and his right arm is flaccid, the left arm has limited range of motion. He eats by a gastronomy tube in his tummy and cant swallow. He has a tracheostimy in his neck to breath threw CPAP, a ventilation device although AJ breathes on his own, this gives him a fuller breath so he can maintain his oxygen saturation. He’s extremely nearsighted and what he truly sees we just don’t really know. We have 16 hours of nursing care a day to help us with his many cares. AJ is a wonderful inspiration to my wife and I and we are very honored and thankful to be his parents.
It was on a spring night 1999 that I was pawing over some old zip disks to see if I could find unusual looking images to entertain and stimulate my young sons mind. I rediscovered this image file of the old dried mud bed. During college I scanned the original 3x5 photograph at 100 DPI. At that time was all I needed but consequently; I never did use it in a project. Its data stayed on the zip disk until that spring night. I thought it might make a nice visual picture for A.J. to investigate. I began to play with it by adjusting the color and contrast and after some time, I flipped the image over in a mirror reflection of it’s self, I saw for the first time more than textures. I started to flip-flop the image over and over on itself like a kaleidoscope. I began to see more interesting looking shapes, patterns and faces, jump out at me. I didn’t really think too much of it. I’ve seen lots of kaleidoscope images before. Other than something fun to hang on my little sons mobile it was not something I thought I would continue working with.
Strangely a few days later a college friend of mine Susan Spong a photographer wanted me to show some recent work of mine at S.P.E.- the society for photographic education North West conference in Bellingham Washington. I told her I hadn’t been making any serious photographs or art since my son’s birth. She told me to get busy and make some because she was signing me up to be a guest speaker. I would be part of a panel of alumni students from Central Washington University. She was determined not to let me back out. I only had a few weeks to be ready for the conference. I decided to continue to explore with this mud image. As I did I found I could make a few more pieces before the conference. I only showed four mud images and my thesis project from 1998. To my pleasant surprise many of the people I talked to really enjoyed what they could see in the images. One of my professors, John Agars who was there enjoyed it so much he suggested that, I should make an entire show of this work. Although I knew deep inside myself that at the low DPI resolution the work wouldn’t be able to become large prints as I would have like to have. The worst part was that somehow over the years I had lost the original negatives. I knew I could not restart this project. I decided to work with what I had and consider the work to be about small images and then see where it would take me. I also remembered that the photographer Jerry Uelsmann once said at a conference I had attended. “That many artists never study one image long enough”.
I started having all sorts of interesting dreams and fantasies about what this new mud imagery could be. The work kept pulling me in further to a different kind of world. I began to wonder how many things could come from this one image? I continually kept getting the feeling of carved stone from an ancient time or futuristic alien world. Some of what I’ve developed seems familiar although, most of the imagery is oddly unique and the possibilities are entirely open-ended in each image. Every time that I look at one of the mud images I find new faces, shapes and elements. I have never seen before and this has given me the drive to make more. Sometimes I have felt like someone combing a beach to find interesting sticks rocks and shells.
Some shapes became the framework to hold other more complex images into place. Those images would be made from many layers piled upon each other that eventually became. (Depending on how close or faraway I would get to the image). Objects or faces. Most of the images have images inside images inside images and so on. Some days I have thought maybe I was building the world’s biggest Rorschach inkblot tests. Often I would forget where I was working at in the image itself, if I would put something away and not get back to it for a length of time. I decided to make more images after my initial first four. I gave myself a few small but flexible rules to follow. I thought working in a cautious and conservative way by planning to only use what I could find confined within the original mud image. I would build a new image from only this one palate and no other. I have pasted pieces and parts I liked into a given place. I then would erase parts to revel hidden things that would then be come the new part or image. At one point or another I decided that letting a little bit of foreign color sneak into some of the images might be okay if I only used it minimally. This can be seen in a stranger’s relic, commitment to vision, white moth, and the Wall.
I hope that my son A.J. has enjoyed viewing my mud manipulation images. I also hope that others can find great curiosity, fantasy, enjoyment and a small escaped from reality from my collection of mud.
In this collection of artwork I have been making new altered images from one parent photograph of a dried mud bed. It has become the pallet in which I have explored and manipulated over 40 images into a new vision of my own unique tapestry. To manipulate the images I have used Adobe Photoshop 4.0 On a Macintosh Performa Power PC 6400/200. my old Macintosh. 2.5 GIG and 100 MG of Ram. so small unlike my new Mac.
I originally photographed the mud in 1988 on the border of Arizona and New Mexico from an Indian Cliff dwelling site.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means-electronic or photocopying without written permission from Michael Patnode
For information and questions write to me at Flickrmail. thanks so much.
!28-300-
1 - Star
July -2004
The Mud
Images and Commentary
By Michael E. Patnode
Introduction
The “MUD” project began several months after my son Albert J. Patnode was born. A.J. came in to my life to change every thing I understand about life. born Dec. 17, 1998 at 36 weeks gestation. He weighed 3.7lbs. He is a kid of special needs. He was born with broken femurs although he was born by cecearian. He has scoliosis of the back. His legs do not move and his right arm is flaccid, the left arm has limited range of motion. He eats by a gastronomy tube in his tummy and cant swallow. He has a tracheostimy in his neck to breath threw CPAP, a ventilation device although AJ breathes on his own, this gives him a fuller breath so he can maintain his oxygen saturation. He’s extremely nearsighted and what he truly sees we just don’t really know. We have 16 hours of nursing care a day to help us with his many cares. AJ is a wonderful inspiration to my wife and I and we are very honored and thankful to be his parents.
It was on a spring night 1999 that I was pawing over some old zip disks to see if I could find unusual looking images to entertain and stimulate my young sons mind. I rediscovered this image file of the old dried mud bed. During college I scanned the original 3x5 photograph at 100 DPI. At that time was all I needed but consequently; I never did use it in a project. Its data stayed on the zip disk until that spring night. I thought it might make a nice visual picture for A.J. to investigate. I began to play with it by adjusting the color and contrast and after some time, I flipped the image over in a mirror reflection of it’s self, I saw for the first time more than textures. I started to flip-flop the image over and over on itself like a kaleidoscope. I began to see more interesting looking shapes, patterns and faces, jump out at me. I didn’t really think too much of it. I’ve seen lots of kaleidoscope images before. Other than something fun to hang on my little sons mobile it was not something I thought I would continue working with.
Strangely a few days later a college friend of mine Susan Spong a photographer wanted me to show some recent work of mine at S.P.E.- the society for photographic education North West conference in Bellingham Washington. I told her I hadn’t been making any serious photographs or art since my son’s birth. She told me to get busy and make some because she was signing me up to be a guest speaker. I would be part of a panel of alumni students from Central Washington University. She was determined not to let me back out. I only had a few weeks to be ready for the conference. I decided to continue to explore with this mud image. As I did I found I could make a few more pieces before the conference. I only showed four mud images and my thesis project from 1998. To my pleasant surprise many of the people I talked to really enjoyed what they could see in the images. One of my professors, John Agars who was there enjoyed it so much he suggested that, I should make an entire show of this work. Although I knew deep inside myself that at the low DPI resolution the work wouldn’t be able to become large prints as I would have like to have. The worst part was that somehow over the years I had lost the original negatives. I knew I could not restart this project. I decided to work with what I had and consider the work to be about small images and then see where it would take me. I also remembered that the photographer Jerry Uelsmann once said at a conference I had attended. “That many artists never study one image long enough”.
I started having all sorts of interesting dreams and fantasies about what this new mud imagery could be. The work kept pulling me in further to a different kind of world. I began to wonder how many things could come from this one image? I continually kept getting the feeling of carved stone from an ancient time or futuristic alien world. Some of what I’ve developed seems familiar although, most of the imagery is oddly unique and the possibilities are entirely open-ended in each image. Every time that I look at one of the mud images I find new faces, shapes and elements. I have never seen before and this has given me the drive to make more. Sometimes I have felt like someone combing a beach to find interesting sticks rocks and shells.
Some shapes became the framework to hold other more complex images into place. Those images would be made from many layers piled upon each other that eventually became. (Depending on how close or faraway I would get to the image). Objects or faces. Most of the images have images inside images inside images and so on. Some days I have thought maybe I was building the world’s biggest Rorschach inkblot tests. Often I would forget where I was working at in the image itself, if I would put something away and not get back to it for a length of time. I decided to make more images after my initial first four. I gave myself a few small but flexible rules to follow. I thought working in a cautious and conservative way by planning to only use what I could find confined within the original mud image. I would build a new image from only this one palate and no other. I have pasted pieces and parts I liked into a given place. I then would erase parts to revel hidden things that would then be come the new part or image. At one point or another I decided that letting a little bit of foreign color sneak into some of the images might be okay if I only used it minimally. This can be seen in a stranger’s relic, commitment to vision, white moth, and the Wall.
I hope that my son A.J. has enjoyed viewing my mud manipulation images. I also hope that others can find great curiosity, fantasy, enjoyment and a small escaped from reality from my collection of mud.
In this collection of artwork I have been making new altered images from one parent photograph of a dried mud bed. It has become the pallet in which I have explored and manipulated over 40 images into a new vision of my own unique tapestry. To manipulate the images I have used Adobe Photoshop 4.0 On a Macintosh Performa Power PC 6400/200. my old Macintosh. 2.5 GIG and 100 MG of Ram. so small unlike my new Mac.
I originally photographed the mud in 1988 on the border of Arizona and New Mexico from an Indian Cliff dwelling site.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means-electronic or photocopying without written permission from Michael Patnode
For information and questions write to me at Flickrmail. thanks so much.