Testing, testing, one, two, three.

Okay, it's around 11 p.m. Wednesday, September 30th, and I've completed my second test of Polaroid Emulsion Lips on to Papyrus. What's the reason for this? Well, it's for a project that I call reconstructed artifacts. This is my second test. My first test was on Saturday, September 26th, and it's basically a sort of postcard-sized papyrus with a single black and white Emulsion Lift on it of the Sphinx in the foreground. From a Polaroid that had the Sphinx in the foreground and the Pyramid in the background, I believe that's a Papyrus pyramid. But what's the point of this? In the process, the process is very meticulous. One, you've got to have a photo. Obviously, these are my personal photos that have taken on travels to Egypt over several years. And two, I've decided as my process to convert them to Polaroids. I have a special Polaroid lab printer that allows me to put any photo from that is on my phone onto a Polaroid. And then I do the standard Emulsion Lift process from there and mount it onto or attach it to Papyrus. Now, the process is not neat and it's not easy. Papyrus behaves a little different than paper when it's wet. However, it takes, and it could completely unravel if you let it sit for too long. So what is it about this process that I like so much? I think it's almost archaeological in nature. It's the reverse of archaeology. It's trying to do what they, I mean, it's the, it's close to the level of meticulousness that they use in an excavation. I have a brush that I gently stroke the Emulsion onto the surface with and try to iron out or stroke out any wrinkles and lift. There's a clear layer on top. If you want, and I play around with backgrounds, like in this case, I've had to, in order to get a proper background on the Papyrus, you have to use a waterproof substrate and that is, you know, like colored jesso. And so that's what I'm playing around with now. But the ultimate goal of this is to kind of use Papyrus, which, you know, is obviously a, a no longer, a paper that's no longer used as a medium for communication. And to bring it back superimposed with not only a film photo or rendering, you know, a visual rendering of Egypt onto that very same medium that was a means of communication in Egypt. So it's, it's, it's almost like, you know, I've, I've layered the technology as well. I, I mean, it's one that I'm using Polaroid Polaroid was considered, you know, and I'm a really amazing technology. It brought photos instantly to it. And then on top of that, I put them on my iPhone and then I convert them using a lab. So we have all this technology. But what I use it for is really to put it back on one of the earliest technologies. So I'm literally reconstructing an artifact. And in that process, I'm, I'm continuing to add to the imagination. I mean, it's, it's as if, you know, the, the, there are many times when archaeologists fully admit that they're, they're really just making guesswork in terms of like interpreting the past or trying to construct stories out of the past or a history out of the past. And it's, it's not perfect. And it's not accurate sometimes. And we're only left with a little bit of it. And so it's the inverse of that process that I'm trying to create when making these papyrus, you know, these, you know, Polaroid Emulsion lifts on papyrus. I plan on also working in some hieroglyphs and perhaps other illustrations and perhaps other substances onto it. I haven't really gotten that far yet. But, and I need to clarify what I'm, what I'm actually doing here in terms of an artist statement because it's really something I'm finding to be very, it's, it's giving me a lot of meaning, a lot of personal meaning. And, and as messy and as sometimes as ugly as the ultimate, the finished work comes out, that's, that's intended because digging through the past is messy and ugly. And in the end, we're left with a half truth and, and a work that appears unfinished or undone. And so I'm going to continue to explore that theme, but I wanted to put it down or at least, you know, dictated so that I could refer to it later. But yeah, that's essentially what I'm trying to do here. We'll see how it goes.