Pumpkin Spice & Everything Nice - Developing Black and White Film using Autumn Spices
During this past month I have felt a little stuck. Maybe a little burnt out. I figured it was time to play and this week, I played with my food.
The Ode to Anna exhibition at the beginning of the year was a lot of work. Well at least it felt that way trying to collaborate with the team and exhibitors digitally and from a different country. During that time I was also trying to settle into my new home, applying for jobs left right and center, sorting through old work and trying to get my Etsy shop off of the ground. Since then I’ve been working on new cyanotype collections, zines and am now feeling slightly fed up. This has caused creative blocks or more specifically, task paralysis from all the ideas I have to continue on from my ‘Please?’ project. I cannot bring myself to make my cyanotypes. I’m stuck. I know I want to do some reading and research to help inform my work but I can’t bring myself to do that either.
During times like these, play in encouraged. My friend Kate Mercer taught me this. Working as creatives and artists, we often get used to having to explain and justify our work and actions. Having our ideas summarised and ready to formally explain whenever someone asks “why are you doing that?” And sometimes we can get stuck in our own tunnelled vision. Any time I have spoken to Kate in the past, play is highly encouraged in the creative process as not just a form of recreation but as a necessity. So I thought about it. What do I want to play with? As children we are deterred and reprimanded for playing with our food but that is all I wanted to do.
Back in July, I attended a work shop by Melaine Kat King as part of the Land Art Collective on Developing Black and White film in Mint Tea. I have always been a caffenol advocate and have almost solely used caffenol for developing film for the past 7 years. I absolutely loved her workshop and the peppermint tea used gave my film a physical green hue and the images a slight silver tonality. My mind began to race. For months I had pondered the question if espresso coffee would even work in place of instant in the caffenol process, and here I was being told you could develop film using tea, or seaweed, or even pasta water! A whole new world of possibilities opened up to me and the choices were endless. But this new found excitement didn’t stop me from overthinking too much and worrying too much about the fear of failing experiments. I put my ideas away in a draw.
I recently started a newsletter which I had been thinking about for ages. Another idea I had been worried about not ‘executing correctly’ until I realised that you can’t really go wrong with a newsletter as each I had seen were completely different from one another. After finish the first letter and sending it off, I gained a renewed sense of excitement. Writing had got me thinking of ideas again. One of which was Can I develop black and white film in Pumpkin Spice?
I’m no scientist so I had no idea how to begin the process of figuring out if the spices would have the right chemical compounds to develop film so I went to Melanie to ask her for advice. She sent me to Gral Treegan aka @Curiosolab over on Instagram, who she explained would be the best person for the job! Now, I am not exaggerating when I say this guy is a wizard. If you click here to check out his Instagram then you will find out what I mean. Film developed in onion skin, nail rust, the cardboard ends of toilet rolls. Sure enough he was incredibly helpful in explaining how I could figure out a recipe! After some googling and some maths, I was ready to get cracking.
I bought some fresh spices, measured everything out but was still unsure about actual development time so used Melanie’s instructions from her workshop as a starting point ( a half an hour standing dev). As you can see, this was far too long and I over developed my images but to be honest, I was just happy that it had actually worked!
Can you develop black and white film in Pumpkin Spice? The answer is yes. Yes you can. I just haven’t perfected the recipe yet.