Another Day's Light

The photographic test strip records light intensity against time, and is fundamental to traditional darkroom printing. Paper is exposed to light from an enlarger incrementally, which results in a tonal graduation across the strip. This is then used as a reference to determine the exposure required to make a successful print. The test strips I’ve woven into these pieces, however, are made using the cyanotype (sun-printing) process outdoors, where light conditions are unpredictable and cannot be controlled. This produces great variety; although the timings are repeated for each strip in the piece, no two are visually the same. Like photography, weaving is a time-based process. Layers are built up gradually in a specific order, and here they tell a story of ever-changing light. The test strips could have become bar-charts representing weather conditions over specific periods of time, but divided up and intuitively rearranged they are instead flickering imaginary light-scapes, playing out over timescales left open to interpretation.