In one of my art classes, I was introduced to the black mirror. Black mirrors are a device to evaluate contrast. They are simply a high gloss surface that is black. When your cell phone is turned off, it is a black mirror. When looking at a reflection of an image of the black surface, it allows you to see the contrast, the differences in value. An image with appropriate contrast looks fine. While an image with poor contrast looks horrible that looked OK. But in the black mirror all the colors looked the same. There were different colors but they were all the same value.
I heard a rumor that the Wikins had adopted the mirror and believed that if you stared into the mirror long enough you could see into the past. I questioned that if you could see the past you might also be able to see into the future. The print that followed was fun, challenging and interesting. I started with the phases of the moon to show an element of time past, present, and future. For the past, I took reproductions of the prints of Hans Holbine’s “Dance with Death”. He depicts when death comes for you at the most inopportune time — on your wedding day, or when the rich man is counting his money. A look into the past can easily bring up images of death. Lastly, I wanted a young portrait and an old one. I decided on my grandson Spencer and I put myself in as the old portrait. This is when it got complicated. I wanted to print with black ink on black paper then dust the ink with various pigments. The process works great the pigment only sticks to the ink. But the challenge is that for a portrait to work, it has to be drawn in negative. A spot that you want to be dark you draw it very light and an area that is light you draw dark. It took me a while to wrap my head around the concept but once I did it was fairly easy. It is an interesting process.
