Sandy Smith
Scanography: Mendocino Coast Seaweed
On the desert of Arizona, where I lived for fifty years, people flocked to see the Spring bloom of wildflowers, while I waited until the petals fell and revealed wonderful forms of plants and pods. Now in my new landscape on the Mendocino Coast, I walk the beaches and find surprises of seaweed in beautiful shapes and colors hiding among the mostly overlooked clumps of detritus washed ashore and abandoned. I collect specimens of seaweed small enough to fit on my flat-bed scanner. I wash and towel-dry the seaweed at home and arrange it on my scanner. Because arranging the seaweed is done upside down, it requires several previews before I have an image I want to share. Leaving the scanner lid open, I scan at a high resolution so I will have the option to make large prints. I use Photoshop to clean smudges and grains of sand that appear on the scan and to make other adjustments to the image. Perhaps you will be inspired to take a closer look at those clumps along the shoreline. If so … enjoy the surprises and keep one eye on the waves.
Sandy has experimented in various categories of Photography including traditional black and white photography, Polaroid transfers, pinhole, composites using Photoshop, and more recently, scanography. Her work has been shown at The Field Museum in Chicago, Walker's Point Art Center in Milwaukee, Canton Museum of Art in Canton, Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, Tohono Chul Park in Tucson, and El Museo Nacional de las Culturas in Mexico City. Her work is in collections at Arizona Historical Society in Tucson, Amerind Foundation in Dragoon, Columbia University Libraries in New York City, Maryknoll Mission Archives in Maryknoll, and El Museo Nacional de las Culturas in Mexico City. Her book, Portraits of Clay, was published by the University of Arizona Press.