Foot in the Door 4

Opening on Feb 18, and running thru June 13, Minneapolis Institute of Arts is showing 'Foot in the Door 4'. Once every 10 years aspiring Minnesota artists are called to submit one work of art to this show. The artwork is limited to one cubic foot or in the case of two-dimensional art one square foot. My submission i......s the image you see here, one of my favorite images from 2009.

This image was made on Oct 1, 2009. I was on my way up to Grand Marais. A storm was raging, minus the rain, all along the shore. I just had to stop and figured the picnic area at Cascade State Park would be a good place. Thule and I headed to the shore and found a nice little area to get out of the brutal force of the wind. I had to come out ... ... See MoreSee Moreof 'hiding' to make this image and had to firmly hold my camera and tripod during the 20 second exposure. I made alot of cool images that night but this is my favorite.

Printing the image for the show took a few twists and turns. Being that the size restriction was limited to a square foot eliminated the 12"x12" framed image since the actual frame size is 12 1/4"x12 1/4". In retropect they weren't measuring so I could have gotten away with it but I'm particular about following the rules. I tried cropping the image square but that didn't work. Then I tried printing an image such that I could have about a 1/2" mat all around it. That looked horrible. Then I thought of Minor White and his prints. They were small, something you had to get close to see. I liked that idea and printed an image 4"x6", cut a mat 10"x12", mounted it and really liked it. I usually mat duotone with a standard white color but for this image I used some light brown mat I had laying around. It really sung to me. I had my print. But I had to deal with the 12" frame restriction. I settled for a 9"x11" frame and had to buy two frames, one 9"x12" and the other 11"x14", to construct the frame size I desired.

I'm quite pleased with the way it came out. There is something about the small size that I really like.

Roger
(:-)