Donna Cameron, Fern Waterfall, 40” x 60”, archival print on canvas
The digital print file source is an analog collage of Cinematic Paper Emulsion, hand brushed and processed silver nitrate photograms of fern and forest detritus on 35mm celluloid clear leader, ©2014 Donna Cameron.
Film, print, painting & projection works by Donna Cameron
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 4, 2-4 pm
Artist’s Talk: 3:15 pm
Each work in this show is the result of a number of steps. The pieces begin with my recycled paper pulp and print emulsion, which I turn into strips the size of the film that I plan to create on a film edit bench. The paper emulsion pulp is wet when formed, much like wet clay that is used to create ceramics, and is then shaped into film strips.
I paint, print, or sculpt into these film strips, constructing a tactile surface of a 35 mm, 16mm, or 8mm film gauge, depending upon the gauge of the moving image work that I hope to create from them. They become sculptural film shot abstractions, onto which I can express emotions that resonate with my own emotional life, the living natural world, and the times in which I am living. They evolve as biomorphic forms and energies – unfurled ferns, rushing water, burning buildings, phasing moons, alphabet glyphs, and blooming flowers. This expanded cinema speaks of a confluence of energies, moving through 2D, 3D, and 4D space.
Each cinema work (moving image print) has been deconstructed from its montage and reconstructed into a 2D abstract image, a fossil footprint of the 4D film, as the works in this show demonstrate. The message in the single frame of the works exhibited here arrives through tactile consciousness and becomes the final take of the film's directorial process.
Click here to watch Donna’s exhibit and some of her opening reception
Donna Cameron, World Trade Alphabet, digital print on voile (6' x 3')
Printed from from a digital photo file scanned from 4”x5” view camera photograph of a 6' x 3' window installation. The installation is made with 35mm clear celluloid film, inks, pigment & recycled paper. ©2000/2023 Donna Cameron
About the artist
Donna Cameron is an award-winning American artist whose hand-generated film prints and celluloid negatives are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, NY (MoMA). She developed her signature imaging technique, Cinematic Paper Emulsion (CPE), as a painting student and aspiring independent filmmaker, using recycled paper print materials to make her own highly textured emulsion. CPE was given a U.S. patent in 200l and has inspired numerous graphic design modalities, including film title art. Cameron's film paintings and prints were exhibited con latere at the Venice Biennale in 2005 and 2007 and programmed in the Whitney Museum of American Art's Millennial (NY) and the MoMA’s Millennial (NY) shows in 2000, among other global museum screenings. Since 1994, she has taught film and television production and inter-media fine arts aesthetics at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, NY. Cameron became an artist member of the Washington Printmakers Gallery in May 2023. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, and Arlington, VA.
