2025; Looking ahead…

Untitled (Entanglement series) 2024 copyright Douglas Stockdale –

After summarizing some of my 2024 accomplishments, sort of as a new years resolution, is looking ahead to some goals for 2025. Probably what is resonating with me right now is from a recent exchange with David Marsh that what we are working on now is Art Therapy, in as neither of us really sell much of what we create, thus being more Exhibition Artist.

From the 60,000 foot level view, what I see are three principal projects that I will continue to develop; Entanglement, Urban Ashes, and Last Iceberg/Warming Waters. For my artistic practice, I work on a Projects (series) concept and then try to determine what is the best way to translate that idea into actual artwork. Thus one of the underlying reasons for the development of my cyanotype printing and gell printing processes last year, although I also became intrigued with these alternative photographic processes as well.

For my Entanglement project, I now have a two person exhibition that will open in March at the OC Camera Gallery (Lake Forest, CA). More about that exhibition in a future post. Nevertheless, I am recalling a question from an interview I had with an Editor; how do you know when a project is complete? I am starting to think the Entanglement project has completed the image taking, cyanotype printing, weaving and sewing of the image stages, as I do not find myself thinking about those aspects. Now it is more about exhibiting this body of work, which I am planning a couple more submissions that might roll the exhibitions into 2026.

Five of my Urban Ashes monotypes were just featured in The Hand issue #47, so that should be a related shout-out in the next week. Although I have been gel printing the pigment prints, I am still thinking about other ways to develop this series. One of the visual aspects of my monotypes has been the loss of white values, which due to the resulting ash, can be a critical aspect of a destroyed structures. Soooo, I have been thinking about what I might be able to do if print these images with a gravure (intaglio) printmaking press? And there are two such intaglio presses at the local Irvine Fine Arts Center (IFAC), as well as related printmaking classes. And over the holidays, I did have a intaglio plate made and a series of gravure prints, so more about that while I consider how deep I would want to get into that process, such as buying a table top intaglio press and related printmaking equipment.

And of course with the recent local wildfires and subsequent urban damage in the Palisades and Altadena, I will have more than enough opportunities to work on this environmental project. Since Urban Ashes has been more about the aftermath of the urban wildfires, I am no hurry to drive to either of these two large sites. In another month I will probably reach out to some friends and photographers whose homes were destroyed to get permission to come into these areas. Nevertheless, also thinking about using some active wildfire photographs I made during the local Airport Fire.

For the Last Iceberg/Warming Waters, whether this is one series or a break-out into two is a subject for 2025, both of which are environmental projects that lend themselves to cyanotype printing as well as monotypes. For the Last Iceberg, I had earlier experimented with some hand-sewing and embroidery and unsure that was working for me, so back to the drawing board. Straight cyanotypes might actually work best, which is what I am also thinking about for the Warming Waters, while my experimenting with using the gel printing to make monotypes did resonate (had not discussed those prints here last year, while if I continue this experimentation, I will share my progress.

Politics took a strange (and dangerous) turn for the worst at the end of 2024 that ended up impacting social media as well at the end of year. Appears that due to an extreme right-wing shift of the top management, I may be leaving Instagram and maybe Facebook, having started anew on BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/stockdale.bsky.social). My Instagram feed lately is rarely of artist, friends and photographers, rather video by persons unknown about topics that I am not interested in. My Facebook feed has suffered the same set-backs, nevertheless, with Facebook there are the Groups that I below to that appear unaffected, or at least for now. Nevertheless, at least recently, my posts on Instagram seem to have more engagement than Facebook, perhaps because so many left Facebook for Instagram. Which is nuts, since both are Mega-Zuck platforms and you should have anticipated that Instagram was going to fall into the same rabbit-hole as Facebook had. Fingers crossed for BlueSky and probably posting more frequently here on this photo-blog.

Which reminds me that I also need to update my website more frequently than once a year. LoL.

Other photo stuff for 2025; for PhotoBook Journal adding another Assistant Editor to keep that virtual magazine going as well as asking photographers/authors/publishers/BookPR to make submissions directly to a book reviewer and get me out of the loop. I will continue with my new role as Executive Director for the local photo organization, Photographers Exchange. I have already booked the 2025 Members Exhibition for next October while initiating discussions with other galleries, such as the Irvine Fine Arts Center for 2026. If you were not aware, getting an exhibition into a gallery can be a long lead item, with exhibitions being book a year or even two in advance, such that my March 2025 exhibition was booked last June.

Make every day an Earth Day

Doug

Artist book available:

 The Flow of Light Brushes the Shadow, an artist book from Singular Images Press, copyright 2022, $60.00 (CA sales tax for those residing in the USA) plus shipping expenses. Message me douglas.stockdale.artist@gmail.com