1998 Farm Journal Littleton vitreography

“Farm Journal”, “Hired Hand” and “Gunslinger” incorporate pages from a journal kept by Reubin Johnson of Stephentown, NY from 1860 to 1868. During those years he records the death of both his father and mother and the outbreak of the civil war in the same terse language he records the planting and harvesting of crops.

For “Farm Journal”, a still-life using the journal and a tintype was photographed with Littleton’s digital camera. For “Hired Hand” a scan of the journal was combined with a photograph of Krause’s grandfather, James Simmons, a farmer from Brewton, Alabama. “Gunslinger” uses a photograph of her father as a boy aiming his air rifle.

For each of the three images, the digital file was flipped horizontlly in the 3M Cactus RIPand printed on the Encad Novajet Pro using Encad’s clear film and graphic outdoor (GO) ink. Using a waterless planographic process Littleton pioneered, Krause created a landscape by painting with waterbased media on a glass plate. The painting on glass was masked with silicon and cured. The image on clear film was transferred to 30″x36″ damp Rives BFK using a 40″x70″ French Tool etching press. In a second pass, the vitriographic plate was inked and printed over the digital transfer or digigraph.