Foraged- Plant Film Developing Workshop with Beatrice Thornton

The Workshop Description:

In partnership with SF Camerawork this sustainable film-developing workshop and collective urban weeding project is organized around 'Balsamic Time', Beatrice Thornton’s solo exhibition of foraged plant-developed gelatin silver prints currently on view at Small Works Projects.

Participants will learn to develop their own black and white film with a brew collectively made from plants that they find in the vicinity of Small Works, in places like sidewalk cracks and building corners. They will be using the same recipe that Beatrice uses to develop her film, including the film she used to make the prints on view in Balsamic Time.
When we think about urban environments, we don’t always picture plants in this image. This workshop aims to alter that view, focusing on the spaces in-between and the plants that occupy them. Edges and overlapping, liminal spaces are also central to Beatrice's darkroom printing practice where she often overlaps negatives to form graphic compositions.
Workshop Details:

Participants will need to bring 1 or 2 (preferred) rolls of film (35mm preferred) that they have already exposed/shot in advance. Film should be Kentmere 400 or 100, or HP5 400.
We will all develop our film together starting with 1 roll and then improvise for the 2nd roll based on results of the first. The workshop format is likewise a practice in non-attachment, so please keep in mind that results will vary. Participants will come away with an understanding of basic sustainable darkroom practices that they can continue at home.
All other materials will be provided. No experience developing or loading film tanks is necessary. Beatrice is willing to demonstrate and assist with loading.
Please be on time as we will depart to W**d promptly at the start of the workshop. Weeding will last for approximately 30-40 minutes after which we will return to Small Works to make the brew and develop film.

Hours- 12:30-4 pm, meet in front of Small Works SF rain or shine. There will be two identical sessions of this workshop due to the very limited capacity (8 participants per session).
About Balsamic Time:
Balsamic Time features recent plant-developed gelatin silver fiber prints by Oakland-based artist, archivist, and historian Beatrice Thornton. Beatrice’s practice centers on using sustainable darkroom processes to develop film and make prints using homemade chemistry from foraged plants to communicate ideas about place with geometric arrangements of exposures on a single sheet of paper.
This installation at Small Works Projects through May 10th, includes a series of multi-image compositions made from 35mm gelatin silver film shot mostly while hiking along the California coast and in Mexico City. The works, or “balsamic moments,” climb across the gallery walls, intersecting to form diagonals and zig-zags.
Balsamic Time is an herbalist practice for harvesting plants when their healing properties are most potent. It is also the final waning crescent of the lunar chart and considered a period of introspection. To make each of her film and print developer brews, Beatrice brews a tea from foraged plants specific to the locations pictured but also mindful of the plants’ medicinal uses as they might relate to her imagery. For instance, mugwort, is commonly used to induce dreaming.
These works reconsider the frame — both as it appears on a roll of film and the rectilinear format in which photographs are typically printed in the darkroom — through her use of overlapping negative frames and circular masks to obscure and create alternative experiences of the same image through repetition. Her work also considers relationships to place through references to art and design history, poetry, and Buddhist and environmental concepts, mingled with biographical details.
Bio:
Beatrice Thornton is an Oakland-based land artist, archivist, historian, and darkroom instructor working in black-and-white film photography through sustainable, alternative darkroom processes equally in dialogue with place and medium. Since moving back to the Bay Area from New York in 2018, she has been exploring ways that reconnect her to her home state — along the way learning, questioning, and considering its complex histories with a sense of wonder spanning environmentalism, art and design history, archival methods, and darkroom-based graphic design.
She develops film and prints in her home darkroom, creating developer recipes using ingredients including foraged plants, collected rainwater, and low-toxicity household ingredients in place of traditional darkroom chemistry.
Her photographic style often features landscapes and architecture through in-camera double exposures and compositions that connect multiple images, or which use the same negative multiple times and at various scales and orientations. She pairs developers with plants featured in or that grow within the environments pictured. She sees developing with plants as a circular process where the art she produces is as much about process as it is the final objects.

Host or Publisher SF Camerawork