The Agean Sea felt like the perfect place for a Cyanotype workshop this September, and our little house had an outdoor marble sink and a worktop that could have been designed for printing. Skopelos was a marvel of Aleppo Pines and tumbling cliffs. The summer was drifting to a close, and around our plum farm were dried flower heads and grasses, yellow and rattling. Once I had shouldered the bee population to one side, I carefully picked some dried oat heads and a plant I think was a kind of wild carrot. Standing in the hot sun with the bees buzzing for half an hour, selecting my subjects, was a happy, mindful way to start the creative process.
I had hoped to make blue Cyanotypes of the blue sea but finding a printshop that would take my acetates wasn’t an option. So I stuck to plants. I shared the wash water with wasps and bees who came in to drink, and the olive tree in the courtyard had my washing bowl when I was done. The prints dried along the ledge above the sink, with ants stopping to decide if the print was if interest, and then I moved them to a highly convenient drying rail under the olive tree. It was the perfect Sporades day. We finished it with a swim.
