Andrea Blanch: Where have you recently shown your work?
Wendy Small: Recently, I’ve shown in Williamsburg with Schroeder Romero, then in Chelsea with Morgan Lehman. I just finished the AIPAD photo fair and Paris LA with Von Lintel Gallery in Los Angeles. I have been working hard for years. I’m realizing that when I make a body of work that I like, it does get shown. Do you generally stick with photograms? I went to school for painting, and then I was an assistant to Terry Winters for ten years. I always thought I’d be a painter. I thought that I’d make large thickly painted, full arm stroke paintings forever. Then, when I started doing the photograms I almost didn’t notice that I had stopped painting. It was very unusual, because I was very fearful of not painting. You have an identity that’s set up in one medium. I was so excited by learning about photo papers and chemistry, that I didn’t feel the switch. That lasted for twelve years until recently when I started playing around with paint again. I can predict that my photo- grams will start to absorb my painting again, and now I have started painting with the photo chemicals. Can you explain to our readers who may not be familiar with photograms what they are and how you go about doing them? Photograming is a photo technique that uses light, an object, and photo paper. Prior to digital photography a negative was projected onto photo paper. Photograms use an actual object instead of a negative. You place the object directly onto photo paper and then expose the paper with light. The object will leave a “ghost image” or tracing. It’s direct. The different transparencies, translucencies, or opacities of the objects allow you to play with tone. Each photogram is unique. In Morning Glory, why did you use the condoms? They look like sea anemones. I became hyper-alert to transparent objects in the world. Everywhere I went I collected transparent objects, and people started saving things for me. I found those condoms in the back of the store Ricky’s, and they had these beautiful flower color tips. I was doing black and white work then, and they reminded me of Blossfeldt’s plant prints.
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View the full interview at museemagazine.com