alyson brown

statement

Blue in Bloom are floral cyanotypes, aka sunprints, from photos styled and shot by Alyson Brown. A photographer by trade, Alyson has wanted to create art from her photos for many years. The concept of Blue in Bloom sprouted from her love of botanical charts and specimen prints. Paying homage to the rich history of botanical documentation, her first collection features an ethereal look into the graceful personalities of spring flowers. Each sunprint is a delicate balance of art and science, capturing the fleeting beauty of floral specimens. Currently she is offering fine art prints on high-quality, lightly textured, cold-press paper with archival ink, with either a straight or raw edge. She also created canvas prints to be hung from chart hangers, much like how you would imagine a specimen print hanging. 

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process

Each print is a high-quality reproduction from an original sunprinted flower photo. Alyson paints a light-sensitive solution onto paper in a dark room. Once dried, she places a transparency negative of the flower photo over the paper and brings it out into the sun to be exposed. It takes approx 12 mins to expose the photo onto the paper. The image is then washed gently in water and alllowed to dry. Alyson then takes a high res image of each print. Each print is printed locally in Bend, Oregon onto either lightly textured, cold-press paper or unstretched canvas with archival inks.