Catherine Mommsen: 3x3 Art Squares

Over the weekend I received Catherine Mommsen's 6 wonderful Art Squares to enjoy and swap, yippee! Catherine creates cyanotypes, does pen & ink art and creates handstitched artist books. This is her 5th Creative Swap, starting in 2011 with the Little Book Swap. She made 4 tiny books for that swap, you can view them there following that link! 

I have seen many of Catherine's cyanotypes on her Instagram account: Cyandiary.2023 and I knew these were cyanotype pieces, but they didn't have the sun printing that I usually associate with it. So I asked Catherine about that and I am going to quote what she explained to me... 

"You are right about cyanotype.  A mineral solution is mixed and applied to a substrate.  This produces a UV sensitive “film”.  Anything you place on the film before exposing it to UV light blocks the light and creates the image. What is left exposed develops into lovely blues.  There are many ways to manipulate the process. In this case, I re-used failed cyanotype prints by painting solution over the piece, exposing it to sunlight again, but rather than blocking the sunlight to create an image, I leave it blank to get the lovely Prussian blue color, and then create the image by drawing on it with white ink.  So these cards are basically white ink on paper dyed with cyanotype solution/wash." 

Her pen and ink work is so detailed and the Prussian blue so rich and deep. I am glad to have six of her squares to swap! She also went above and beyond and gifted me a beautiful handstitched artist book I had admired on her separate Instagram account that holds her stitching & drawing: imajicaamadoro. 

I've made an album to share the handstitched book, if you'd like to see it, please go here.

Thank you, Catherine!! 

Looking forward to seeing all of your entries -in my hands by November 20th! I have received six swap entries, including my own and am expecting 12 more. :)