David Trautrimas: Lengths

David Trautrimas, Aphasia [panel 2/3], cyanotype, 40” x 30”, 2024

David Trautrimas
Lengths

September 20 – October 25, 2024
Opening Reception: Friday, September 20, 6 – 9pm in-person | RSVP here
Smokestack Gallery, The Cotton Factory, Hamilton

Lengths presents a new series of prints by Hamilton-based artist David Trautrimas. Collaboratively created during his experience as a Smokestack Analog Print Residency participant, the featured works on display demonstrate Trautrimas’ expansive development into the technical and visual possibilities of cyanotype: a wholly new process within his professional artistic practice.

David Trautrimas in residence in the Smokestack Analog Studio, 2024

An interview between Trautrimas and Smokestack Gallery Director, Tara Westermann, follows:

Tara Westermann (TW): How did you come to focus your residency on cyanotype?

David Trautrimas (DT): I thought about working with silkscreen initially, but there were mid-tones in one of the larger pieces [Aphasia] that wouldn’t translate with silkscreen and so we started experimenting with cyanotype. Even then I didn’t intend to produce the whole series in cyanotype, but with more experimentation with other pieces something clicked, and so it became the process we used to make the whole body of work.

TW: How did the cyanotype process compare to the range of other photo and print-based methodologies you have experience with?

DT: In a lot of respects, it felt very familiar. I’ve spent a lot of time with black & white photography processes during my student days at OCAD and afterwards working in dark rooms and at the end of the day, cyanotype is a photographic process: you have light, emulsion, a substrate and a developer. But though it shares those fundamental aspects when it comes down to the granular it is quite different. We found it was very easy to get an okay result, but very challenging to get a reproducible, precise result, with comparably minimal professionally inclined resources to guide us. There were times where we’d watch a print just dissolve and bleach out right in front of our eyes 10 minutes after we thought we had figured something out. There was definitely a lot of trial and error.

TW: You’ve worked with Laine [Groeneweg, Smokestack’s Analog Printmaker] a number of times over the years, but it seems this collaboration was quite different.

DT: Yes, neither Laine or I had ever worked with cyanotype before. Through his expertise in other print media (i.e. intaglio) Laine of course brought a lot of experience handling wet paper which is a big part of the cyanotype process, but we found that the same papers reacted very differently with a similar multi-soaking process through cyanotype than they would through etching. In many ways though it really was collaborative on the most fundamental level. There were times early on that I had my doubts whether we could actually achieve the results we were looking for with cyanotype, but Laine’s optimism and energy really carried us through those crucial moments.

TW: The variation of visual and physical forms within this body of work demonstrates your drive to expand and push the medium seemingly to its limits. Was this the intention?

DT: Once we started into cyanotype and it taking over as the medium to use through the whole residency – aside from its measures of unpredictability – we really found it to be quite flexible. Getting more into the process through experimentation I came to realize how much could be done with it, and so it became a fun challenge to see how we could push it. “Can we actually do it?” was a regular sentiment and the trials and errors led to some really successful results.

TW: Regarding content, you’ve explored cultural phenomena and the intervention of everyday spaces & objects across your practice. What aspects in particular have you been looking at through this series?

DT: In some senses this body of work is a departure; still looking at themes of the human experience but not so much the domestic or everyday. I was inspired by a term, Vale of Tears, which is a tenet that underpins a lot of religions – from Christianity to eastern philosophy – that asserts life is suffering and it’s only in the afterlife that we find deliverance. I’m not necessarily an ardent believer in the paradise of an afterlife, but through lived experience I can say that there is suffering and there are moments of deliverance. I was interested in creating a body of work that spoke to these global themes but also had very personal elements and narratives underpinning them.

TW: How does the title of the exhibition, Lengths, reflect these themes?

DT: I rarely rely on one word to convey something, but it seemed to fit all of the works (directly, conceptually, metaphorically) and how they’re positioned within so many universal narratives of suffering and its counterpoint. The lengths we go to avoid suffering, the lengths we go to find peace, the literal lengths to swim in a pool as a form of meditation, the lengths of distance ancestors physically travel to flee from trauma…

TW: The lengths of survival.

DT: Exactly.

David Trautrimas, Choir Practice VII, cyanotype, 9” x 9”, 2024

Smokestack Gallery exhibits the work of artists who have produced their print projects in Smokestack’s Analog and Digital studios. The partnered operations between Smokestack Studios and Smokestack Gallery seek to establish a connection between the production of print works and their final presentation; to offer a greater understanding of the uniquely technical and creative processes involved in these specialized artistic disciplines.

Smokestack Analog Print Residency and exhibition of artworks created by residency participants has been made possible with the generous support from the Ontario Arts Council.

For more information:
Tel: 289.799.5088
gallery@smokestack.ca
www.smokestack.ca
@smokestack.studio

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday – Friday: 10am – 4pm or by appointment

Smokestack Gallery
Mill Unit #215, 270 Sherman Avenue N.
The Cotton Factory
Hamilton, ON L8L 6N4
Wheelchair accessible (with assistance)