Amber Lee Williams

The Waves series began as 35mm black and white film photographs. I developed the 35mm black and white film in the darkroom. I scanned the negatives and then printed them on waterslide paper. I sprayed the paper with a varnish, and after about 20 minutes of drying, I submerged the photos in water. The emulsion part of the image (i.e., the ink secured by the sprayed varnish) floats off the paper’s surface. It swims and crumples, folding in on itself where small pockets of air get trapped under the emulsion, creating bubbles. The work is then photographed digitally in a reflective metal tray. The images begin in black and white, but colour is introduced through my body’s reflection. I see myself in the metal tray, below the waves, and digitally photograph this process. These digital files are then printed on metallic paper. The metal tray led me to the metallic paper. The metallic prints are then meticulously cut-out and the edges sanded to soften them. Finally, these cut-outs are scanned and digitally printed to produce the exhibited version. Like the waves, the process goes back and forth between digital and analogue. The reflection mimicking the intangible qualities of memories, a kind of elusive apparition that’s simultaneously there but not there

Kept in the Dark consists of 44 unique anthotype reproductions of my mother. I chose this number because it was her age when she died. The selected image, reproduced photographically again and again, is her high school graduation portrait. It hangs in my stairwell and I walk by it daily. The  image  was also used in her obituary, and at her funeral, as a centerpiece. For me, it has been irreversibly changed, inescapably tied to her death.

Anthotypes, impermanent photographs made from plant matter, are produced by crushing organic materials (like flower petals) into a pulp that is mixed with alcohol. This emulsion is then painted onto an absorbent substrate. To make the exposure, a positive film is set on top of this light sensitive paper, and then placed in the sun. Exposures can take hours, days, or even weeks. Anthotypes cannot be made permanent, and continued sun exposure lightens them further. Even stored in complete darkness, the image will disappear, due to the fugitive nature of the pigments. Anthotypes are inherently ephemeral, tying them to themes of memory and the transience of life.

I chose to explore flowers vis-a-vis anthotypes, as their materiality relates to not only beauty, but also decay. In 16th century Dutch Still Life paintings, flowers are symbolic of the transience of life. They speak to both fragility and brevity, as a flower’s beauty is enjoyed, but not for very long. The flowers used in this work were collected at different times and from different locations. Some are from my garden (tulip, petunia, lily, rose), or the garden of a friend, while others were from the side of the road, a ditch, a field, or in some cases covertly cut as they peeked over a neighbour’s fence. They exist together as one artwork, a collaged-based process which is akin to Maria van Oosterwijck’s flower paintings and her imagined compositions that were constructed over prolonged periods (circa 1600). Her paintings, made prior to the invention of photography, used ‘live’ flowers as source material for the composition. However, Maria van Oosterwijck would not have had access to these flowers at the same time, thus flowers were successively painted and added, as they became seasonally available. The outcome is an impossible composition that simultaneously speaks to life and death.

In a traditional Vanitas painting, the soap bubble is a symbol that represents the fragility and brevity of life. I expand on the symbolism of the soap bubble to develop my own metaphor for the contrasting themes of life and death. The original symbolism of the soap bubble is ‘Homo Bulla Est’ which translates as ‘Man is a Bubble’.

Femina Bulla Est (woman is a bubble), is a sequence of macro photographs of bubblegum. This work is based on the Vanitas soap bubble found in Dutch 16th - 17th century still life paintings. In my adaptation the soap bubble becomes female and is reimagined in both inflated and deflated states. Thus, unlike the vanitas archetype, Femina Bulla Est is both fragile and durable.

Memento Mamma Mori is a body of work that began with an investigation of vanitas still life paintings and other vanitas related works such as: memento mori, the five senses, Dutch flower paintings, and other variations of the still life genre. These types of paintings are rich with symbols that remind the viewer of the fragility and brevity of life, and the inevitable ending that we all face, death.

When I began to create work from the symbolism found in still life paintings, I did not intend for the theme of motherhood to be a part of it. What I discovered in each piece was that motherhood was at the core. With each symbol there was a transformation of meaning that was made through my personal involvement and the feelings that came to the surface when I interacted with the various symbols. This would happen at different times, during the collecting process, the making, the altering, or even in conversation when discussing the work with my family.

The overarching themes of motherhood and death in Memento Mamma Mori bring together several specific areas of exploration. Femina Bulla Est is a series of macro photographs, investigating the symbol of the bubble. The vanitas soap bubble is replaced with inflated and deflated bubblegum. The Table builds on ideas of the traditional still life, creating clusters of contemporary versions of these symbols and compositions with found and fabricated sculptures. No More Tea, a wall installation, is a fictional space that uses broken or absent tea cups to suggest the permanence of loss and the ephemeral details of everyday life. The winged insects of Horror Vacui represent the fear of empty spaces and the spaces that are left behind. There are also several quieter pieces, such as Reassembled Hibiscus, that examine personal symbolism in a singular way.

My approach to making this body of work involved trying many different things—part meticulous planning and part spontaneous experimentation. I have a very nonlinear way of working and thinking. A number of different approaches and processes were happening simultaneously in the same space, moving from one idea or medium to the next. I like to think of my art practice, my thinking, and the way I work in the studio as a constellation of ideas and bodies of work; there are multi-directional connections and anything can influence or change anything else.

The winged insects of Horror Vacui represent the fear of empty spaces and the spaces that are left behind.

The Lumen prints began as a representation of my postpartum body. The placenta (Birth Day Cake #1) is literally a part of my body, an organ that grew alongside my child. Breast Milk on Baby's Breath, the time I spend feeding my child, and the Padsicles, a reminder of time spent labouring, and the work of delivering a child.

I’ve continued to make these Lumen prints alongside other bodies of work, and as works on their own.

The Polaroid emulsion lifts began with a bath, my pregnant body partially submerged in the water. The areas of me that had changed because of my child, my breasts and belly, were above the water, and the rest of me under the water, hidden.

I worked with other mothers, documenting their bodies with Polaroid film, labouring over the emulsion lifts to find different ways to create meaning and relate them to the idea of a hidden mother. I photographed the emulsion lifts while they were in their fluid and very temporary state before transferring them to glass jars (Preserves series).

This body of work is in some ways a documentation of my experience as a mother, and an exploration of the individual and shared themes of motherhood in general. While the work was created from a personal point of view, I connect it to the timelessness of motherhood and the universal truth: we are all born.

The expired Polaroids intertwine themes of randomness and time. Because the film is expired, it exposes in an unpredictable and sometimes in a faulty way. Only certain areas of the image are developed. the rest of the image remains hidden and unexposed. I embrace the randomness of the process, which involved shooting a lot of expired film, with only a handful of successful results