Purple Potato Problem

So, purple potatoes are giving me some issues.  And that’s ok.  All art comes with its challenges and I have hit one just at the crux of my excitement about anthotypes.  Thus I am able to carry on and persevere!

Seriously though, the purple potato dye isn’t fading like the beet and pomegranate dye did.  Being a visual learner, let me show you what I mean.

As you might recall from my previous post, I started out with a lovely purple potato dye painted on paper that looks like this:

I added a few extra coats for good measure after I took this photograph because I was so excited about the depth of the dye.

Now, here is the photograph I picked out and printed on transparency paper to be contact printed:

Good contrast, good possibility for detail to show up on the paper… but when I checked the progress of the contact print there was no visible change in the dye from day 1 to day 3 (normally I see significant fading of the background).  So I kept at it and left it out in the sun for 8 days straight (We had an awesome stretch of days with nothing but sun!) and still no visible change.  So I decided to abort and take it out of the frame.

I went to take a picture of it to show you all the before and after, and I saw this:

There is a little bit of fading starting to happen to the background and the potato slices are beginning to show up!  So, back in the frame with you!  Which is not an easy task or an ideal situation as I need to line things up perfectly.  Normally I would never take a print completely out of the printing frame before I knew it was done as it can take away from the sharpness of the print.  But in this case, it looks like the purple potatoes have a chance!

So maybe this dark color takes a while longer, or maybe there is something chemically going on with the starch of the potato that causes it to not fade in the sun.  I don’t know the answer.

What I do know is that this is a great experiment that I am still loving even with the set-backs.

The only fallout, however, is that I could not get my entries in to the Mill Valley Call for Artists as I only had 3 pieces to show them instead of the required 5.  So as soon as I get my 5, I’ll start talking to galleries in the area as friends have already given me some leads.

Also, I will be selling these!  More information on that in a future post, but I would love to get these anthotypes out in the world.