Petrified Forest National Park Artist-in-Residents Daniel Bernard Gray & Billi London-Gray

Date: July 29, 2014
Contact: Kip Woolford, [phone] Ext. 273

Daniel Bernard Gray completed his bachelor of fine arts in painting at Texas State University. Born in Vienna, Austria, to Finnish and American parents and raised in Texas, he incorporates his international perspective into his artwork. Through material experiments, found-sound compositions, paintings, sculptures and music, he seeks to explore the elements of conflict and resolution that underlie the universal human condition. He also is an academic advisor in Texas State’s College of Liberal Arts.

Billi London-Gray was raised in Wylie, Texas, and earned a B.A. in theology from Criswell College and an M.A. in liberal arts from St. John’s College. Her inter-media work examines recontextualization and translation as essential processes of the human narrative. By appropriating, abstracting, repurposing and combining disparate materials and symbols, she explores the ways in which people construct and inhabit their realities. She serves as a founding organizer of the BEST Art Tour and a member of Arts Advocates of San Marcos. She curates the Gallery of the Common Experience at Texas State University.

Together, Daniel and Billi co-direct the nonprofit Zosima Gallery in San Marcos, Texas, where they live and work.

On Thursday, August 7^th 2014, Daniel and Billie will present a hands-on activity, demonstration and presentation for the public. This will be held at the Painted Desert Inn Historic Landmark located in the Petrified Forest National Park. General admission into the park is required to attend this event.

Learn to make photographic prints outside using the sun! Visitors are invited to try their hand at the historic process of sun printing. Join the Petrified Forest Artists-in-Residence in creating sun prints for a large-scale collage related to the history and stories of the park.

Just like making darkroom prints, sun prints expose light-sensitive paper to strong light (the sun), which causes a chemical reaction to change the color of the paper. Instead of projecting light through a frame of developed film, park visitors will create meaningful compositions by selecting and placing small objects directly onto the photographic paper. As the paper is exposed in the sun with the objects on top of it, the shadows of the objects will create solid shapes on the paper, resulting in a type of contact print called a photogram.

The Artists-in-Residence will keep the sun prints to create a large scale collage that combines the work of all participants. Images of all sun prints and the final collage will be available for free download atwww.billilondongray.com/sunprints.

Sun Prints – Public Outreach Activity @ PEFO – Billi London-Gray and Daniel Bernard Gray