Wild Summer Blooms: A Path Still Being Found

Wild Summer Blooms, tri-color cyanotype by Nikki Gardner

There is something about working with a process you cannot fully control that forces you to pay attention differently. This week I have been deep in a tri-color cyanotype, and I want to share what drew me to this particular image, what the process actually involves, and why the print that came out of it is not something I could make twice.

I was walking by a garden in Northampton on a day that felt like summer distilled, wild, vibrant, loose at the edges. I wanted to fill the frame with that fullness rather than tame it, which is not my usual instinct. I tend toward negative space, cleaner compositions, more room to breathe. Here I did the opposite, on purpose, to see what would happen.

When I look at the print now, it feels like a secret I wanted to uncover. Somewhere in that density of color and leaf and stem, there is a path. Something still to find. That feeling guided every decision I made while I was working, and it is still what I see when I look at the finished piece.

For this print, I worked with three separate negatives, each with its own contrast adjustment, layered and registered on top of each other. That layering is what makes tri-color cyanotype different from a standard single-exposure print. Every negative affects how the ones before it read once the next exposure and toning pass over it, so the relationship between the three layers is something I can guide but never fully predict. Alignment shifts things. Exposure time shifts things. The way the chemistry dried on that particular afternoon shifts things.

This print is not perfect, and I mean that as a description, not an apology. There is a slight imprecision in how the layers sit against each other, a little friction where the registration is not exact. That imperfection is what holds my attention. A cleaner, more controlled print would not have the same pull. The tension between the three layers is part of what makes this piece feel alive rather than resolved.

This is also, I think, the most honest thing I can tell someone considering a piece like this for their own home. A print made this way cannot be exactly repeated. The sun's intensity that day, how the chemistry sat on that sheet, the precise way each negative was placed, none of that will line up in quite the same way again. What exists is this one print, holding this one set of decisions and accidents together.

I did not make this piece because it fit neatly into my usual body of work. I made it to get outside my own habits, more positive space than I would normally choose, a denser and wilder composition, three layers of contrast instead of the cleaner approach I usually reach for. It broke my own rules, and that is exactly why I kept going with it.

I keep coming back to the garden itself. It was loud and full that day, nothing tidy about it. This print is quieter than the memory, and a little more mysterious at the edges, but it still holds that same sense of a path not yet found. If that is a feeling you would want to live with, in a hallway, a reading corner, a room that could use a little more wildness and a little more secret, I would love to talk with you about it.

You can reach out through my shop to see the print or ask about availability. The garden is still there. There is still a path to find. I am not done looking yet.