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Creating with Cyanotype with artist Julia Whitney Barnes
Creating with Cyanotype with artist Julia Whitney Barnes
 
Herb Fair & Market
September 20, 2025
10:15 am - 12:15 pm
 
Caramoor
Education Center
149 Girdle Ridge Road
Katonah, New York
 
Please note: the cost of the workshop includes all essential materials

Creating with Cyanotype with artist Julia Whitney Barnes

SKU: wrkjwb2025
$160.00Price
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  • Julia Whitney Barnes will be giving a demonstration on the cyanotype technique along with an inside look into her process of creating Planting Utopia at the Shaker Heritage Society. Sometimes considered a printmaking technique, sometimes a photographic technique, Julia approaches cyanotype as an artist painting with light. Cyanotype is a cameraless photographic printing process invented in 1842 by scientist and astronomer, Sir John Herschel, which produces a cyan-blue print when a coated surface is exposed to sunlight. It is also known as a sunprint, photogram, or blueprint. The first artist (who was also a botanist) to use it was Anna Atkins. There is a directness to the link between botany and the cyanotype photogram technique because of the physical plant/object leaving its mark.

  • Artist/educator Julia Whitney Barnes approaches the medium as someone painting with light. She is interested in creating objects that feel both beautiful and mysterious. Each of her cyanotype paintings recall something familiar yet slightly outside of time. Given that sunlight starts the exposure process with cyanotype chemutilizes long exposures under natural or UV light to create the final prints. She carefully arranges elaborate compositions at night and manipulates physical impressions of plants grown in her Hudson Valley garden and other nearby areas, along with intricate negatives that are created as digital renderings or photographs printed in reverse onto transparencies.

    Julia Whitney Barnes is an artist living in the Hudson Valley who works in a variety of media from cyanotypes, watercolor, oil paintings, ceramic sculptures, murals, and site-specific installations. She has exhibited widely in the United States and internationally. She was awarded fellowships from New York State Council Arts, Arts Mid-Hudson, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Abbey Memorial Fund for Mural Painting/National Academy of Fine Arts, and the Gowanus Public Art Initiative, among others.

    Born in Newbury, VT, Julia Whitney Barnes spent two decades in Brooklyn, before moving to Poughkeepsie, NY in 2015. She received her BFA from Parsons School of Design and her MFA from Hunter College. Whitney Barnes has created site-specific installations at the Albany International Airport/Shaker Heritage Society, Albany, NY; Brookfield Place/Winter Garden, New York, NY; Arts Brookfield, Brooklyn, NY, the Wilderstein Sculpture Biennial, Rhinebeck, NY; The Trolley Barn/Fall K*ll Creative Works, Poughkeepsie, NY; GlenLily Grounds, Newburgh, NY; ArtsWestchester, White Plains, NY; Gowanus Public Arts Initiative, Brooklyn, NY; Space All Over/Fjellerup Bund i Bund & Grund, Fjellerup, Denmark; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council/Sirovitch Senior Center, New York, NY; Brooklyn School of Inquiry, Brooklyn, NY; New York City Department of Transportation, New York, NY; and Figment Sculpture Garden, Governors Island, NY and among other locations.

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