Welcome to no. 30 in our series Poignant Pics where our editor, Diana Nicholette Jeon, writes about Kaylee Clark’s handmade film, “Divergence.”

Recently, I got an email announcement of the online BFA show from my undergrad alma mater, the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. I clicked so I could see what the graduates are making right now, given that the world as we experienced it this past year had been so unlike our lives were before COVID.

I was impressed with several projects, but one resonated for me more than the rest. It was a handmade film by Kaylee Clark, who created it from analog, alt process photographs exposed and developed using ecologically friendly methods. Among other things, the work brought me back to my own time in college and grad school as well as the time I spent making a project that remains a favorite of mine 17 years after the fact. 

When I was an undergrad, I had tried for three semesters to get into a video class, but the gods did not smile favorably upon me–by the time it was my turn to enroll, the class was long filled. In December of 1998, the skies parted, the sun shone upon me, and I was finally able to enroll for the Spring 1999 session. I was pregnant at that time; the night before my mid-December finals the bleeding started, resulting in enforced bed rest for the rest of my pregnancy. 

Finally, I got to take the class during the Spring 2000 semester. By that time I had already taught myself to shoot and do non-linear digital editing, but I still wanted to be in the class in order to learn more about the genre, its theory, and its history. For me, the coolest day was the one we spent watching handmade and hand-altered experimental films. Before seeing those in class, I had no idea anything like that could be done with motion film. Since we had no facilities to do anything like that I noted it but mentally put it aside while still trying to use some of the ideas behind it in my digital work.

In my second semester of grad school at UMBC, I got to take a class called Surface Tensions. We did all the cool things I had been wanting to do since that day in that video class at Kapiolani Community College. I spent that semester exactingly creating a handmade film: bleaching, splicing, coating with liquid light, drying, exposing in the enlarger, developing, sanding, etching with an etching needle, hand coloring, and digitizing. I used it in an installation about tourism in Hawai’i. The film was projected on top of an 11 ft. circle of sand that was perfectly raked into concentric circles. I cannot overstate how much I loved that entire project and experience. I haven’t had the luxury of having the tools and space to do anything similar since that time. I miss it, still, 15 years after graduating. From time to time I search YouTube to find some interesting experimental films, but sadly it is not a particular strength on the YouTube platform.

Imagine my joy and surprise at finding out someone in Hawai‘i was currently doing this kind of work. I was intrigued by this film and Kaylee’s process of working with analog photos to make it, so I contacted her to ask about featuring this work. Although her project has some prints as well, it was the film that grabbed me and pulled me in to view it more than once. 

About this work, Kaylee writes: “Divergence is exploring the landscape of my mind and body through its connection with nature. The images are made with an organic developer and direct sun contact. The visceral marks are paralleling nature’s properties of growth and erosion. Through the abstraction of landscape, I reflected on my disconnect between mind and body, caused by anxiety, to create an external diagram of the internal landscape. By removing the use of a camera, I became immersed in the roots of my body's manipulative tendencies.”

The 4-minute film is full of luminous, quiet, ambiguous imagery abutted by a jarring, persistent (and somewhat annoying) soundtrack. The imagery is beautiful to look at, especially with the sound turned off. However, when viewing it as it is meant to be seen, with the soundtrack on, Divergence does quite aptly reflect the past year–a year which for many of us was one filled with quiet personal moments as we huddled in our homes and family bubbles that were juxtaposed with our anxiety, fears, and worries. Divergence, through skillful use of sound and image, truly reflects the landscape of disconnection between these aspects of our lives during these past 15 months.

If you would like to learn more about Kaylee’s process in creating this film, she has an accompanying process video in the UHM BFA exhibition that gives more info. You can watch that here: http://www.uhmbfa2021.com/2021/04/04/kaylee-clark/

I hope Kaylee makes many more handmade films. I am eager to see how her work develops as she evolves from a student artist to working artist.

— Diana Nicholette Jeon

PS: I want to give a huge shout-out to Violet Murakami, who taught the video class at Kapiolani Community College. If not for her showing those works, I might not have taken the paths I did along the way in developing my artistic career.

Artist Bio

Kaylee Clark is an artist originally from Wichita, Kansas. In May 2021, she graduated with her BFA in Photography at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

She works the conversation of photography through physical manipulations and alternative processes of the film and photographic prints created. By working in this way, the experiments conducted allow a balance of control and abstraction that the process creates.

Clark’s work has been published in Transcend Magazine in 2020 and the Hand Magazine in 2021. She has received the John Young Scholarship in the Arts and the Yoko Radke Award in Photography.

More of her work can be found on her website.

Author Bio

Diana Nicholette Jeon is an award-winning artist based in Honolulu, HI who works primarily with lens-based media. Her work has been seen both internationally and nationally in solo and group exhibitions. Jeon holds an MFA from UMBC.