i turn my camera on @iturnmycameraon - Tumblr Blog

Finally got through cleaning up these film photos from last summer. Took a roll and a half during my natural dye workshop at Oak Spring Garden Foundation in northern Virginia. Wonderful class, lovely people, extraordinary location. I did find out that my camera's shutter needs repair so any darkness on the right side of the photos is not intentional but certainly present. At least most shots still turned out, unlike my last two rolls which were blank (battery). 😩

#film photography #film #35mm #film is not dead #canon av 1 #natural dyeing #natural dyes

art studio alley | 2026

Spring time watercolor view of a local drive around my old neighborhood in Lexington, Virginia.

art studio alley

Mackenzie Brooks

2026

#watercolor #art #spring

Acipenser oxyrinchus | 2026

If you've traveled to historic/natural resource sites in Virginia or North Carolina, you've probably seen watercolors from John White, a very early colonist and artist. I've always loved his rendering of the sturgeon, but I've also just become fascinated by this dinosaur fish after seeing some babies in Richmond (a boat trip on the James is still on my bucket list).

I've been dreaming up an art project that features the sturgeon for a while. I have plans to expand to other endangered/threatened species. I really wanted to do something large-scale, but I think I have to work up to the size linocut that I'm imagining. Stay tuned for a print inspired by John Williams's Butcher's Crossing.

This print ended up 9x12". I used historic maps as reference images to create the decorative elements, especially ones from Joan Blaeu. I used watercolor to add color to the elements. I cut out the white spaces of the print so you could see the bottom layer which is a 1970s Virginia tourism map. This bottom layer was not originally part of the plan, but I found it in my collection and decided it was the perfect background, both dimensionally and metaphorically. In my day job, I spend time talking with students about maps as stories or arguments, so I was interested in playing with layers that engaged both the past and the present. The colonial-era maps are obviously highlighting natural resources as discoveries and potential commodities, but what has that wrought? The Atlantic sturgeon was listed as endangered in 2012.