Enjoy this behind-the-scenes look at resident artist alumnus Dominique Muñoz, whose studio practice involves cyanotype, a photographic printing method harnessing the power of the sun! ☀️
Cyanotyping is a slow-reacting photographic process yielding deep-hued Prussian blue prints. The photosensitive chemical mixture behind the process is made up of a mixture of potassium ferricyanide and ferric ammonium citrate that is sensitive to ultraviolet and blue light.
Here, Dominique treats thrifted bedsheets with the photosensitive emulsion. After drying for 24 hours, he lays them on boards under film transparencies before carrying them out to the Craft Garden for exposure in the Texas sun. After exposure to the UV light, water is used to “fix” the prints and stop the developing process. The prints darken as they dry, eventually achieving their signature richness.
For Dominique, whose photography practice led him to textile explorations, cyanotypes bring together a variety of influences. Growing up in a Guatemalan American household, his connection to the fabrics of his childhood led him to explore the history of Mayan weaving and the impact of decades of industrial textile production. Challenging aesthetics that standardize and flatten the visual richness of these craft legacies, he is currently translating familiar patterns, alongside new ones, onto thrifted bedsheets through cyanotype and sunlight.
Strips of these large-scale prints appear in Dominique’s baskets, where patterns are crushed, interrupted, and recombined through weaving into an object that can be held. He is interested in the ways fabrics imprint themselves on us—how certain materials can carry memories, histories, and meanings that are deeply specific to our own lives. With this in mind, he has begun thinking of these woven baskets as dream vessels: objects that hold traces of the fabrics, patterns, and dreams from strangers, while leaving room for something new to emerge.
