The Blackbird and the Crane Studio

Work

Painting from Photos
The Wizard the Artist and the Spaceman
Pinhole Photographs
Test Strips
Hero of a Thousand Cranes
Graphite Drawings
Pinhole Cameras
Painted Photographs

← Work

Painting from Photos

Acrylic and glaze on canvas, painted from large-format negatives. 25 × 15 cm.

Pale spotted alstroemeria flowers emerging from a black ground — The Flower Sermon

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The Wizard the Artist and the Spaceman

From the bedtime stories my dad told my brother and me: he was the wizard, I was the artist, my brother the spaceman. The first of three models for a photographic children’s book.

Sculpted head with closed eyes and a long beard of real hair, draped in a pale hood — The WizardClay bust, head 10 cm tall.

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Pinhole Photographs

Silver gelatin prints, taken with bespoke pinhole cameras. About 10 × 13 cm.

Pinhole photograph: a workshop interior seen through a soft dark circle, with a bench and tools in the light

Pinhole photograph: a building’s steel frame and windows inside a round black vignette on a pale ground

Pinhole photograph: a large dark speckled sphere resting on a pale surface

Pinhole photograph: a round view of a dark speckled wall crossed by a vertical post

Pinhole photograph: a faint, pale interior with angled shapes inside a soft circular vignette

Pinhole photograph: a pale, blurred vertical frame with a dark half-moon shape hanging in the middle

Pinhole photograph: a figure seated in a room, seen through a small round opening

Pinhole photograph: pale soft shapes above a dark band of objects along the bottom edge

Pinhole photograph: a dark window grid floating in a pale field

Pinhole photograph: an image of branches and buildings above two dark horizontal shapes

Pinhole photograph: a round view of a window frame with a dark plume to one side

Pinhole photograph: a black disc cut by a pale diagonal, with marbled edges

Pinhole photograph: an interior with a table edge and a dark arch, softly doubled

Pinhole photograph: two dark window grids under soft dark shapes, above a blurred horizon

Pinhole photograph: an arch of dark window panes floating in a pale field

Pinhole photograph: a round view of a window and tree, cut by a dark half-circle below

Pinhole photograph: a small doorway in a pale field beneath a dark band

Pinhole photograph: a pale field with a dark band along the bottom edge

Pinhole photograph: a pale sky above a long dark blurred horizon

Pinhole photograph: a pale sky above a dark blurred horizon with a single post

Pinhole photograph: a pale field with a dark rounded shape low on the right

Pinhole photograph: a glowing pale oval low on a deep blue ground

Pinhole photograph: streaked pale and blue forms tilting across the sheet

Pinhole photograph: a pale glow above, a pale band below, joined by blue and scattered light

Pinhole photograph: two pale ovals stacked above a pale band on deep blue

Pinhole photograph: a pale oval high on deep blue, with a light band at the foot

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Test Strips

Liquid photographic emulsion test strips, made in the darkroom while printing large photo-paintings on canvas. 26 × 16 cm.

Test strip: dark sepia washes and a pale arch-like opening, with brush sweeps across the top — Test Strip 1

Test strip: black cloud-like forms scattered with white specks over a pale sepia ground — Test Strip 2

Test strip: pale sepia ground of diagonal brush marks with dark blots along the left edge — Test Strip 3

Test strip: pale sepia ground of fine dotted brush marks with dark edges — Test Strip 4

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Hero of a Thousand Cranes

Folded brass origami crane, in CZ108 sheet brass 0.15 mm thick. 25 cm wingtip to wingtip, 13 cm from base to tail tip. Inspired by senbazuru, the Japanese practice of folding a thousand paper cranes, and by Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

A folded brass origami crane, gold and mirror-bright, standing on a glossy black plinth

hotc.co.uk · coming soon

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Graphite Drawings

Pencil and rubbed graphite on card, 100 × 70 cm.

Large graphite drawing of swirling feather-like forms, two spheres and a dark vortex — Sunyata

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Pinhole Cameras

Collapsible handbag camera: an old folding camera set into a leather bag, with stitched light-proof lining and a paper holder. 18 × 26 cm closed.

Pinhole camera: a worn tan leather case with a folding bellows camera opening from its side — Handbag Camera

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Painted Photographs

Photographic emulsion over heavily textured acrylic on stretched canvas, the image projected, developed and fixed in the darkroom. 150 × 100 cm.

About

The Blackbird and the Crane is the studio of Samuel Cragg, an artist based in Scotland who graduated in sculpture from Edinburgh College of Art in 2002. He designed and built the studio in his back garden. It is equipped for working in wood, metal, clay, fabric and paint, with a digital suite and a large-format darkroom, and is where the drawings, paintings, pinhole photographs and objects on this site are made.

The finished studio at dusk, black timber with two lit windows

Privacy

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Contact

blackbirdcrane@icloud.com

The Art of Remembering Ltd
Registered in Scotland, company number SC903039
Registered office: 4 Mitchell Street, Leith, Edinburgh EH6 7BD