"Owl's Head Hoop Dance #2, Arizona" (c) 2002, 2019 Stu Jenks.
The Toole Shed 25 Year Anniversary Thing.
In 1992, The Toole Shed in Tucson, Arizona was born. It was a difficult labor but the baby arrived with 100 fingers and 100 toes.
James Graham asked me to do a little something for the 25 year anniversary thing. I hope to be able to travel from my new home in Greensboro, North Carolina, back to my true hometown of Tucson in May for the celebration, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to. But I surely can raise two hands in praise for those heady times in the 2000’s when I was a part of the tribe, and I can share a story or two, and a photograph or three.
I really hope I can make it in May. Love and miss you all.
Owl’s Head Hoop Dance #2, Arizona
(Ode to The Toole Shed Darkroom)
Spring and Summer, 2002
Excerpts from Stu Jenks’ book:
Hoop Dancing: More Journeys Through Nocturnal Photography.
Fezziwig Press: 2009.
I blow the negative with a blast of canned air. The negative carrier rests on a small light table. I bend over with my loupe and look for dust. Damn. Still a couple of pieces of lint. I blow the negative carrier again with air, doing my best to rid it of all dust. It'll be a white spot on the finished print if I don’t eliminate it now. And I really hate spotting prints. Unless you are really good at it, you can still tell when you’ve spotted a final print with a brushed dot of colored ink. I look again through my loupe at the negative. I think I got it all now. I hope. I'll find out once I do a test print or two.
I place the carrier holder in the color enlarger, between the lamp and the focusing lens. I gently pull down the lamp housing to secure the carrier. I've already set up my easel to print a 7 x 7 inch image on 8 x 10 inch paper. Now I just need to focus it. I turn on the enlarger lamp and crank the enlarger head up and down to get a rough size of the image and then I bend down close to the easel with my focusing mirror, reaching high above my head to the fine focusing knob on the enlarger. No filters right now, f-stop wide open for focusing. Back and forth, between almost sharp and spot-on sharp, looking for the grain to pop in the mirror. Pop. There it is.
I stop the enlarger down to f16, very gently turning the aperture, so as not to move the enlarger very much. This is a very old Omega color head enlarger and it doesn't like to be bumped. Very delicate, this old machine. It already has a threaded bar that runs from the metal frame through the old sheet rock wall to the north. This jury-rigging is there to add stability and hopefully keep it level. But when a train goes by, just a few feet north of the darkroom, the whole room shakes, enlarger included. (I've often thought it would be fun to make prints as the trains go by, just to see how wonderfully fuzzy those images would be. The whole of the Toole Shed borders the tracks.)
I'm in the Toole Shed Darkroom, here in the Toole Shed, in the Historic Warehouse District of Downtown Tucson. Doesn't that sound quaint? Well, it’s not really. Across the street is Pleasure World, a video porno store that fronts a male prostitution business. Perhaps the only pornography store in America that shares a common wall with a courthouse, in this case, the Tucson City Court. The courthouse parking lot is where most of the nighttime prostitution business is transacted. James Graham and other Toole Shed residents have called the police on many occasions but they don't seem interested. Makes James mad as a hornet. I don’t blame him.
Speaking of James Graham, it's through his generosity that I'm printing here tonight, and other nights too.
Maybe a little history about the Toole Shed and the Warehouse District are in order. I could be wrong about some of the facts here. In fact, I’m sure I am. Please forgive me. The Toole Shed is truly a mystical place, living in the land of soft myth as much as in hard reality.
So here goes.
"The 16th Circle, Owl's Head, Arizona" (c) 2002, 2019 Stu Jenks.
Back in the early 1980's, The City of Tucson (The City) and the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) decided to widen and improve the Aviation Parkway, a relatively unused East-West thoroughfare that runs parallel to the Southern Pacific railroad tracks, east of downtown. A city bond came up on the ballot and the people of Tucson voted for The City to have the money for that construction. Then, the City and ADOT decided that since now that the Aviation Parkway was going to be so wide and new, it made sense to connect it to Interstate 10 that runs just west of Downtown. About a mile separates the Interstate, from the western end of Aviation Parkway. Only problem was how to get the two roads together. The City and ADOT came up with another bond issue to get the money to build The Last Mile. They were confident that it would pass, since the first bond passed easily. In preparation, ADOT bought all the land along the tracks between the Aviation Parkway and I-10, except the Tucson Electric Power (TEP) building, a large eight-story office structure. They'd worry about TEP later. On the land they bought were a series of old decaying warehouses. Legend has it that they were owned by a number of prominent Tucsonans and that ADOT paid way over market value for them. (I believe it's called a Sweetheart Deal.) Rank has its privilege I suppose. And its corruption. Anyway, ADOT bought the land and the old buildings and the bond came up on the ballot and it went down hard to defeat. The people said No to The Last Mile. Now, The City had egg on its face and ADOT was stuck with old rundown buildings it paid too much money for. But the City and ADOT held onto some hope that, in the future, another bond would pass to pay for the piece of road.
It's now the year 2002 and we still don't have the Last Mile. A spiffier Aviation Parkway but no Last Mile.
But that ended up being good for us artists. Here’s how.
ADOT was stuck with these buildings but they couldn't do anything with them for they were slated for demolition, but the road never came, and the warehouses just sat fallow. The homeless began to live in some of them. Then some artists contacted ADOT in the late 1980’s/early 90’s and said that they would love to use the warehouses for art studios. We'll put in all the sweat equity, they said. And we'll clean and fix them up, and pay you a little rent too, the artists told ADOT. And they won't be such an eye sore, and you'd be helping the artists of Tucson have affordable studio space. ADOT agreed. James, his wife Julia, Dave Lewis and a number of other people went into the warehouse on the corner of Toole and 6th and began the long process of making it livable and workable. They worked very hard and very long to get this done. They named the building The Toole Shed, after the avenue outside and the tools inside. They have been on a month-to-month lease for over a dozen years now. ADOT fixed the roof this year but not until much asking, pleading and prodding. The rent’s paid (mostly) and ADOT is reasonably happy in the ‘no news is good news’ idea. The residents and artists of the Toole Shed do repairs and maintenance as they come up.
The Toole Shed has some legends attached to it as well. Perhaps true, perhaps myth, perhaps a little bit of both. It’s said that Air America, the CIA-run airline that sent goods and arms through Laos during the Vietnam War, ran shipments through the Toole Shed on their way out of the country. It is also said that during Prohibition, there was a speakeasy in the basement of the Toole Shed, where black and white porno films were shown and bathtub liquor was served. The Shriners, at one time, even stored their sequined costumes in the Toole Shed basement.
Now, The Toole Shed is home to over fifteen art studios, a darkroom and most recently, Tucson’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), a project of James, Julia, and other patrons and artists in town.
The darkroom was a creation of James and Julia’s hard work. Story goes that Julia built the sinks for James as a birthday present, and then James assembled the counters, scrounged the cabinets, and found the enlarger. The color paper processor, it's said, was brought by somebody and then just left there. Some stories in the Toole Shed do one of two things: They get bigger and more elaborate with each telling, so a story of a mouse becomes a story of a moose, or they shrink and become very small, so a story of a art couple drinking, fighting and fucking all the time in one of the studios just fades away after they are no longer tenants, their names forgotten. Anyway, the darkroom is huge by darkroom standards, probably a couple hundred square feet, a trapezoidal shaped room with a high ceiling and plenty of room for dancing and moving around. James is a tall thin man who prints color photos that are 30 x 36 inches. Great big prints of hazardous materials and other mysteriously beautiful things. Wonderful prints from a great big rock and roll darkroom.
This night, Steve Roach's "Lost Pieces" are playing on the boom box in the darkroom as I focus the enlarger. I'm printing color tonight. The ratty old Hope Color Processor clunks away on the other side of the room. It is old, but it does just fine. Most times, that is. It has no replenisher reservoir, which is a bit of a drag, for the chemicals become old in about four days, but you can still do quite a bit of printing in half a week. I'm printing black and white negatives onto Fuji Crystal Archive Color Paper. 8 by 10s, 11 by 14s and a few 16 x 20s. Good sizes. The red light overhead isn't on in the darkroom, like in black and white paper printing though. With color paper, you print in complete darkness.
I turn out all the lights, and take out an 8 x 10-inch piece of paper from the Fuji Box, and by touch, place it in the easel below the enlarger. I’m making a test strip first, to get my exposure times for the final prints. I check to make sure the Fuji box is closed, to ward against light leaking on the paper and accidentally trashing it. I reach toward the timer to my left that has been set at two-second intervals of exposure light. With my right hand, I find an 8 x 10 inch piece of cardboard and place it over 4/5 of the paper that is to be exposed... (I know this section of the story is tedious as hell, but I thought a full description of chemical darkroom color photo printing should be written down in details somewhere, so just in case, in say 100 or 200 years from now, folks might want to know how we did it.) ...I hit the timer with my left forefinger. Two seconds of f16 light falls on the easel and the paper. I move the cardboard off the easel about a 1/5, an inch and a half or so, and hit the timer again. Two more seconds. Back off another 1/5. Hit the timer. Two seconds more. Back off the cardboard another 1/5 of the length of the paper. Hit the timer switch again. Two seconds of "Hoop Dance #2" falls on the Fuji paper. Now I take the cardboard completed away from the easel. Hit the timer one last time. Last two seconds of enlarger light. The afterglow of the enlarger lamp fades to black.
I lift the top of the easel and take out the 8 x 10 inch piece of paper and I walk in the complete darkness to the Hope Color Processor 15 feet away. There is a tiny piece of fluorescent tape on the processor to guide me, but it's old hat to me now. I've walked back and forth in the dark a lot in this darkroom. Like a blind person, my body remembers how many steps it is to the processor, where the handle to the lid is, how to get back to the enlarger, etc. Half the fun is the process of making these prints. Making magic in the dark. And part of the magic is working in full darkness.
I place the Fuji Crystal Archive Paper in the slot that feeds the paper through the processor, close the lid, and walk in the dark to the light switch on the other side of the room. I turn it on, and it’s instantly big time bright. I squint a little. My eyes adjust. I have seven minutes to wait until the print comes out of the other end of the processor. I light a smoke and sway to Steve’s electronically manipulated drums and think back to that night near Owl's Head when I shot “Hoop Dance #2”
"Abajo Mountain Hoop Dance, Utah" (c) 2002, 2019 Stu Jenks.
Not much Moon to speak of. A half moon sliver to the east, obscured in cloud. I wonder if this'll work. There is still some dusk light to the west, but it’ll be gone soon.
The massive rock protrusions of Owl’s Head are farther away than usual. I'm not at my regular sacred place, with its shallow fire pit, quaint rock seats and emotionally familiar ground. I'm north at a relatively unknown wash to me. But I need a wash with trees to do what I’m thinking of doing.
My Pathfinder’s parked partly in the desert, with just enough room for another vehicle to pass, on this one lane 4 x 4 dirt path in the Tortillita Mountains. I don't think I need to worry about company. I've been coming out here at night, for a good long while now and have only seen one car at night in all those years. But famous last words, I park my truck in the road and sure enough someone will come. And I really need the truck to stay in one place for most of the evening.
I pop the hatchback and pull out the hula-hoop, the power converter and a hell of a lot of extension cord. I go inside of the cab and connect the converter to the cigarette lighter and look for the power light on the unit to glow ‘on.’ Good. I go and get three long rolls of drop cords. One by one, I unloop the cords, and plug the first cord into the converter and slowly walking down the hill to the wash, connecting the second and third cords as I go. I continue through the wash and walk behind some small Mesquite trees to the estimated furthest distance I'll go with the hula-hoop tonight. It'll be easier to pull cord back to the truck then to pull the cord away from it.
I start up the truck and let it idle. I grab the hula-hoop with its 100 tightly wrapped Christmas lights and walk through the wash to the end of the extension cord. I plug in the hoop.
The wash explodes with light, even in the waning dusk.
"Wow!" I say to myself, “I think this’ll be plenty of light.”
My Rollei medium format camera, loaded with Ilford Delta 400 film, already sits on its tripod on a nearby hill, with depth of field calculated, the focus 2/3’s out, and the f-stop at F 5.6. It's good to go. Now the hoop and cords are ready. Just need to wait a few more minutes for it to get a little darker.
Ten minutes pass.
"Ok. Let's do it."
God, let me know when I need to close the shutter for this is an almost moonless shoot. Help me to close the shutter after the right amount of time. Where am I? I’m here. What time is it? It’s now.
I walk up the hill to my camera and check to see if the lit hoop is out of the frame. Yep, sure is. I open the shutter and walk back down into the wash. Grabbing the hula-hoop, I swing it from left to right, back and forth, pulling the extension cord with my right hand as I dance through the wash. I hit a tree with the hoop.
"God damn it,” I say to no one but me.
I pull the cords and the hoop back out of the frame to the left. I walk up the hill, close the shutter, advance the film, check again to see if the hoop is out of frame, and I then open the shutter again.
“Slow, Stu,” I whisper to myself, “Dance with it. Dance.”
I dance again through the wash, swinging the hoop, high and low. This time I miss the tree. It feels good, this hoop dance. I drop the hoop far to the right out of the frame and go up to my truck to check on the time. There’s some glow still to the west from the long-setted Sun and some glow to the south from the distant city lights of Tucson. Hmm. 10 minutes should do. I turn on Elvis Costello's new CD on my truck’s player. I wait and sing along. After ten minutes, I go to my camera and close the shutter. Looking at the sky, there’s only the faint glow of the Tucson lights to the south. No light to speak of from the west and the Moon is still playing hide and seek in the clouds. Hell, let's do it anyway. I reposition the hoop to the east, open the shutter and dance again. I love the dancing part. I love making big light curves. I place the hoop on the ground again, outside of the frame, and head to the truck again. No tunes this time. I check the time and go for a walk up the road away from the wash. Twenty minute exposure this time.
Beautiful night. No rain lately. Plenty of cool air in the washes. Just lovely.
I turn around wondering if I can see the lit hula hoop. A hundred yards away or so, I spy the hoop glowing through the Palo Verde and Mesquite trees, looking like something from another time and place, creating a wondrously magical light that is both alien and familiar. Pity. Would be a nothing photograph from this distance, unless I had a very long lens (which I don’t), yet it's a big-time-somethin’ experience, right here, right now.
I'm kind of struck by my own work tonight and my own process. That rarely happens, that I get reflective or impressed during a shoot, for I'm mostly focused on the getting the shot I want and not messing up, and I’m not that impressive with myself in general anyway. I just do what I do. But from this distance, I'm feel more detached from the work, yet more connected to that hula-hoop of light.
A mentor long ago, once said, that when you find two seemingly contradictory yet absolutely complete truths, look for the paradox that resides in-between them, for there you will find an even greater truth.
Looking at the hoop in the distance, I sense that larger truth. Fleeting yet permanent. Solid yet fluid. Hard but soft. Real but otherworldly. Truth yet an illusion.
Hmm. Would make a good vision statement for the next Arizona Biennial, wouldn’t it? I crack a little smile. Don’t get too deep now, Stu. Just get the shot.
"The Three Surrender Trees, Red Ridge Trail, Catalina Mountains, Arizona" (c) 2002, 2019 Stu Jenks.
The 8 x 10 Fuji Crystal Archive Paper flops into the exit tray of the processor. Looking at the test strip, I like the brown color and it appears that seven seconds of light from the enlarger is about right for a 8 x 10. I turn out the light, load the easel again with a fresh piece of paper, expose it and walk to the processor again. I get off course and hit a stool I didn’t know was there hard with my right big toe.
"Ouch" I yell.
I hobble to the Hope Processor and load the print into it. I limp back to the enlarger and expose another seven-second print, just for good measure. Darkness again. Missing the stool this time. Feeding the Hope. Turning on the light.
Seven minutes later, both prints are out. They seem a bit too dark. I'll expose at 6.6 seconds next time. Also, they seem a little boring, with just the simple sepia color. Then I have an idea. I'm sure I'm not the first to think this, but I'm wondering what would happen if I extremely burned in the sky of this black and white negative onto this color paper? What color would it make? What if I use no filters during the burn? Just a straight white light burn.
I try out my idea. After the 6.6 second initial exposure, I feather in the sky with a piece of cardboard, obscuring most of the bottom piece of the paper in shadow but allowing another 6.6 second of white light to burn in the sky. After burning, printing and processing, I see the result.
The sky becomes a reddish orange, giving the illusion of the colors of sunset, yet the lines of the hoop dancing are still fine, bright and sharp, and the wash keeps its rich sepia color. This is good. Very good. I repeat the printing process a number of times, making six 8 x 10 Fuji prints.
It's going well in the darkroom tonight. I’m grateful of that. Some nights, it seems the darkroom fairies wreak havoc on me. Some printing sessions, the dust never gets off the negative, or I make silly beginner's mistakes or I can never dial in the exposure times or the colors correctly. But tonight, my print burning and dodging is reasonable, and my guesses on exposures are close if not right on the first try. Six good prints. Hap, hap, happy.
Now let's pull out the 16 x 20 inch paper and go for the gold.
But first, I think I'll walk next door and get a soda out of the Toole Shed soda machine. The Hope Processor clunks away. I'm shirtless in shorts and it's after midnight on a Friday night. I leave the darkroom and walk down the hall to the front door of the East End of the Toole Shed. I open the never-locked painted plate glass door and then unlock the always-locked yellow steel-bar door. I relock the door and turning, I notice that Pleasure World and the parking lot of City Court are hopping tonight. It is a Friday night, after all. Lots of cars. A number of cross-dressed men walk from car to car. No biggie to me. Whatever gets you through the night. I'm mostly thinking about Owl’s Head Hoop Dance #2, and the big print I'm about to attempt. Will the processor hold up? Will I need to rewash the big prints, because sometimes old rubber processor crud gets on the prints. Should I set up a couple of separate wash trays? Will the darkroom fairies be kind? I hear whistling from the parking lot across the street. I pay it no mind, thinking about f-stops, timers, and trays of water. I unlock the door to the main Toole Shed, go inside and get a soda from the machine. Exiting the main section and locking it back up, I hear whistling again and then I heard someone yell.
"Hey sweetie. You're cute," I hear a masculine-feminine voice say.
I look over at the parking lot across the way and seeing two women or rather men, looking at me. Suddenly I realize the whistling a few minutes before was for my benefit. I look away and continuing toward my door, very aware of the eyes of hungry men on me. I'm OK with women checking me out (which is almost never), but having a male prostitute giving me the up and down is giving me the willies. I bet this is how women feel all the time.
"He is cute!" I hear another voice say, from across the street.
I say nothing. As I unlock the East End door, I become aware of my clothes or rather lack there of. All I have on is a pair of tattered blue jean shorts, old jogging shoes, and no shirt. I smile. No wonder I'm getting catcalls from Pleasure World. I’m basically naked.
"I love this town," I whisper with a smile, and then I lock the door behind me and quickly forget about the prostitutes across the way. My mind shifts to thinking about all of that virgin 16 x 20 inch Fuji paper in the great big box, and my hopes that I’ll create a good print or two tonight.
I enter the darkroom and look at my 8 x 10s on the counter of the Owl’s Head Hoop Dance #2. Lovely orange, strong sepia, solid design.
I’m a grateful man, a happy man, a lucky man.
"Ghost Horses, Coalmine Canyon, Hopi Reservation, Arizona" (c) 2002, 2019 Stu Jenks.