Cyanotypes Cast from Dinosaur Fossils in the Utah High Desert

In the high desert of northeastern Utah, the town of Vernal lives in the shadow of giants, the Jurassic kind whose mineralised bones jut from the cliffs of Dinosaur National Monument. A Vernal-based printmaker has begun casting dinosaur fossils in cyanotype, the nineteenth-century photographic process that renders images in deep Prussian blue.

Cyanotype rewards long exposures to ultraviolet light, a quality that suits the unhurried tempo of small-town Utah. The Vernal artist stretches that logic further, pressing actual Jurassic-era fragments into light-sensitive cloth and letting the Utah sun do the rest.

Word has begun to spread across the Pacific. Australian curators and collectors recognise parallels with their own deep-time heritage, from the opalised fossils of Lightning Ridge to the sauropod tracks around Winton, and have shown a growing appetite for art that engages with geological time.

A Town Built on Bones

Vernal brands itself as Dinosaurland, a nickname earned honestly. The quarry wall at Dinosaur National Monument, where more than 1,500 bones remain embedded in sandstone, lies barely twenty minutes from the town centre, and residents grow up with deep time woven into everyday conversation.

The artist grew up among that heritage, her childhood spent between the museum and walks through hills where smaller fragments still surface after rain. She trained as a photographer before drifting toward alternative processes, and returned to Vernal to fuse technical training with the landscape she had never quite left. The cyanotype project emerged almost by accident, when a borrowed fossil fragment sat on prepared fabric during a bright summer afternoon. The bones in her prints come from regional digs, loaned through a network of palaeontologists who appreciate the unusual afterlife the imagery gives their specimens.

How a Fossil Becomes a Cyanotype

The chemistry of cyanotype is straightforward enough to set up in a kitchen. Two chemicals, ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide, are mixed into a solution and brushed onto paper or fabric. Where ultraviolet light reaches the dried coating, it reduces the iron compounds to an insoluble blue pigment; where objects block the light, they leave a pale silhouette.

Traditional cyanotypists use ferns, flowers, or photographic negatives as stencils. Using a fossil inverts the usual direction of interest: the artist records the absence left by a piece of bone rather than the living surface of a plant. The resulting prints read as positive images of the fossil itself, every ridge and suture rendered in pale cream against an indigo ground. Each fossil must be cleaned and arranged with care, since any movement during exposure will blur the final image, and prints are rinsed in water to halt the reaction and dried flat.

Studio Practice on the Colorado Plateau

Working in a region with more than three hundred days of sun a year has obvious advantages. The artist exposes her coated sheets on outdoor tables, timing the laying-out for harsh midday hours when ultraviolet intensity peaks, with exposures ranging from twenty minutes for a thin fragment to several hours for a denser bone.

Seasons shape the palette more than visitors expect. Summer prints lean toward deep, saturated blues, while winter exposures yield softer greys and pale washes, and the artist keeps a meticulous log of weather, temperature, and duration. Waste is minimal: chemistry is mixed in small batches, rinse water goes onto garden beds, and unsuccessful prints are recycled into collages, a low-impact practice that suits the conservation ethic of the surrounding public lands.

Resonances Across the Pacific

Australian readers will recognise something familiar in this preoccupation with deep time. The Australian Age of Dinosaurs museum at Winton, in central western Queensland, draws thousands of visitors each year to view the remains of Diamantinasaurus and other Cretaceous giants. Lightning Ridge, in New South Wales, yields opalised fossils that locals have prized for generations. The cultural weight of fossils in the outback is comparable to Vernal's, even if the public visibility differs.

The Australian art market has warmed to process-led regional work in recent years, with Sydney Contemporary and the Melbourne Art Fair regularly including booths that specialise in alternative photography. Buyers from Brisbane and Adelaide have begun acquiring cyanotypes by international makers, and the artist is aware of these parallels. She has begun sketching ideas for an exchange with a printmaker in Victoria, a fair dinkum collaboration in her own half-joking words.

The Exhibition Circuit in the Mountain West

In the United States, the work has travelled to galleries in Salt Lake City, Boise, and Santa Fe, often within group shows exploring the intersection of art and natural history. Collectors respond to the tactile specificity of the prints and the sense that each one records a real encounter between sun, chemistry, and a particular bone.

Smaller venues have proven especially receptive. A recent feature on Inside the Tiny Moab Gallery That Only Shows Artists Under 25 highlighted how the artist's work fits naturally within programmes that champion emerging regional voices. Moab's proximity to its own dramatic fossil-bearing landscapes gives such a context extra resonance. The artist splits her time between the studio and travel to these exhibitions, preferring venues that allow her to demonstrate the process, since making a cyanotype is a performative act as much as a private one, and visitors are more willing to acquire a piece once they have watched a print emerge from a tray of water.

Deep Time and Slow Looking

Cyanotype carries a particular set of historical echoes. Anna Atkins, the English botanist, used the process in the 1840s to produce the first book illustrated with photographs, a series of ferns and seaweeds rendered in blue against cream. That lineage matters: cyanotype has long been the medium of patient, observant record-keepers.

A fossil cyanotype extends that tradition into geological time. The artist is, in a sense, photographing the absence of something that died 150 million years ago, using the same sun that once warmed the living animal. Prints become small meditations on continuity, on light passing from a Jurassic afternoon to a contemporary one, and collectors often report a sense of slowing down in front of them. The granular detail of the bone, the slight variation in blue across the sheet, and the evidence of weather and timing in the final image all reward attention that contemporary life tends to discourage.

For Collectors Considering a First Purchase

• Look closely at the silhouette. A well-made fossil cyanotype shows clear, sharp edges where the bone blocked the light; soft or doubled outlines suggest movement during exposure.
• Ask about edition size. Cyanotypes vary more than most photographic prints because of the manual process, so limited editions of three to ten are typical and reasonable.
• Inquire about provenance. Reputable makers will name the fossil, its general age, and where it resides when not in use.
• Consider lightfastness. Properly processed cyanotypes are stable, but display them out of direct sun and away from humidity to keep the blue from fading.
• Think about framing. UV-filtering glass or museum acrylic helps protect the surface and reduces the need for glazing replacements later.
• Document the process. Artists who keep exposure logs add value by linking each print to a specific time, place, and set of conditions.

For Australian readers keen to follow the project, the artist maintains an online journal of new prints and exhibition dates, and inquiries about commissions are welcomed. The Fibonacci Fine Arts gallery in St. George plans to host a small showing of the fossil cyanotypes later this season, with an opening arvo reception that will include a live demonstration of the printing process. Travellers passing through Utah on a wider southwestern loop can coordinate visits to Vernal, Moab, and St. George in a single trip, and the gallery team is happy to help with itinerary suggestions for anyone curious about the broader Mountain West arts scene.