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4</head> <body> <a href="#main" class="skip-link">Skip to main content</a> <header role="banner"> <nav aria-label="Primary"> <a href="/"> Erin McLean </a> <ul> <li> <a href="/cyanotypes">
5Cyanotypes
6</a> </li> <li> <a href="/writing">
7Writing
8</a> </li> <li> <a href="/licensing">
9Licensing
10</a> </li> <li> <a href="/about">
11About
12</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/erinmclean.art/" rel="me noopener" target="_blank">
13Instagram <span aria-hidden="true">&#8599;</span> <span class="visually-hidden">(opens in a new tab)</span> </a> </li> </ul> </nav> </header> <main id="main" role="main" tabindex="-1">  <article class="prose" data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r> <h1 data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r>About</h1> <p class="lede" data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r>
14I make cameraless cyanotypes on a floating home in Seattle — pieces with
15      Washington's water and coastline literally in them.
16</p> <p data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r>
17I came to the process as a summer camp counselor on Orcas Island, laying
18      beach and forest finds onto sensitized paper to catch their shadows. It was
19      the most direct way to hand a kid a picture, and it was my own first real
20      lesson in shadow and light. I came back to it years later with the water
21      itself instead of the objects — foraged seaweed, salt, sodium alginate,
22      magnesium, flooded under glass and left in the sun.
23</p> <p data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r>
24What holds it together is scale. The same structures keep turning up in the
25      ocean and in deep space — branching, dispersal, the way a thing spreads out
26      from a center — at sizes that have nothing to do with each other and look
27      the same anyway. I design crew interfaces for human spaceflight at Blue
28      Origin, including lunar landers for NASA's Artemis program, and the longer
29      I spend pointed away from Earth the more I fall in love with this planet.
30      The cyanotypes are where that goes.
31</p> <h2 data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r>Background</h2> <ul data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r> <li data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r>Lead Experience Designer, Blue Origin (2019&ndash;present)</li> <li data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r>Harvard University, Master of Design Engineering (2019)</li> <li data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r>University of Washington, Human-Centered Design &amp; Engineering (2015)</li> <li data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r>&ldquo;Breaking the Karman Line&rdquo; &mdash; <em data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r>Lunch 14: Frontiers</em>, 2020</li> </ul> <h2 data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r>Also</h2> <p data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r>
32I write novels too &mdash; three so far, the first out on submission.
33      They are under <a href="/writing" data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r>Writing</a>.
34</p> <h2 data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r>Contact</h2> <p data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r> <a href="/contact/" data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r>Send me a message</a> &middot;  <a href="https://www.instagram.com/erinmclean.art/" rel="me noopener" target="_blank" data-astro-cid-kh7btl4r>
35Instagram
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