Krishna Reddy: A Strong Impression

On August 22, 2018 one of the giants of twentieth century printmaking passed away at the age of 93. N. Krishna Reddy was instrumental in making printmaking something unique, not merely a secondary medium for creating a reproduction of an artwork in another form, as it had been perceived for much of the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries. He and his mentor, Stanley William Hayter, are far from common household names, yet their impact on Modernism proved fruitful in shaping the processes and works of some of the key figures of midcentury Modernism, such as Joan Miro, Louise Nevelson, Pablo Picasso, and Jackson Pollock.

Reddy was born in a small town in India in 1925. He went to university in his home country and began teaching art there in the 1940s. At this point he was working primarily in sculpture and painting. After WWII, as Europe was beginning to rebuild, Reddy made his way west and first settled in London in 1949. There he studied sculpture with Henry Moore. By the next year he had moved on to Paris where he also studied sculpture with Ossip Zadkine.

Stanley Hayter had first set up his workshop (Atelier 17, but now running as Atelier Contrepoint) in the late 1920s. It was a meeting place for artists from around the world, who had come to Paris to study the evolving styles of early abstraction. Hayter’s workspace and press allowed these artists to try their hand at engraving and etching, even if their primary media were something other than printmaking. With the onset of WWII Hayter moved Atelier 17 to New York City for a period, but by the time Krishna Reddy was in Paris, Hayter had returned and was running both the American and French versions of the workshop for a period.

Reddy took to printmaking, especially engraving, right away. He shared Hayter’s enthusiasm for the direct processes of working a metal plate. Eventually, during the 1950s, Reddy was named as a co-director of Atelier 17 in Paris. It was not odd that an individual who had originally trained as a sculptor would become a director of the most significant printmaking workshop in the world. Hayter, himself, had started out as a painter and continued to paint throughout his life. Helen Phillips, Hayter’s second wife, was also primarily a sculptor before she met her husband and began working in etching and engraving processes. This was also the case for the American Shirley Witebsky, Krishna Reddy’s first wife. With this group of very physical printmakers it was no wonder that some new, experimental, and significant changes would soon be discovered at Atelier 17.

The most famous technique to come out of Atelier 17 is often called Color Viscosity Etching. It was usually called Simultaneous Color Intaglio printing by both Hayter and Reddy. The process was discovered somewhat accidentally by Reddy and his fellow countryman, Kaiko Moti, before being fully developed by Hayter and Reddy. At its root is the tendency for two oil-based inks to reject each other when one is oilier than the other. If an oilier ink is rolled onto the surface of a plate, another, tackier ink can be rolled over the first inking without disrupting that initial ink surface. This became most important when the sculptural aspects of Reddy’s (and others’) works allowed rollers of different densities to apply the inks. A hard roller would deposit an oily ink on the top surface of the etching plate, whereas a softer roller with a tackier ink could deposit ink on a lower surface, while not changing the ink from the previous roller. This discovery finally achieved the effect that Hayter had long been searching for—a way to ink an etching plate in colors so that it could be sent through the press only once.

The technique of simultaneous color printing became synonymous with the artists of Atelier 17. Hayter had his own ways of utilizing the process which changed over time, as he worked in the collaborative atmosphere of Atelier 17. Reddy, however, made the process his own. While Hayter favored engraving and the use of etching acids to develop textures and depth in his plates, Reddy was prone to work the plate in a more sculptural way. Using traditional hand engraving tools alongside electric rotary (aka Dremel) tools, Reddy produced what were essentially low relief sculptures in a metal plate. As aggressive as this method might sound, under his masterful hand, using the color viscosity method, Reddy was able to achieve incredibly nuanced inkings of his intaglio prints.

Floraison (or Blossoming) from 1965, was the first work that Reddy created entirely utilizing hand tools, without any etching techniques. It is reminiscent of many of his and Witebsky’s etchings of this period. The true print collector can relay just how interesting these works are to examine. They may look lovely framed, but are best enjoyed outside of a frame where the embossed depth of the plate can be seen on the back side of the sheet of paper. Close examination reveals that Reddy was a master of color with this technique. What first appears to be a basic inking with black and blue is discovered to be more complex. Reddy actually used a pale orange color with one of the rollers. This layer of color is made to mix with one of the lower layers of blue—instead of rejecting it—creating a richer gray than what is possible with an inking of black alone.

Hayter wrote two editions of his seminal work New Ways of Gravure that explain the process of Color Viscosity printing. They are each illustrated with works by a variety of artists—including Reddy—who passed through Atelier 17. However, Reddy’s book, Intaglio Simultaneous Color Printmaking: Significance of Materials and Processes, goes much further into the details of the process, revealing just how complex the inkings of some of his prints were. It is an essential handbook for anyone interested in learning the process. 

One of the last major exhibitions to highlight Reddy’s work was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, about two years ago. I was fortunate to see Workshop and Legacy: Stanley William Hayter, Krishna Reddy, Zarina Hashmi at the Met in February 2017. This was not a huge exhibition, but the limited works actually made it a more intimate encounter with the works. There were several very important Hayter works on display (including two works that appear in my own collection) but there were many Reddy pieces that I had never seen in person. Also included was one of Reddy’s sculptures. This exhibition was the highlight of my trip to New York. It has been instrumental as I put together an exhibition of Atelier 17 artists from my own collection.

With the loss of Reddy, there is one remaining major figure from Atelier 17 still working. Hector Saunier continues on at the Atelier. He started at Atelier 17 after Reddy moved to the U.S. Luckily, with shows like the one at the Met, and others that have been touring (such as Syracuse University’s About Prints, named after Hayter’s other major publication), the important work of these artists is not being lost. A new generation can discover just how influential these men and women were on Modernism in its early days.

Georges Rouault: A Synthesis of Tradition and Innovation

One of my artistic heroes is the French Expressionist Georges Rouault. Though he is still discussed in twentieth century and Modern art history courses, his name does not resound with most people as one of the elite Modern artists of his generation, such as Henri Matisse or Pablo Picasso. In a cursory comparison one would not find much in common between Rouault’s work and my own. His very direct and aggressive style seems at odds with my more “refined” realism. Still, Rouault’s primary work in both painting and printmaking, as well as his consistent themes of uneasy religious engagement with contemporary culture, can be aligned with my own work.

Rouault’s monumental print undertaking—one of the greatest all time achievements in printmaking—is his Miserere et Guerre. These large intaglio works, originally envisioned as two sets of fifty plates each (fifty for the Miserere segment and fifty for the Guerre), ultimately were produced as a total of fifty-eight plates. Still, that result is an enormous achievement.

The suffering of Christ is mingled amongst the suffering of humanity in these works. What first seem to be awkward juxtapositions of images are quite intentional. The images are all dark, both in value and subject. Even images of the Virgin Mary seem stained with darkness. She butts up against images of wealthy, bourgeois women, as well as haggard prostitutes. She is the deliverer of salvation to both. The sadness and brokenness of the prostitute are balanced against the detachment of an elite, whose indifference and intractable hold on resources are partly responsible for the circumstances of the former. All are in need of mercy (miserere) and all are at war (guerre) with the world and their own condition.

The themes are further explored through kings, judges, clergy as well as skeletal specters of death. All of these expose the corruption of this world in some form. Christ suffers with and for each one. While the individual images may seem desperate and despairing, there is a strand of hope running throughout the entire series.

However, it is not just Rouault’s thematic elements that have held sway over me. His process for these works, and his unswerving dedication to seeing the work completed just as he originally envisioned, have been instrumental in my own current work. It took Rouault about fifteen years to physically complete the Miserere. But it was actually a project thirty-six years in the making, from the first drawing to the final publishing of the completed prints. Of course, he was working on many other paintings and print projects during that period, but I recently took comfort in this. My own intaglio project consisting of fifty plates, originally conceived almost twenty years ago, is probably more on schedule than I would have believed.

The original designs for the Miserere prints were actually ink drawings. Since Rouault’s work was always an odd mixture of tradition and innovation, the drawings were actually transferred to copper etching plates through a photographic process. Photogravure (sometimes called heliogravure) is an early photomechanical process that allowed photographic images to be printed on paper, from a photographic negative, without the fading that happened with earlier photographic prints. The photogravure work prints like an etching but looks more like a photograph.

Rouault was not at all content with his initial photogravure plates and refused to allow them to be printed as they first existed. Instead, he meticulously reworked each of the plates with traditional forms of etching and intaglio, including hand working of the plates with mezzotint roulettes, scrapers, and burnishers. The results are far more than early photomechanical “reproduction.” Rouault did so much working and reworking of the the copper that it is often impossible to know what exactly he did to get the soft, velvety effects and deep, rich values. Many of the etchings look more like charcoal drawings than etchings. Each plate could be considered a masterwork, but considering that there are fifty-eight, it is an unfathomable achievement.

This brings me to the comparison with my own Palimpsest Portraits series. While there are many images of Jesus within this series, there are also “out-of-place” figures, just as with some of the Miserere works. I want viewers to analyze the series as a whole, much like the Miserere, to consider the unusual juxtapositions. Individual images may have a similar dark content as Rouault’s, but there is just as much similarity when it comes to the process.

The Palimpsest Portraits, likewise, mix technological innovation with more traditional modes of working. Each of these plates starts with a drawing, too. However, my drawings are completed in Photoshop and are composed completely from passages of text. The next step is quite like the photogravure process employed by Rouault. I transfer the images onto copper plates via a toner-based transparency print (these are the transparencies used for overhead projectors which are printed through a copy machine or laser printer). The plate and transparency are slowly heated so that the toner offsets (or melts) onto the plate, eventually acting as a resist in an acid bath.

If I was only printing these images in black and white, most of the work would be done at this point. Still, also like Rouault, I do extensive additional work on each of the plates after the first photomechanical etching process has been completed. To enhance the realism, I use multiple applications of soft ground etching textures to soften and darken the tones. This is tempered through much scraping and burnishing. The textual elements still remain, but may be further enhanced with traditional hard ground etching. The plates are also developed to differing levels to allow for the color printing process. This allows multiple colored inks to both separate and mix in various ways to create the final effect.

This is a time intensive process. There is no other way to achieve the effects required by the concept. Rouault has taught me that there is no need to compromise on your vision. Working and reworking these plates becomes a joy as I am surprised with each new plate. The new color combinations and alternate pairings of images continue to open the series in directions that far exceed my first thoughts about this series. I am pleased that the reception of these images by viewers will further expand how the pieces “speak” to each other.

Building a Book

Long long ago, I believe in 1999, I first started making some handmade, artist books. I participated in a weeklong book binding workshop at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA. It was a wonderful experience and it led me to organize my printmaking courses in such a way that the students would print enough etchings or linoleum prints for everyone in the class, which we would then bind into books at the end of the semester. It was the perfect way for them to learn to edition prints and trade those prints with their classmates, plus learn a new process.

I mainly just try to get my editions of prints finished these days, but I remain committed to the physical codex-style book. No ebooks for me. I like to feel the paper, smell an old book, maybe even see what someone else wrote in the margins. Some may feel that I don't actually love books, since I do tend to tear them apart and paint on them. In reality, that is part of my love for them. Turning an otherwise ruined book into artwork gives it a new life.

Recently, I finally finished a book project that first began in 2007. This involved the second generation of Cathedral Floor Plan etchings that I started at that time. I started in on the plates in 2007, got busy, moved, and then they sat in storage until the end of 2016. The intent had always been to create an edition of six books that included these five etchings. The prints stand alone as individual works, but the book actually has text that explains the concept behind these works. 

I made a video recording of the steps of binding the book together and the edited version of that can be found below. Hopefully it inspires a couple more people to take up the cause of the book in this digital age.

Ready, Set, Print

It has taken a few months to get everything aligned, but the time has finally come. The Kickstarter Campaign to make the Palimpsest Portrait Project a reality is now live. You can find out more about the particular printing process I use below, but all the specific details are available right on the Kickstarter Campaign page. The best overview is actually presented in the video shared here.

Your first question about the images you’re seeing is probably, “Why are you pairing those particular people together?” Well, the answer to that comes down to the text that actually makes up these images. That text is from the Desert Fathers, the ancient, mystic monks of the Egyptian desert. While reading of the accounts of their lives, I came across a monk who was said to have asked God to show him which of the saints he was like. God sent him to several individuals, both good and bad, with whom the monk could make this comparison. In the end the monk realized that, “no one in this world ought to be despised, let him be a thief, or an actor on the stage, or one that tilled the ground, and was bound to a wife, or was a merchant and served a trade: for in every condition of human life there are souls that please God and have their hidden deeds wherein He takes delight.” This got me thinking about how I view and treat people. Do I see that element or spirit of God in everyone? Is or was there ever a person I could not view in that way?

These figures, and more, came to my mind and I began to design this provocative project. It is meant to be seen as a whole series and not just as individual works. After years of working on the concept, on and off, it is time to finally see it made. That is why I created the Kickstarter Campaign. This project cannot happen without the help of many people coming together to make it happen. Unless artwork is specifically commissioned, it is typically up to the artist to self fund the project and hope that someone will, eventually, like it enough to buy it. Often, the sale of one artwork funds the creation of the next one. When the funds needed to obtain equipment and materials reach a certain level, turning to crowd sourcing is a wise option.

So, please take a look at the campaign. Join in if you can. Even if you can’t, please share the project on social media (you can do that right through the Kickstarter page). When many people come together around this project it can become reality. 

Note: The full funding goal for this project was not reached through Kickstarter, however, several generous individuals did fulfill their pledges directly To Tyrus so that he could begin a portion of the etching portraits. If you would like to give toward the completion of the funding goal, to see this project fully completed, you can do that through his website.

The Palimpsest Portraits: A Resurrection

In 2006 and 2007 I first began serious work on a project that was not yet named. Conceptually, it was to consist of twenty-five portrait pairs—fifty total portraits. Each pairing would situate an image of Jesus, from art history, with another individual. The other person might be historical, from popular culture, or even relatively unknown. He or she may be generally acknowledged as good or bad or somewhere in between. The idea was based in my understanding of a story I read from the Desert Fathers and has been mentioned here before. (for an explanation of “Palimpsest,” refer to the previous posting)

For various reasons the project was not completed a decade ago. Mainly, it was an expensive venture. I did acquire some of the materials needed to complete it, but the process was also quite time consuming and my job at the time left little available time to devote to the task. And, quite a daunting task this was. The color viscosity printing technique planned for the series is technical and complex, too. And I added the complication that the images were to be “drawn” from text—just to complicate matters more.

I had wanted to utilize this printing technique since I first came across the works of Stanley William Hayter and Dick Swift in the university art collection when I was in graduate school. The intensity of the colors used and the complexity of the color mixings enticed me. Hayter’s work tends to be on the more abstract side, though some of Swift’s includes a good amount of representational imagery. I wanted that element of representation, but desired to make it my own. The use of text, running through all forms of my artwork, was my distinctive take on the technique. 

The major pause in the project came when I moved in 2008 and no longer had access to the large rubber ink rollers of varying density that are required for the printing process. Over the past few years I have further experimented with the technique on a limited scale, with the small ink rollers I do possess. They are not large enough to complete the project as planned, but I have been determined to perfect the technique and seek funding for the equipment and materials needed to complete the project as originally envisioned. The images here reveal two of those experiments.

The digital “drawings” of the images are first composed from text in Photoshop. When the values have been sufficiently produced, the image is transferred to a copper plate. However, much traditional etching work still needs to be completed at that point. At least three distinct levels need to be developed into the copper plate (this is for color separation and mixing with the various inks and rollers). Surfaces need to be bitten in acid or smoothed with tools so that colors and values print clearly. Here, I show the multiple states of a self portrait and an image of Martin Luther King. The first tests of each can be somewhat unrecognizable, but over time, the development of the plates reveals both the images and the tiny textual elements that compose them.

These are still only trial images, to give prospective funders an idea of what I’m attempting to produce. The comparison between the first images from a decade ago and these newer versions shows how my process has changed—and improved—over that period. I feel that I am finally ready to complete these works as they first existed in my imagination. The larger images allow for much greater complexity with the text as it relates to the design. Hopefully, new larger works will find their way into future posts later this year.

Love Letter: Foundations of a Family

Anyone browsing through posts on this blog will quickly find that the presence of text and words within my artwork has been evident for about two decades. In paintings this has often taken the form of applying paint over book pages. When incorporated into printmaking techniques the combination has become increasingly integral to how the imagery is actually developed. At first, the layering of words and images was related to the concept of the incarnation of Christ—the Word made Flesh. While that idea remains in the background, I more recently have embraced the terminology of the Palimpsest for this process.

The origin of the term Palimpsest comes from an ancient practice. Before paper was developed in the West, the writing of manuscripts was often done on parchment (dried and prepared animal skins). Preparing the parchment was time consuming and expensive, so it was much more precious and less plentiful than paper would later be. If a parchment document was no longer needed or wanted, the text layer could be scraped off to erase the words from the document. This was ink, so the text was never completely erased. When a new text was written on the parchment the first layer was invariably still legible beneath. A parchment with both layers of text visible was called a palimpsest.

While I first began to develop the use of erasing and relayering texts to create an image with etching, I eventually employed the process for lithographic techniques. With both of these I actually develop the imagery in Photoshop. Portions of a page of text (often scanned as a high resolution file) are erased in Photoshop, then a new layer is added and more portions are erased, and so on. Eventually the values build up and the image is created from the words that still remain.

The images here are printed as polyester plate lithographs. These plastic plates can actually be fed through a toner-based printer or photocopier. The toner will attract the oily ink which can be offset onto another surface when run through a printing press, or even rubbed with a wooden spoon or baren to transfer the ink. The plate is wiped down with a wet sponge during the inking process, like any traditional lithographic printing. While there are multiple ways to develop a plate with this medium, I prefer to create the image in Photoshop and then print the plate through a toner-based printer and print from that matrix. 

In these works I chose to recreate photographic images of my maternal grandparents which I then printed on paper, antique textiles, and even hymnal pages. This takes a bit of experimentation since some fabrics are more receptive than others. Also, any preprinted pages (like the hymnals) require several layers of printing. The first three or four passes are with a white or cream colored ink that deadens the text already printed on the page. The final layer is in black and it is enhanced by the underlayer of text. The “white” printing produces an additional erasure to that already created digitally. 

The text that creates this image is actually from a handwritten love letter that my grandmother wrote to my grandfather in 1936, before they were married. The text that reveals their relationship materializes into a physical form in the prints. It recalls the physical manifestation of their union which was eventually my mother and her siblings, extending into future generations. While both of my grandparents have now died, the materialization of their love still exists in new generations. I believe that these works provide a unique visual metaphor—our words and their intentions are able to carry forth into the future as physical manifestations of who we ultimately are. 

Engraving and the Art of Stanley William Hayter: Taking the Hard Line

I can’t see that there is a very accurate measure for fame. In fact, I’m not sure we would really want to attempt creating such a system. Fame is not an indicator of what kind of influence or importance a person actually holds within his or her immediate circle or within the larger culture. It is more of a popularity contest based on some least common denominator.

For this reason, most people do not know the name Stanley William Hayter. Most artists don’t even recognize his name. That does not diminish his importance. As a printmaker, Hayter initiated some of the most significant media-specific changes of the twentieth century. But it was his inventive spirit that ultimately impacted hundreds and thousands of artists who would not necessarily classify themselves, primarily, as printmakers.

I admit that I knew next to nothing about printmaking until I was about halfway through my graduate program in painting. I knew the minimum about techniques. I also knew a bit about Durer and Rembrandt, which came from general art history survey courses. And I had some interest in the work of Leonard Baskin, but that had much more to do with style than technique. When I came into the presence of a color intaglio work by Hayter (Saddle, above) my interest in printmaking skyrocketed.

I think my earlier lack of enthusiasm for printmaking and printmakers was largely due to my preconceptions about the medium, I figured that it was merely a medium by which paintings and other artworks could be inexpensively duplicated for the masses, only in black and white. This was exactly the kind of thinking that Hayter worked against for most of his life. He wanted to transform printmaking into a highly original and creative medium in its own right.

Hayter’s first prints were in black and white, but they were works unto themselves and not derivative or reproductions of other prototype works. (A side point is that printmaking has continued to suffer from the belief that prints are mere reproductions. There is a major and distinct difference between what many call "prints" and true original print media.) Hayter’s primary process was intaglio—which encompasses a wide variety of techniques that incise or abrade a metal plate. Nearly every intaglio work by Hayter incorporated engraving. He referred to himself as an engraver and that technique was at the heart of his method.

Although Hayter is often linked to the Surrealists, he transcended the movements of the twentieth century. Hayter worked with several Surrealist artists, but his imagery was not intrinsically linked to their styles or concepts. His engraving favored freely flowing virtuosic lines that mocked the unforgiving nature of the metal surfaces he utilized. Themes for the engravings often came from literature. A master work, Death by Water (above), takes its title from a movement in T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land. It was not unusual for the works to take on such existential themes, particularly during this early black and white period.

The passage from the poem reads as follows:
Phlebus the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

While Hayter generally took a much more abstract approach to his literary transpositions, this work retains a certain faithfulness to the text. One senses the whirling undercurrents of the seas as they assault the tragic figure of Phlebus. Yet delicate lines also seem to suggest the gentle picking clean of the Phoenician’s bones.

Rescuing printmaking from the realm of simple reproduction of previous imagery would have been a sufficient and noble goal. And Hayter’s engravings were able to accomplish this in the minds of many. His next endeavor was more far reaching. His belief in the medium as an avenue for unlimited creative expression empowered him to open a printmaking workshop—Atelier 17—where others could come to experiment with intaglio processes.

At first, Hayter did not visualize himself in the role of teacher. He championed an approach of freedom in the print studio, though, in the end, if one came to study at the workshop he had a somewhat regimented approach to the medium. This was, however, a structure within which a great deal of creativity could still be expressed. Atelier 17 opened in Paris before WWII and was a creative meeting ground for many renowned continental artists of the period. When the war threatened France Hayter uprooted the studio and transplanted it to New York for a time.

Many artists came to Hayter’s workshop with little experience in printmaking. Their clean slate status, mixed with the experimental nature of the workshop atmosphere, provided the impetus to challenge tradition. Hayter harnessed the questioning spirit of these artists, bringing their collective energies together so that the whole of the Atelier’s efforts became something much more than the disparate parts.

The next challenge that Hayter and his associates undertook was printing in color. Previous color intaglios were either printed in black and white and then hand colored, or printed with multiple plates. The multi-plate method was cumbersome and produced unreliable results. Hayter felt that if multiple colors could be printed from a single plate, on only one pass through the press, the results would be more consistent.

Cinq Personnages (above) is the watershed print that marked this transition. At times Hayter had created stencils through which he had rolled colored inks onto the plates before they were passed through the press. The colors were a bit diluted with this method (though he did create some incredible images with this process). For Cinq Personnages, the colors were applied to the plate with silk screens. This rendered vibrant colors. But, while the registration of colors was better, using all the silk screens was still somewhat laborious.

What one begins to sense in this transition is Hayter’s new way of conceiving imagery. The same lyrical line quality is apparent in the engraved portions, but color and shape are equally comprising the finished products. It is this presence of color and shape that connects the work more to painting than to drawing. Drawing and printmaking had traditionally been grouped into the category of graphic arts. Hayter, who was also a painter, wanted to transcend these media specific categories.

The last stage of the color printing transformation came when members of the Atelier (usually this discovery is attributed to Krishna Reddy) found that multiple colors could be applied to one plate by producing varying levels within the plate, then inking the plate with inks of different viscosities, using rollers of different hardnesses. Saddle, the first work I encountered, is a variation on this method: it only incorporates two inks with one rolled color. The intermixing of the various inks created a breadth of color combinations and sparked a revival of interest in printmaking.

The vibrancy of the colors used in these prints was like nothing seen in intaglio works during the previous centuries. By the 1960s and 70s Hayter’s style had taken a slightly different direction, in keeping with the new multi-color printing. Still stemming from his engraved line work, the jarring color shifts resulted in combinations of either analogous or complimentary colors. The results were somewhat similar to the Op Art works of the period, yet retained a distinctive quality of their own.

Mauricio Lasansky, an Argentinean-American, studied with Hayter while Atelier 17 was in New York. Lasansky’s color printing methods were much different from Hayter’s but, along with Hayter, his impact on printmaking in the U.S. was astounding. Lasanksy started one of the first MFA printmaking programs and his students went on to found the major university printmaking programs across the nation. Still, the renewal in printmaking—intaglio specifically—was initiated when Atelier 17 was briefly located within U.S. borders.

There was actually a confluence of multiple factors that caused this renaissance in printmaking. Much of it had to do with timing. Hayter was in the right place at the right time. The U.S. was perched on the edge of its first original, world-impacting art movement—Abstract Expressionism. The experimental qualities of Abstract Expressionism were similar to the innovations found in Hayter’s workshop format. Although Stanley Hayter is not the household name that Jackson Pollock is, his spirit infused the work of many mid- and late-century artists, even if they may not recognize it.

Floorplans: Text as a Foundation

Just as I am interested in the added complexity that the combination of both words and images brings to an artwork, I also like to explore the multiplicities that are inherent in each of those symbolic systems on their own. Like most artists, I tend to revisit themes and subjects that I once used and thought I was done with. In 2007 this happened when I brought back the motif of the cathedral floorplan for an edition of etchings used as thank you gifts for individuals involved in the CIVA biennial conference—Transforming Spaces.

I originally worked on a series of cathedrals/crosses as a way to learn and experiment with the color viscosity etching process. In 2007, the new image—Plan—was the first such print to incorporate text. I had used text as a pictorial element in other etchings, but this was a new experiment with the floorplans. My technique and process for viscosity etching had evolved over the eight years I had been using it and this new work was markedly different from earlier pieces. The text is somewhat faint in Plan, but working on that image was enough to re-ignite my interest in this format.

The new series came from my recognition of the similarities among more conservative, even fundamentalist, branches of religions. The emphasis on the written word, on the law given by each religion’s god, is of prime importance. To simplify my task I decided to limit my investigation to only Judaism and Christianity, as they hold many scriptures is common. The new series not only used the cathedral layout, but included both English and Hebrew texts from the Pentateuch—Deuteronomy. The words work both as readable text elements and as textural design features within the larger compositions.

The central theme was the concept of the mezuzah. Jewish tradition requires all the faithful to adhere a portion of a parchment to the doorpost of the home. While some more orthodox Jewish sects do this with nearly every interior doorway, it is common that most families and persons of Jewish heritage do this with the main entrance of the home.

This act is a mitzvah—a biblical commandment. The command is found in Deuteronomy chapter six, where the LORD instructs Israel to not forget the laws and words given to them. They are compelled to teach them to their children and write them on their doorframes. They do this by affixing a tiny scroll in a small container to the right doorpost. The scroll contains the prayer known as the Shema Yisrael: “Hear O Israel, the LORD your God, the LORD is One.”

While evangelical and fundamentalist Christians do not feel an obligation to adhere physical scripture to the frames of their doors, they do hold biblical texts in equally high regard. The belief that the Bible is both infallible and inerrant results in the spare artworks in their homes that often include a verse of scripture in some form or another. In fact, Christian bookstores have made a huge industry of marketing and selling such works. I won’t waste space by offering my low views of Thomas Kinkade and his copycats here. However, I do appreciate the piety of those who purchase these kind of items. The American Church has done little to encourage a high regard for art, so we cannot expect the most art savvy Christians in a culture where art has a common status that is quite low.

This new series still places the cruciform image of the floorplans in the central, prominent region. The Hebrew and English texts become the foundation of the work in both conspicuous and subtle ways. Just as the Hebrew scriptures are the foundation for the Christian New Testament, so is Christ the cornerstone and foundation of the Church.

Only one edition of this new series has actually been printed—Fix these words in your hearts and minds. There are five smaller plates (including Write them on the doorframes of your houses, above) that have been proofed but not yet printed as editions. In fact, I still need to do some color tests before I choose the final color combinations for a few plates. Individual prints from the editions will be available, but the idea also evolved into the concept of a limited edition artist’s book that will be a gift to some friends and family. Each book will include prints of the five smaller plates along with text that explains the idea behind the project.

Bono vs Jesus

This image of Bono, of U2 fame, is part of a series of etchings inspired by readings from the Desert Fathers. While reading a portion of the Desert Fathers (4th century hermits who lived in the Egyptian desert) I was drawn to the concept espoused by one of these monks that we are each called to find the face of Christ in everyone we meet. This particular monk pronounced the ideal that, whether they are good or bad, we should treat everyone with the dignity and respect with which we would treat Jesus. I kind of vacillated on this. At first I thought that this was a great concept but not something that was humanly attainable. Then I thought that I actually DO treat the people I meet fairly well. Lastly, I realized that even if that is even partially true, it is only possible with the intervention of God’s grace, because we are all deeply flawed.
I tried to think of someone—anyone dead or alive—who would pose a challenge for me. The number one person popping into my head was Adolph Hitler. From there the idea grew quite naturally. The ongoing series is composed of twenty-five pairs of "portraits." There will be twenty-five images of Jesus drawn from art historical sources, paired with some of the best and worst figures from human history, with everything in between.
This black and white design is composed from the text from the Desert Fathers. I took an image of Jesus, Hitler, Bono, etc. and imported it into Photoshop. There I placed layers of the text over the photo and erased out the lighter values of the image. Once this was done four or five times I took the original image away and what was left was a similar image, but composed entirely of text. The images are transferred to a copper plate and developed with more traditional etching techniques. I’ll wait until another posting to explain just how the color process works and why I decided to use text to compose the images.