FALL SEMESTER 2009

"Ben"
Intaglio

Over the summer, my hometown suffered our first loss of a soldier in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it was an especially heartbreaking blow since Ben was only 21 years old. The initial report of his injury was shocking, but everyone believed he would recover soon (being that he was shot in the leg). But he had lost a lot of blood and went into cardiac arrest, and had been unresponsive since being shot. It wasn't until he was moved to a hospital in Washington DC that it was discovered he was completely brain dead, and his mother made the difficult choice to take him off life support and donate his organs.

I really sympathized with his mother, and often thought about how tough it must have been to lose her only child, and to be the one to make that decision. In my History of Motherhood in the United States course this semester, we learned about the true origins of Mothers day, and it's roots in maternal activism. In 1870, Julia Ward Howe called for women to rise up and oppose war in all forms. She wanted women to come together across national lines, to recognize that what women had in common-- the devastation of losing their sons as casualties of war-- were more powerful than petty politics that divided them. She issued a declaration, called the Mothers Day Peace Proclamation , hoping to gather together women in a congress of action, and stop the killing of their sons. According to Julia Ward Howe it was up to the mothers of the world to call a truce and not allow their sons to kill one another.

The quote to the left of the headstone is from the Mother Day Peace Proclamation. The opinion that Julia Ward Howe held about peace being up to the mothers of the sons who were being killed was something that inspired the print along with feeling the personal loss of a friend due to the horrors of war.

"Injustice"
Intaglio

I found it a little tough at first to get an idea going in conjunction with the theme of justice/injustice. I first decided to turn to text (quotations by others about justice) and found a really striking quote by Elie Weisel (which is in the print above). Elie Weisel was a holocaust survivor and author of the book "Night" which re-called the horrors he experienced in multiple concentration camps. It's a powerful quote because it calls for action in the face of our injustices.

SPRING SEMESTER 2009

Self portrait
Line etch

Self portrait
Line Etch with Aquatint

This particular semester Joel assigned both the litho class and the intaglio class to do self portraits. Though I'm ashamed to admit it, inspiration for a series was hard to come by that semester, and I ended up spending a majority of the semester trying to perfect this print (which was gouged in the acid and left a deep line cut across my face).

In an effort to crank out SOMETHING, I created one more plate to add to my series regarding love and my relationship with my fiance.

I one day decided to print the back of "The Kiss" plate because it had a great deal of foul bite due to varnish that had been eaten away in the acid (and possibly, a lot of carelessness being that I was a baby at the time!). The plate was beautifull blemished, and I decided to print a quote about printmaking along with the gouges, and it reads: "Printmaking is fun because it takes a perfectly simple process like drawing and makes it as complicated and error prone as possible". When explaining what printmaking entailed to friends and family who were not familiar with the process, I often times explained a lot of the art of printmaking had to do with the processes behind creating the final image.

FALL SEMESTER 2008

"John Lennon"
Color intaglio














"John Lennon, Imagine"
Color Intaglio, multi-plate.


The John Lennon series was inspired by the ideals that John Lennon expressed about peace and unity, which is something that I admired greatly. During this semester I was feeling a great frustration with the hateful sentiments being thrown around in the final months of the presidential election. I wanted to evoke the same feeling of peace and love to the viewer and make them think about John Lennon;s ideals regarding humanity and the world.

This series marked my introduction into color printing. A majority of the images are simultaneous color printing, using only one plate and adding different colors to different areas of the plate. In the print at the top (with the warm colors--red, orange and yellow) I applied red to the plate, and wiped it clean. The red stayed in the shadowed areas of Lennon's face, and left a slight pink plate tone. I then wiped all plate tone away from the border with paper towel, and rolled yellow ink only on the background. The yellow mixed with the plate tone of the background to create orange, and the border stayed pure yellow since it was free of plate tone. This technique gave me far more options for color combinations than multi-plate color printing, and often my favorite prints were achieved through successful experimentation.

I added a secondary plate of the "Imagine" mosiacs (a mosaic memorial located in central park near where Lennon was killed) and printed it on top of the John Lennon print. The addition of this secondary plate was inspired by Lennon's song titled "Imagine" which specifically addresses his ideals regarding humanity. I wanted the viewer to read the word "Imagine" and think of the song and the lyrics.