The Role of Printmaking and Expanding Boundaries

Printmaking is a valued artistic medium with unique technical and aesthetic qualities that range from simple to complex processes: it is a graphic language with remarkable inter-changeability. Mastering a technical facility with intaglio (etching) has given me the creative freedom to experiment with process and to explore ideas that delve to a broader dialog within contemporary art making. In my creative practice, I incorporate a multi-faceted approach using drawing, printmaking, painting, sculpture, artists’ book, installation, sound, photography and digital technologies in all manner of applications. Using multiple processes and techniques I build layered images and installations that address utopian and dystopian constructions; exploring the boundaries between the idealized and abstracted spaces of an immaterial world. My narratives allude to themes within contemporary culture that express a political or social point of view, using animals as a metaphor for human behaviors and contemporary events. Birds that fly into invisible fences, dogs sleep while on guard, bunnies who are unwillingly displaced, and eagles that run through forests trying to escape world scrutiny. The act of rendering visible the difficult, the uncertain, and the unconscious helps me to understand how the precarious nature of life can be examined.

The introduction of traditional dust-grain photogravure and laser engraving/cutting has had a significant impact on my creative practice. The photogravure process is a 19^th c. process that is unique in its aesthetic and process. What might be seen as an obsolete intaglio process by current digital trends, this process can also be seen as a contemporary way to reconsider the hyper-reality of postmodernism and a method of incorporating digital technologies and hand-printed techniques. My process begins with creating a high-resolution image by using digital composing that include both photographic resources, such as spider webs and fishing nets, to drawn elements imported from Illustrator. The digital file is then printed as an inkjet film positive onto a transparency film and exposed to a sensitized piece of gelatin, or carbon tissue, that has been sensitized with potassium dichromate. The exposed gelatin is then adhered to a piece of copper and placed into a bath to wash away any unexposed gelatin. A rosin layer is applied and the copper is then etched in a series of five ferric chloride baths of different baumes to attain a full value range in the print. (Process images are in the creative research pub.)

The result is a continuous tone image etched into a copper plate that is inked, layered, and/or altered with any other intaglio process, of which there are many. I use color in a purposeful manner to fully express the intention behind each piece. Working with full color in intaglio has its challenges due to chemical reactions of the ink with the copper. However, the development of color plays an important role in establishing and enhancing the type of atmospheric qualities that the photogravure delivers and the images exploit. For each color image represented in my creative research publication, there are two plates that are inked ala poupee in various colors and printed directly on top of each other wet into wet.

Similarly, I use laser engraved relief prints to explore the digital analog relationship within printmaking. With the relief prints I often make my own paper for the specific images, and/or use colle techniques to build in value, which is them printed on in multiple colors. This technique is similar to the well-established chiaroscuro technique used widely in the 15^th c, Germany. Again, my interest in exploring seemingly obsolete technologies with current technologies is at play here. Digital processes in some manner have mediated nearly all the work I have done in the past twenty years yet I feel none of it reads as “digital” art. This is very important to me as it is my hope that the work transcend process and be considered primarily by the image, its’ meaning and conceptual intention. While my practice is rooted in idea generation, executed on an intuitive level, and informed by applied research, it is most centrally informed through personal experience and observations. I continue to develop new content, expand my visual language, explore new technical processes, and seek fresh strategies for distributing my work to the public.

In the last several years I have become interested in working on a much larger scale for intaglio prints, which traditionally have been more modest in scale due to etching bath and rosin box size restrictions. Since I am limited in my capacity to etch large in the studio at ASU I have turned to international residencies where I can work significantly larger with aquatint etching. This has been a great opportunity for me to explore intaglio in combination with collage, screenprint, and painted elements. The large-scale etchings also focus on the mark of the hand using the white ground etching technique a more painterly approach to mark and aesthetics; while the photogravure is generally small(er) is scale and focuses on the digital/photographic element.  In some works, such as “Swimming”, these two techniques are combined together using multiple plates tiled when printed to attain the larger scale I am interested in. ~ Mary Hood