Title: Scrap Plastic
Medium: Paint on Plastic Mylar
Date: May 2015
Size: 5”x5”
Title: Bird Cluster
Screen Template
Medium: Screen Print on Plastic Mylar
Date: May 2015
Size: 6”x8”
Title: Death of Icarus
Gray Variant
Medium: Screen Print
Date: June 2015
Size: 6”x8”
Title: Death of Icarus
Yellow Variant
Medium: Screen Print
Date: June 2015
Size: 6”x8”
Title: Fall of Icarus
Sunset Gradient Variant
Medium: Screen Print
Date: June 2015
Size: 6”x8”
Title: Big Bird’s Love Nest
Yellow and Magenta Variant
Medium: Screen Print
Date: June 2015
Size: 6”x8”
Research as a studio artist is not about studying and emulating already-famous artists. It is not just about refining a singular piece either—it is about considering and proposing steps forward, both professionally and personally. For me, it is about more than finding that perfect color, or even just exploring the effect of color—it is about presenting and challenging single interpretations of both my artwork, and of myself. It is about transformation through reimagination, through repetition, through juxtaposition, and through reiteration. When I received a 2015 Summer Undergraduate Research Award (SURA), I set out to explore how the artistic choices that go into representing an image affect the way that an image is perceived, while also improving my overall printmaking habits and skill-set in the process.
At this point, I have been actively engaging with printmaking for a year. Printmaking mediums implore the creation of multiples of the same image from the same matrix, such as a stamp or a stencil, resulting in each original print being one of any number of multiple originals. As such, there is additional potential to accurately explore different outcomes of the same stencil or plate through trial prints with less fear of ruining a design. It was in Professor Lenore Thomas’s Screen Printing class in fall 2014 that I was exposed to serious printmaking techniques—beyond the work of Andy Warhol to lesser known, but still accomplished, artists such as James Nares and Inka Essenhigh—for the first time. This was also when I first became explicitly interested in the relationship between preconceived assumptions and how we interpret a subject.
The idea that the presentation of a subject could either validate or violate this relationship soon became a driving force of each of my projects—I reveled in finding ways to depict highly trivial moments as being very meaningful, and felt accomplished when I could make my audience reconsider the severity of these silly moments with the seriousness of the moment’s depiction. In one of my projects, I could make the incident of the Virgin Mary changing Baby Jesus’s diaper look dramatic and devastating by using highly rendered layers of color and expressive marks over a black background. Not only that, but I could also make this image appear over and over by pulling ink through a screen. After being a painter for years, I quickly grew to love the fluidity of screen-printing, but at this time I had the mentality that printmaking was essentially a method of multiplying a single image as a means of extending the use of said image.
I have come to learn that the preciousness of the image goes away in printmaking because the process may result in more than one identical image. Consider each print being an “extra life” in a game; if you start out with ten prints, or ten lives, you have ten opportunities to see the print through to the completion of one ideal image. In most cases, you do not need to fear losing the image altogether because there is still the potential to save a physical remnant of how that image once was prior to making a change. After doing printmaking for some time, I no longer considered having more prints as having “more lives,” but rather, having the potential to realize new outcomes with the same image.
If you consider that an image’s representation is due to artistic choices ranging from nuanced decisions, like the difference between shades of color, to significant decisions, such as the chosen medium or the subjects being depicted, then it becomes apparent how low the odds of creating a successful image are without considerable experimentation first. Furthermore, works may need to be revisited again and again in order to reach their full potential. When I applied to summer programs with the intention of creating highly developed works of art, a printmaking approach was the obvious choice because of its facilitation of trial and error and capacity to multiply an image.
During the SURA program, I prioritized finding methods of working effectively through problem-solving my studio habits, and even redefining what I considered “effectiveness” to be. I strove to be conscientious about constantly reevaluating my art and my approach to art, and I had to be honest with myself as to when things were or were not working. At one point, I painted something for one of my initial ideas and determined that the marks left on the piece of scrap plastic I used as a drop cloth were more interesting than what I had actually intended to make (Figure 1). I made these loose marks into a stencil in my screen by using a photo emulsion technique, which required putting the plastic into a light chamber with a silkscreen so that the marks would block out the light that is being projected at the screen coated in a light-sensitive chemical, in order to transfer the positive image to the screen. The resulting stencil was a rudimentary silhouette of the marks
that I had made on the scrap paper. I then printed this stencil and layered it on a single film, over and over, to make the “Bird Cluster” template that I then shot into my screen again, as a new stencil (Figure 2).
In continuously printing on clear plastic sheets for these formative steps, I have also preserved my process for replication at a later time because I can shoot them into my screen continuously with consistent results; with the use of a scanner and digital imaging, I can later replicate my image on a larger scale. This method not only enabled me to think within layers, it was also far more abstract and process-based than anything I had ever done before, and I embraced it. I could make a series of prints as studies on a smaller scale, and then redo the same image larger with fewer resources, more thought, and more certainty.
In starting with a silhouette of a potential image, I asked myself, “What does this look like?” I saw the potential to make a narrative about feathers falling in some sort of aftermath and considered two absurdly different possible interpretations: the story of Icarus, and some birds fornicating. I thought about the myth of Icarus, a Greek tragedy of a youth’s death for flying too close to the sun, and saw the potential to represent two aspects of the myth: the death, and the fall. Then, I had to consider more specifically, how would I represent a concept like death, especially considering the bittersweet nature of Icarus’s demise? Does death need to be dark and oppressing, due to its terminality? Could there be light and glory in a death that occurred as a result of being unable to stop doing something that just felt too good?
I decided to explore the death within “The Death of Icarus” as being a fall into black, such as in Figure 3, and as a blinding fade into white, such as in Figure 4. For “The Fall of Icarus,” I decided to make a print that was more grounded in visual logic than the monochromatic “Death” prints and to employ sunset imagery and feathers that were set apart from the background to enhance the image of Icarus falling (Figure 5). For my other interpretation, I decided to make an absurd take on the stencil with bright yellow feathers against a magenta background, “Big Bird’s Love Nest” (Figure 6).
I used these print studies in my presentation to my fellow SURA recipients as a means of gathering feedback on the studies that I could consider, for my revised versions, by simulating the critique atmosphere that Studio Arts students utilize in intro- and upper-level classes. This exercise resulted in tangible criticism
for my reflection, as a form of data collection, and also demonstrated the expanse and severity of the artistic
choices that shape each art project to the class.
It was important to me to try to establish to my interdisciplinary audience that—despite the notorious subjectivity of art—visual choices aren’t mere matters of opinion that exist without consequence. Visual choices are decisions that mold the viewer’s interpretation of a piece of art in ways that act independently of the artist’s intentions. The resulting difference from the decision to represent death with a yellow color scheme presented almost as many new interpretations of the picture for the class as did naming one version of the print “Fall of Icarus” instead of “Death of Icarus.” It took the non-Studio Arts students a while to warm up to the informal discussion that occurs during a classroom art critique, but I learned as much from their silence, or implied discomfort, as I did from their comments.
Fewer students discussed the yellow and purple variation of the “Bird Cluster” template entitled “Big Bird’s Love Nest” because the print did not seem serious enough to be given the same consideration as the other prints that referenced the Icarus myth, despite the substantial pop cultural implications of Big Bird’s sexuality in this print (Figure 6). One student suggested that it is because having the Icarus prints as a frame of reference cheapened “Big Bird’s Love Nest” into feeling like a parody of something more serious. While I may not have displayed the prints right next to each other in any other scenario, this information was important to consider nonetheless. I want to be sure that I do not inadvertently invalidate my own artwork in a more professional setting, like a gallery.
In doing my research, I have done more than just create art—I’ve developed a mature method of working. Making the same image in four color schemes required cleanliness, organization, and detailed notes—especially when you consider that part of the intention behind these studies is that they would be replicable on a larger scale. I kept a print log that detailed my layers and labeled my ink mixtures; I even began to obsess over having clean hands as to avoid tainting any of my mixed inks or marring the borders of my in-progress prints. Furthermore, I have taken a new approach to art making that emphasizes the process of making art. In becoming more concerned about the process, as opposed to just finishing a picture, I am allowing myself to let a piece develop more fluidly, layer-by-layer. I am currently in the middle of finishing a larger version of the yellow “Death of Icarus” and the “Fall of Icarus” studies, with revisions based on the criticism I’ve received and my own reconsiderations regarding the print studies. I’ve made a significant improvement by clarifying the various elements that are interacting within the background of the print studies; many of my peers were confused by the uncertain and chaotic marks since they do not explicitly suggest either clouds or feathers, but are rather ambiguous. These are issues that have resolved themselves naturally in the resulting two versions of the print studies because they are four times larger, which has allowed me the space to shape the image with more consideration to the interaction of different textures within the piece.
I have continued improving upon my Icarus print as I move forward on other projects in a directed study under Professor Thomas this fall. While participating in SURA, I appreciated the opportunity that I had to work very conscientiously through this single project as I found my way, but I still have more things to consider in terms of exploring how I approach art, as well as how we perceive it. My goal is to transcend the idea of “the multiple” that results from printmaking beyond simply “having extra” of my work, both in terms of elements within a piece and the actual resulting artworks themselves, so that the same image acts in a way that is completely changed. My research in printmaking is about being able to say that I have fully utilized the features that are truly unique to the medium.
My work from the SURA program and my fall 2015 Directed Study will be on display in the University Art Gallery’s exhibition in the Frick Fine Arts Building this January. This exhibition will showcase the research of the four other Studio Arts students that participated in Pitt’s Wyoming Field Studies Program, as well as the work that I have made here in Pittsburgh with the support of the SURA program.
Title: Love and Love-in-Return
Medium: Screen Print
Date: September 2014
Title: Holy Shit
Medium: Screen Print
Date: October 2014
Title: Raindrops Keep Collecting Over My Head
Medium: Screen Print
Date: November 2014