Printmaking as an art form allows for the exploration of mark making inherent in a wide variety of processes. Additionally, each type of printmaking offers its own set of process rituals. These rituals can also be manipulated and exploited to create diverse ways of making images. Printmaking also deals largely in multiples. You repeat processes over and over, adjusting and rethinking as each set of results allows new questions and new solutions to arise. As a printmaker, I love immersing myself in these processes and exploring what they have to offer. More often than not, they take my work in unexpected directions.
My work often deals with how I digest information about the world around me. I break it down into two categories: pattern and space. I use patterns to simplify the complex nature of the world I am in, breaking down mountains into geometric shapes, or trying to capture the essence of water through alternative intaglio etching methods. My work also deals with the concept of space, and how it can be visually represented. A collection of lines angled a particular way, is read by our brains as space. This kind of optical illusion I find intriguing. In my practice, I explore the concept of 2-D spaces, how they are represented and interpreted, and how that system can be interrupted. Through examining the two concepts of pattern and space, I work to decode the complexities of my environment.
I continue to explore these ideas in different mediums of printmaking. I look to learn new processes and investigate process can reveal to me new ways of representing my relationship to the environment.
Recently, I have begun working with simple methods of weaving, creating large pieces that I then bring into the printshop to use as a drawing material to make screenprints, monoprints, and lithographs. The marriage of fiber arts with printmaking explores the minimal properties of weavings, and created a dialouge between a made object in space, and how it becomes represented on paper through various printmaking techniques.