Wednesday, July 10, 2013

She's Carnivorous- new etching

She's Carnivorous, 5" x 7", etching, soft-ground, aquatint, and drypoint, edition of 20

My Love Letters Etching Series stems from my deep obsession with diversity of flora and fauna in the natural world, and most specifically from the ocean. I see these new works like deep and intense obsessions with celebrities. I desire to write love letters to all my heroes in the form of small, process driven intaglio prints. I’m interested in the balance between the menacing/beautiful and between the man-made/natural. I seek to both catalog and respond to various natural phenomena and micro to macro relationships in the art making process. How many letters can I write and how many different organisms or sources can I incorporate into my work? Naturalist, biologist, and artist Ernest Haeckel drew over 5,000 species of radiolaria during his lifetime. I seek to incorporate a similar number of flora and fauna into my work during my lifetime. New species are still being discovered every day and we have only explored less than 10% of what is actually in our oceans. While my works are inspired by the natural world, the forms don’t necessarily exist and are created through inventing and adjusting actual references. It’s important that I’m combining a variety of source material in the work and not just documenting different species. My paintings series, The Pocket Pod Series, includes over 250 original works made between 2008-09. My last big series completed in 2012, The Daily Drawing Project, encompasses 52 weekly series with 366 original works. The Love Letter Etchings builds on those ideas and but takes cues from the Census of Marine Life, a 10-year research project that involved 2,700 scientists and 6,000+ potential species.

She’s Carnivorous
She’s Carnivorous, inspired by the newly discovered Carnivorous Harp Sponge, is strikingly beautiful like a harp, but it is also very ominous at same time. The balance between the menacing and the beautiful is exciting to explore in the printmaking process. I’m interested in investigating the duality present in a variety of creatures and environments. 

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