Not a Knot

This year I had vowed to participate in the Cascade Exchange through Oregon State University. Every year I intend to do this, but when the due date arrives I have done nothing. So, this year I made possibly one of the ugliest, most disgusting little prints I've ever done. Ordinarily they would have found their way to the kill pile, but since I vowed to do this I followed through and sent them off, my poor homely little orphans. The way that I print is somewhat akin to a Suicide (reduction) print, where you really don't know what you have until its finished, and since I had waited until the last minute I had no time to start over. But, I had the plates all made so after I had mailed the obligatory exchange disasters off to OSU I tried printing with different colors and added chine collé and it turned out considerably better. The basis for the print was, of course, René Magrittes Ceci n'est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe). He was right, it wasn't. It was a painting of a pipe. In the same vein this is not a knot. It is a print of a knot. And it is a play on words & spellings. English is so much fun to play with! Sometimes I think I should have been an English Major, but then I couldn't have ended a sentence with a preposition, could I?

Birth of Aphrodite

Print Arts Northwest will be exhibiting prints from Cyprus during the month of March and later in the year we will be sending prints there for exhibition in one of their galleries. But, while their work is here we were asked to do small 9" sq. prints giving an interpretation of Cyprus to be hung with the work from Cyprus. That was the impetus for the birth of Aphrodite. I learned that Cyprus was the birthplace of the mythical Aphrodite, ancient Greek goddess of love, and figured that if Venus arrived via sea shell then Aphrodite may have arrived from the sea also, amidst bubbles. And so she did, with a basket of hearts and carrying the two olive branches from the Cypriot flag (symbols for the two factions of Cyprus: Greek and Turkey), may they continue to live in peace. Her head dress is a map of Cyprus and is embellished with copper leaf as the name Cyprus means "copper" in Greek. So there you have it - the explanation of all the elements in the birth of Aphrodite. She is a Solarplate intaglio using several plates printed numerous times and ending with chine collé of the goddess herself, and the bubbles, printed at the same time as the line plate, of course.