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As I create an image on an intaglio plate, I think of the surface of the plate as the surface of the earth. My investigations with printmaking run concurrent with my study of geology, and my thoughts of how to make a print have been fused with my understanding of how landscape itself is made. The intaglio process, which uses hardened steel tools and acidic chemicals to create incisions in metal, is slow and methodical. The incised image, like the topography of earth, is shaped through repeated chemical and mechanical weathering of the surface. As rock records the trespass of elements, and subsequently maps those passages, so do intaglio plates. As I expose my plates to polishing, degreasing, scratching, protective coatings, and chemical baths, each action leaves its mark. The process is cumulative, and by its repetition takes on the steps of ritual. The recessed areas of intaglio plate hold the image, the hidden, incipient landscape. The ink is forced into these places. What was once below is now above. The process correlates to the shifts of rock and earth through geologic time. Plates of lithosphere move apart, magma rises forming new crust, plates collide, subduction occurs, mountains rise, and mountain erode.
I combine multiple etched plates and woodblocks into a single print. The stratum records the topographic features of a period of time, a layer of ground, a plate. It is customary in printmaking to do editions of printed image, with each print as close to identical as possible. I do not do editions of my work; each print is unique. My prints are impressions of a place in time, and like a natural land formation that is shaped by a series of forces acting upon them, their creation cannot be replicated. It is the time of working, shifting ground, building for which I have chosen printmaking. It is this imagining of the hidden places of the natural world, of the hidden self, which I seek to document.