Collagraphs
Collage is an art form that has existed for hundreds of years as artists glued various materials, mostly paper, onto a substrate to create an assemblage. In the early 20th century the art form was reinvigorated by George Braque and Pablo Picasso, who coined the specific term, "Collage" from the French "colle" meaning "glue". Printmakers appropriated the technique to assemble bits of various kinds onto a substrate such as wood or paperboard to produce a plate that could be printed like an intaglio plate. They called prints of this kind "collagraphs" from "colle" (glue) and "graph" (producing an output like a drawing). Collagraphs through the twentieth century were generally produced by gluing bits of various materials onto a base of board or wood and printing as an intaglio or relief print. The materials can be bits of sandpaper, carborundum glued onto the base, string, card, or even plant material.
My method of producing a collagraph plate is a bit different. I first coat a sheet of plexiglass with a thin layer (1-2 mm.) of modeling paste (marble dust base) and gel medium (5:1). I carefully spread the paste smooth with a plasterer's trowel, and while the plate is wet, shape the thin layer with various objects. A guitar pick creates gestural movements, pieces of wire dipped into the matrix leaves a linear fissure, perforated discs produce circular grids, toilet bowl chains trace out dashed or dotted lines. I have about fifteen minutes to create a space or a feeling before the medium is too stiff to work smoothly. I leave it overnight to dry completely, and when it is thoroughly solid, I sand to remove projecting sharp parts that would tear the paper. After a coating of Krylon acrylic to seal the surface frI print as an etching, often with transparent colors rolled as final layers.
My method of producing a collagraph plate is a bit different. I first coat a sheet of plexiglass with a thin layer (1-2 mm.) of modeling paste (marble dust base) and gel medium (5:1). I carefully spread the paste smooth with a plasterer's trowel, and while the plate is wet, shape the thin layer with various objects. A guitar pick creates gestural movements, pieces of wire dipped into the matrix leaves a linear fissure, perforated discs produce circular grids, toilet bowl chains trace out dashed or dotted lines. I have about fifteen minutes to create a space or a feeling before the medium is too stiff to work smoothly. I leave it overnight to dry completely, and when it is thoroughly solid, I sand to remove projecting sharp parts that would tear the paper. After a coating of Krylon acrylic to seal the surface frI print as an etching, often with transparent colors rolled as final layers.
Items used in assemblage:
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Road Warrior
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Items used in assemblage:
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Tn on Vortex Street
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 Hyperzootic Biomorph |
For me there is nothing interesting except that it lives, once lived, or has the potential to live. All the material universe means nothing without a spark of life to animate it. Just a single bacterium, however, and there is ample justification for the entire cosmos. With such a bias, it is not surprising that I see living forms everywhere I look. These collagraph constructions I have been working on are somewhat like fossils that I bring out of the mud, ink up, and print on paper.
Hyperzootic Biomorph is a extraterrestrial fossil of sorts. It existed somewhere, or may exist, but exactly where is not certain. Not on Earth, perhaps, at least not for a very long time yet, or long ago since it hunted our planet. It is the picture of voracity, all mouth and spines, rostral crest sending a protective spear behind. I don't know what size it is. It could be like one of those deep-water horrors that seem to be a nightmare incarnate, but when you bring them up from the depths they are only an inch long. Alternatively, it could be of elephantine or even planetary dimensions. It might hunt the dusty seas of unknown nebulae, or inhabit the benthic zone of a more liquid sphere, balancing on its vertical spine just above the bottom, drifting occasionally into the pelagic openness, still far beyond the reach of light. Whatever it is, it's hungry. |
Maxwell's Vortex Solutions
It started with a machine that blew smoke rings. The year was 1867 and Peter Guthrie Tait dazzled crowds of academics with the extraordinary long-term stability of such rings. For physicists it led to the insight by William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) that matter was composed of knotted tubes of the all-encompassing ether that was thought at the time to underlay and unify space. Tait even constructed a periodical table of the elements showing how simple knots comprised the structure of simple elements like Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Carbon while complex knots were the basis of complex elements like Calcium and Lead.
Another witness of Tait's smoke ring demonstrations was James Clerk Maxwell, probably the most brilliant physicist in the time between Newton and Einstein. Maxwell was the first to recognize that electricity and magnetism are twin aspects of a single phenomenon. He demonstrated that electric and magnetic fields are propagated through space as waves, and that light is an electromagnetic wave. Maxwell's concept of matter involved various vortex solutions.
Nineteenth century efforts in knot theory led directly to string theory in the twenty-first, now one of the most active areas of mathematics. Mathematicians suggest that M vortices and N antivortices are cosmic strings and antistrings, energy and the curvature of space around localized strings serve as seeds for matter accretion in the early stages of the cosmos. The universe as we know it is not the only possibility; others may have existed or will exist with vastly different types of matter and space.
Another witness of Tait's smoke ring demonstrations was James Clerk Maxwell, probably the most brilliant physicist in the time between Newton and Einstein. Maxwell was the first to recognize that electricity and magnetism are twin aspects of a single phenomenon. He demonstrated that electric and magnetic fields are propagated through space as waves, and that light is an electromagnetic wave. Maxwell's concept of matter involved various vortex solutions.
Nineteenth century efforts in knot theory led directly to string theory in the twenty-first, now one of the most active areas of mathematics. Mathematicians suggest that M vortices and N antivortices are cosmic strings and antistrings, energy and the curvature of space around localized strings serve as seeds for matter accretion in the early stages of the cosmos. The universe as we know it is not the only possibility; others may have existed or will exist with vastly different types of matter and space.
