Variants

The Variants series of kinetic etchings is a response to our emergence as a society, culture, and country into a post-lockdown world.

After enduring, like millions of others, physical restrictions on my life due to Covid, I wanted to take my work outdoors as the lockdown laws were relaxed. To achieve this, I devised a simple mobile printmaking system made up of customized frames that hold prepared plates. For some works, these frames are held within a cinema Usherette Tray. Marks on the plates are made fast, expressively, and in the moment, using ball bearings rolled across the plates that respond both to the movement of walking, climbing, sitting, and my intuitive guidance at any given time. More recently, I’ve been adding direct mark-making while traveling - using etching needles, skewers, toothpicks as well as objects and detritus found on each journey. All excursions are very different - a walk in the park, climbing stairs, a train journey, shopping, a trip to the beach. They mark my emergence from the pandemic but are also a record of the movement of an individual through time and space. Much like dousing rods, ouija boards, or automatic writing, it is a magical process as well: the lines revealing apparitions and summoning the invisible to be visible - fixed in metal, ink, and paper. 

The result is printmaking that escapes the confines of the restricted space of the workshop. Instead, this way of working engages in a fluid, real-time encounter with both the immediate and external and their impression upon the senses and the self. The Variants are etchings that celebrate and reflect the glitches, transformations, and accidental, unplanned encounters of our lives in all their flawed and fabulous glory.