How do you visualize your grief?
What does it feel like to you? Is it an image, and experience, a word, a song, a voice? Grief is intangible, an emotion that defies description, yet it is an inherent part of being alive.
You are alive, and one day you will die, so will every person you have ever touched- loved or not.
So how can we begin to make space in our lives for our grief? See it and recognize it, hold time and space for it in ourselves and others?
Using the mutable qualities of intaglio printmaking I have been channeling descriptions of grief gleaned from conversations into a series of prints- mixing techniques and sizes to achieve the right effect. None of the plates have the same size- they are as big or as small as they need to be- each informed by the conversations and experiences that guided their creation. Working in this intuitive way is liberating- breaking both portraiture and traditional editioning conventions to instead focus on the experience of the print as a glimpse into individual grief. Combining this print series with books allows for multiple entry points into the source material- encouraging each of us to allow space for grief in our lives- if only for the moment of time spent reading or viewing.