Abstract
WALKING THE DISSOLVING LINE is a body of work that I have developed over the past few months to complete my studies in the area of Printmaking at PNCA. Using the skills I have developed in the print studio, I have been making fabricated relics of becoming; each littered with evidence of my experiences with transness, religion, and self-preservation.
In the studio, I have been exploring traditional and nontraditional print applications, focusing on intaglio. Intaglio is a planographic print process using a plate made of metal, usually copper or zinc, relying on varying textures and incisions made into the metal using chemical and mechanical means. The textures and lines made into the plate pick up ink in varying concentrations to produce a print with a variety of marks, tones, and lines.
I have been using copper plates to produce printed works that were made with a combination of digitally produced and manipulated images screen printed onto the plate, and images hand burnished and engraved into the copper. With these digital and analog processes, I combined references to tradition and antiquity with my own contemporary experience in a visual manner that appears to dissolve, decay, and compress traditions, signs, objects, gestures, and images.
With this project, I hope to not only challenge conventional notions of binary gender–but also binary ways of thinking about artwork and images, spirituality, materials, and our place in the world. Our bodies, identities, and artworks are all subject to similar limiting logics of categorization, and by abstracting, transforming, and leaning into nuance, we can work to free ourselves from repressive ideologies.
