Demonstrating how to make her "Wreckage Salad" prints at the University of Arkansas (UArk) Fayetteville, November, 2016.
Adriane Herman and UArk faculty, Sean Morrissey, examine raw materials to assemble monotypes that students help color and hand cut.
Palette of shapes to work from.
Students enrolled in the University's BFA and MFA generously collaborated with Herman to hand-color water-soluble crayon onto both sides of tracing paper.
Thank you to all UArk students who worked on this series of prints!
A wide assortment of double-sided colored tracing paper was needed to amass enough material to simulate scenes from the dump.
Students developed systems to cut material that appear uniform as well as with subtle and not so subtle variation.
Olivia cut shapes both uniform and eccentric.
Believe it or not, this was the day after the 2016 Presidential election.
Though many students enrolled in art classes were in shock about the results, having something tangible to do with their hands seemed to provide some relief from the stress of the news.
Though of course, many were in shock and experiencing a range of feelings.
Just as the wood pile at the dump is a collaboratively created construction, these monotypes required the labor of many individuals, allowing the artist to be non-precious about individual "shards" of paper.
Slowly critical mass accumulated.
Making the most of each sheet; here a student joyously displays the "rind" of this particular colored sheet.
University of Arkansas Printmaking Professor, Sean Morrissey examines a ladder hand-cut by an undergraduate student.
Professor Morrissey also used his expertise to laser-cut shapes representing familiar objects one might find in the wood pile at a transfer station: pallets, fences, shutters, chairs, ladders, beds, cries, etc.
Negative space from laser cut shapes. These too were hand-cut into shapes that all got tossed onto the compost pile, a.k.a., a representation of one or more photograph(s) from Herman's series entitled "Town's Mounds." (To view photos look under "Goods Riddance" or click here.)
Herman assembles non-adhesive collages of the hand-colored, and hand- and laser-cut shapes at the press in anticipation of making monotypes using moistened paper that will activate the water-based pigment.
A complete "collage" from which one of the first "Wreckage Salad" prints would be pulled. Or more accurately, two, since two prints can be created at once using this method.
Herman lays the second piece of paper down to take advantage of both sides of the pigmented pile.
Peeling the top print off the "pile" is exquisite fun.
Then the serious labor sets in of removing each one of the hundreds of shards of cut paper. Sometimes large areas come off at once, but myriad shapes continue to cling to the print, requiring removal by tweezers, so as not to smudge the moist water-soluble pigment.
Herman and Morrissey remove the pieces of hand-colored paper from which the following monotype was pulled.
"Wreckage Salad (Crib)," 2016, monotype, 21.5 x 28.5 inches