AftermatH: series

In these prints, I am combining cyanotype prints with etchings and ink drawing to portray transitional ecosystems from multiple vantage points. I use the cyanotype process, a “cameraless photograph,” to record the silhouettes of understory plants by placing them on paper coated with a light sensitive solution. Exposed to the sun, the paper turns blue where it is revealed, and says white where it rests underneath the foliage. This process was pioneered by long-unrecognized botanist and artist Anna Atkins (1799-1871) in her extensive studies of British algae and ferns. I then print a copperplate etching onto translucent paper, which is fused to the cyanotype during the printing process. Whereas the cyanotypes portray what grows at ground level, the etchings portray eye-level vantage points into transitional ecosystems. Finally, I carefully fill in the negative spaces by hand with a blue ink pen. The resulting images use light, water, ink, and fiber to make mysteriously beautiful layers while also telling a story about places undergoing change.
This series of prints takes its titles from the common names of the plants they depict, and from lines written in Katherine Anne Porter’s short novel, Pale Horse Pale Rider (1939), which tells a slightly fictionalized account of the author’s experience witnessing the end of World War I and nearly dying during the 1918 pandemic.