The repetitive and reproductive nature of printmaking is what draws me to the medium, which in turn lends itself to my creative impulses. A repeated cycle or routine not only becomes comfortable and familiar to both body and mind, but is fertile to numerous possibilities that occur in situ. The repeated familiar produces lulls in consciousness as the task through repetition is ingrained into memory and the acute details of the motion fall below the threshold of being consciously aware of them. What typically was once the conscious mind clearly dictating the body how to move becomes awkward moments of clarity as the mind catches up to the deeply ingrained muscle memory. These awkward moments leave chance for error or recognition of something previously unnoticed that at that point, permanently changes the cycle or routine in a minor manner. Time passes by and these minor changes slowly amass, effectively giving birth to a brand new cycle without a sudden shift from the previous one.
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Repetition within an image, how the image is repeated, or the ways in which an image has been reproduced is one of the first things that comes to my mind when thinking about the creation of the next cycle for a new print. Each piece originates from an idea or grouping of ideas that initiates a need to collect images that speak to this idea or are the beginning of a line. These drawn lines grow and are repeated, conceiving forms and merging compositions. When I work with found or photographic images, this repetition of form and compositions, reveal to me an absurdity of the object being depicted. Each slightly differently rendered image of the same object are projected to the viewer to see them as separate entities, a private one-on-one show, despite the fact that they exist in banal multiples. And the more these images are repeated, the greater and more obvious these banalities become; serving as a source of inspiration.
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Everything must be considered from start to finish. A color printed below a drawing can have a vastly different visual effect than a color printed on top of a drawing. The order in which drawn or photographic elements are printed may produce clarity or profuse distortion. A poorly planned print is as disastrous as robins hatching eggs in winter; it is a broken cycle that cannot reach completion. Though once these conditions and resource needs are met, this cycle (in an ideal system) may repeat indefinitely. In our less than perfect world however, there is nothing indefinite and always an end. Energy is never perfectly translated from one action to the other and limited resources restrict these cycles. In this way, I find the process of printmaking to mirror processes (living and nonliving) that occur in or from life.
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Life and death exist in endless circles.
The birth of a child is it’s eventual
death.To live all things feed and in
feeding, takes the lives of others. A
plant drawing nutrients from the soil
is the same as a tiger hunting a boar.
In taking this nutrition, another plant
may not sprout and the hunted boar
may not escape. This is trivial in the
shadow of our abilities to
mass produce food,
yet also inescapable.
As with any other animal carcass and
plant detritus,
humans too
eventually decompose.
Printmaking is a clockwork system.
This repetition draws one into the medium
and in itself fosters new creative impulses.
Endless hours of labor are spent in collecting images,
incubating ideas, drafting
compositions, choosing colors, etc.
in order to cultivate a print. These things
are done repeatedly and endlessly–
produced within the lull of the same kind
that occurs when commuting
the familiar path from
work to home. It is
the known becoming the unknown:
the same start that in an instant produces
a different cycle.
Nim Breitenfeld 