When artist, curator, and master printmaker Raeleen Kao approached me with a proposal to participate in an elaborate event involving printmakers, chefs, and a mixologist, I was flattered and initially a little nervous due to my complete illiteracy in printmaking. But I said yes. This led to a printmaking adventure that I could not have possibly imagined.
The event, Basilica Chymica, is scheduled for early October at Hoofprint Workshop in Chicago. It will feature print editions by six artists paired with food designed by six chefs. The theme of the event is alchemy.
Throughout the years of working with photography, ceramics, drawing/painting, digital imaging, sculpting, mold-making, casting, etc., one would think that printmaking would pop up somewhere along the way, at least in a college course. But nope. This is part of why the project sounded so exciting; I love a challenge. Liz Born and Gabe Hoare at Hoofprint Workshop have been immensely generous throughout this endeavor. As professional printmakers with fierce levels of knowledge and experience, they are essentially doing the legwork and spending many hours facilitating the creative process.
The theme is alchemy. Where do I begin? I had recently acquired a book on Max Ernst’s use of alchemy – before Raeleen even approached me about this project. I’ve also used books on alchemy as references in my work, and I happen to have a background in chemistry. There’s a lot to consider.
But I never identified as a creative person. I could never just grab a blank sheet of paper and start drawing without an initial visual seed to guide me. Hence I usually start with the inkblots. Given that the printmaking process was going to involve directly layered drawings instead of inkblots on paper, I hearkened back to Timekeeper and Reattachment, both of which began with X-rays and other medical scans. I decided to dig through my medical scans and find something to get me started. I found a set of X-rays that related nicely to the culinary nature of this project: individual scans of my teeth. These were images I had never previously used.
We tried various things with the teeth: positives, negatives, blown up, digitally enhanced, etc., using both lithography and screenprinting. In the end, I responded most strongly to the simplest solution: using the X-rays directly, without a digital intermediary. Something about the knowledge that we were using actual X-rays, not digital scans, was conceptually appealing to me. This visceral response is probably related to my love of film-based pinhole photography over any form of digital photography. It’s something that I should further investigate.
The next step is to decide how to arrange the X-rays, and then build an image from there. In addition to my own books on alchemy, I am looking at a couple of books that I checked out from Sulzer Library. Things are starting to come together.
