COMMITTING AND CONFIDING Original Art Lithograph

Description

I found a marriage certificate from the 1800's for sale at a flea market a little while ago, and I was so surprised that somethng so personal and important could just end up being for sale in a makeshift booth...I had to purchase the certificate and recreate it in this lithograph. I drew what I imagined the couple to look like, and the piece turned out very layered and mysterious.

"Committing and Confiding" is an original hand drawn and hand printed stone lithograph. It is printed on thin and beautiful Japanese rice paper and measures 10" x 6.5" wide. There are only 8 prints in this small edition, and this is number 5 out of 8. It will ship flat between cardboard, and it's ready to be framed!

ABOUT THE PROCESS:
Lithography is one of the tricker forms of printmaking (and artmaking...) that exists! You have to carry around heavy limestone tablets which you then grain at a special sink using tiny pieces of sand to wear away and smooth out the surface of the stone. Then you draw your image with a grease pencil, and you can work both additively and subtractively - drawing on then carving off your lines - until you get a perfect image. You do several etching processes using acid and water, but I would need my litho handbook to tell you more about those in detail - it gets confusing... Then you cross your fingers and roll your image up with ink, hoping that you etched it correctly and end up seeing your drawing and not some large black blob. The plus side is that a stone lithograph pulled by hand is as rich and nuanced (if not more) as a charcoal drawing, and you can make multiple prints of your drawing from a single stone image.

This print is special because the edition is so small, and this (along with the two or three other lithos also up for sale) is probably one of the last lithographs I'll ever make - in part because I really didn't enjoy the process, and due to the fact that the process is *so* toxic, and it makes me sick to think of all the dangerous chemicals I inhaled while making this! But I guess if I have to risk my health for something, it should be art...right?

Added on Sep 29, 2009