Kate Cheney Chappell Art Space

Printmaking

I studied etching in Paris during college, but since then have learned many non-toxic printmaking techniques, at Maine College of Art and through Peregrine Press, a printmaking collective in Portland. Monotype techniques appeal to the painter in me, and of these, collagraph proved to be the most versatile for my process.

What is a collagragh? Think COLLAGE plus GRAPHIC. To make my plate, I use gesso on museum board cut to the size I want; while it is the consistency of toothpaste, I mark into and embed things in it that become part of the permanent plate. Sometimes my plates are made from torn Rives BFK paper and gesso in shapes I want, marked on both sides. I seal the plate with shellac and let it cure. Then it's ready to apply the oil-based etching ink I use (Charbonnel), wipe with a tarlatan as I would an etching, and print successively, using both sides. This layering achieves the depth and mystery I am after.

Healing the Break

I broke my wrist in 2006, and it forced me to change many things in my life in order to heal, including the art I made. The birds in this suite of collagraphs are based on the recently rediscovered golden-fronted bowerbird from the deep rainforest of Papua New Guinea. I dreamt they were knitting my bones in place (see the article, New Species Found in Lost World of Indonesian New Guinea.) Healing happens in mysterious ways. We have a choice when we respond to breaks in our lives: the creative act has power to heal. In 2011, Healing the Break became part of a collaborative art project, Painters, Players, and Poets when Cindy Bullens wrote a song in response to it, also titled Healing the Break.

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Navigating by Heart

These monotypes use the constellations of the summer sky, moon and monolith as imagery. Made on Monhegan Island, where celestial navigation is understood and used, and where my heart abides.

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Wintering Over

This suite of monotype/collages speaks to our kinship with all living creatures and our desire to find those safe burrows, dens and nests in which to protect and "winter over" what is essential in us, our creative core. The extreme cold and constant white of my surroundings in Vermont (VSC residency 2007) was a backdrop for my explorations of warmth and life, grounded in the earth, connected to her fiery center and regenerated every year through seed, egg, idea---a manifestation of what is becoming from what is hidden, buried, dark.

Click on the image at left to see more of these prints