Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Tagged

I got tagged by Jennylu. The game is to pick the 4th photo from my Pictures album and write four things about it. Well, this is it, but it's not super exciting...

1. This is a print I made in college, one of the only intaglios I made that actually turned out well. It was made with 4 copper plates, each etched to print a different color. So I had red, blue, yellow, and black. The technique requires inking each plate, soaking a piece of cotton paper in water, then printing it with each plate, one by one, so the colors align and the image turns out all nice and colorful. It was hard! But I had a really good teacher.

2. The image is a hill in Oregon, in a little "town" called Airlie, where I grew up. The hill was surrounded by fields--probably grass, which is a popular crop in that area, but sometimes the fields had trees along their borders, and this particular little road and hill had a striking group of pine trees that I liked the look of, so I took a picture of it with my first camera, which my parents got as the free gift when they bought a new washing machine. I was probably around 12 or so.

3. The image reminds me of Airlie, which reminds me of my childhood, which reminds me of home, which is appropriate for today, because I've come home to my family, although not to Oregon. Sometimes people ask me where I'm from, but I've lived in so many places for significant amounts of time that I find it hard to answer that question. Am I from Oregon because I "grew up" there from age 5 to 17? Or am I from North Carolina because thats where most of my family lives? Or am I from New York City because I get my mail there? I like all those places--how can I choose? They say home is where the heart is, but I've given pieces of my heart out in so many different places along the way. I guess I have a lot of homes, then.

4. I don't know what fourth thing I can say, except that I hope to be able to do printmaking again sometime. My press is in storage, and I don't have a place for it in New York yet. But I'm not selling it--I'm still an artist, even if I'm mostly dormant right now.

So anyway, I'm supposed to tag four other people now, but I know my friends and I know they don't want to be tagged. However, if they want to play the game, it's kind of a fun exercise.

2 comments:

Jenn said...

Nice picture. Thank You so much for playing along. happy Turkey day.

Lis said...

I went to Oregon for you. And sneezed a lot from said grass :)