#ghost prints

[inlovewiththemooon]

[formicalage]

Playing around with styrofoam block printing again. Since I had some extra ink I used it to do a few trace monotypes and ghost prints.

[zombie-rott]

GHOST BC TOTAL RESTOCK

A4 & 5X7 variations are available with a price drop! Some stickers are still available too & more are coming in late FEB.

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[longlistshort]

Above is Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds’s work Surviving Active Shooter Custer, 48 monoprints, 2018, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, on view in 2021.

From the museum about the work-

The term “active shooter” is one we hear too often in today’s news. Here, Heap of Birds uses this contemporary phrase to characterize massacres committed by United States troops against Native Americans in the 1800s. Each of this work’s panels contains six lines of text evoking the violence of not only this country’s history but ongoing acts of oppression against Indigenous communities. The prints on the right are “ghost prints” of those on the left, made by using the residual ink remaining on the printing plate after the first print was produced. For the artist, these prints recall the “ghosts of a whole culture.”

In the video below from the museum, the artist discusses the work with two of MoMa’s curators.

[meantforinfinitesadness]

GUESS WHO HAS AN ART PRINT UPDATE!!!!!

@meowsaidmissy

@caturrday

@omurizer-draws-things

I have more prints on the way and I cant wait to show you them!!!

[gedditor]

Dusk on the bayou

Don’t think I posted this ghost image, though I think I posted the original first-pass print way back when I made them. Forgot about it till I embarked on a sort-out-the-studio mission.

Ghosts are images obtained by re-printing a plate without re-inking it. When there are raised or incised marks holding the ink, it’s a fair bet you’ll get a clear enough ghost, and sometimes they are more subtle and appealing than the first image. You can always re-ink such a plate if you want multiples, adjusting you inking according to what you learned from the first proof. A monoprint is another matter. There’s nothing holding the ink in place on the plate except its tackiness, and the ghost is your last shot at that particular image. The painterly ink application can often be uneven in monoprinting, and over-inked spots which may have looked not bad on the first print will stick out like a sore toe in residue, and often make the ghost fit only for the bin.

There are a few such spots here, but the colours in question were mostly so soft that I think it’s just about ok. A tiny bit of rework with a cotton bud and some ink may sort it, or perhaps I should just leave it alone. And keep it. It has a rainy dusk feel that wasn’t there in the much livelier original, and runs much closer to the memory associated with the moment. Another intriguing example of the sensitivity of wet-strength cartridge paper. Its surface smoothness and hardness works to your advantage when the ink is sparse or the the lines fine, picking up detail that gets squelched into thirstier paper by the press. It’s not archival, but it’s buffered and durable, and it seems to be demanding a place in my printmaking language.

[inlovewiththemooon]

ghost print on scrap paper

[inlovewiththemooon]

Birdmen, they walk in shadows

Whisper to me