After over a year delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic our cohort was able to display our MFA thesis work at the Icebox Gallery in Philadelphia in December of 2021. I exhibited an installation of handmade paper sculptures, video documentation of a performance titled Release, three sculptural artist books, and over a hundred risograph printed pamphlet takeaways titled the lists.
Untitled, handmade paper, wood block prints, and pulp painting, 2021.
Handmade sculpture featuring wood block prints.
Handmade paper sculpture featuring wood block prints.
Untitled, handmade paper, 2021. This book is one of over 20 artist books that are the result of my performance Release. During Release all of the sculptures I had created prior to the pandemic were flatten, disassembled, and then bound to create these books.
Untitled, handmade paper, 2021. Artist book from Release.
Untitled, handmade paper, 2021. Artist book from Release.
the lists, risograph printing and handmade paper, 2020. the lists is a takeaway pamphlet that contains poetry providing context to the inspiration for the sculptures.
the lists, risograph printing, and handmade paper, 2020.
Untitled, handmade paper, 2021. This book is one of over 20 artist books that are the result of my performance Release. During Release all of the sculptures I had created prior to the pandemic were flatten, disassembled, and then bound to create these books.
Untitled, handmade paper, 2021.
Untitled, handmade paper, 2021.
Release, 2021.
Release is a performance and collaboration with Amalia Avilés-Lugo documented with the assistance of Sara Moose-Torres. During this piece Amalia and I deconstruct the 20+ handmade paper sculptures that were destined for our 2020 MFA thesis show that was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Release was performed in Wissahickon Valley Park outside Philadelphia. The performance is two and half hours long and the full video will be available at a later date.
Because all of the sculptures are made from handmade paper and formed through laminate casting, when moisture is applied they can be separated back out into the original strips and sections. These pieces were later dried and bound into books.
Handmade flax and abaca paper.
Handmade flax and abaca paper.
Handmade cotton paper embedded with dirt and sealed with beeswax, and linen thread.
Handmade cotton paper embedded with dirt and sealed with beeswax, and linen thread. This piece is approximately 4’x3’.
Offset lithography and screenprint on paper. This installation, at its beginning, featured 400 books. Viewers are invited to take a book and the piece diminishes over time.
For this performative installation I collaborated with my younger sister, Emily Welch. I ran, to exhaustion, a rigid path based on maps of my childhood neighborhood. Emily entered after 7 minutes to leisurely walk a curving path that corresponded with our family’s current suburban home and overlaps my route at different intervals. After some time Emily leaves and I continue alone.
Following the performance I mixed plaster and made castings of different impressions left on the landscape.
Samples of plaster castings.
Multimedia installation, features weighted fabric that has been dyed and covered in spray-paint prints, the floor is lined with dirt, and as participants maneuver farther into the space they must crawl while the fabric presses down on them. At the end of the passage is a small wood paneled box that in place of a roof has more of the fabric that is heavily weighed down. As participants engage with the piece they hear sounds of shovels, scraping, and footsteps.
Erratic Obsession was created in the Spring of 2019, and it is letterpress printed on handmade cotton and abaca paper. The imagery in Erratic Obsession was executed through pulp painting and blowout papermaking techniques. The text was sourced from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) and Annie Payson Call’s Nerves and Common Sense (1909). I combined and manipulated fragments from both texts to create the present narrative.
Edition of 10. Copies available.
Pictorial Plagues features letterpress printing techniques, pressure printing, linoleum prints, and metal type. The book also contains handmade translucent flax paper and text written by the artist.
This book examines the fragility of memory, reflecting on how our understanding of people and experiences fades over time and we gradually require artificial prompting to remember, such as photographs.
Edition of 15. Copies available.
Detail.
Detail.
Detail.
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Detail.
Stagnant and Scarred are a diptych and the two books present complementing narratives about loss and the aftermath of grief.
Handmade poplar box that houses Stagnant and Scarred.
24 collagraph prints on Stonehenge paper, Drumleaf binding with a break-away spine; 5 3/4" x 7 3/8" x 1 1/2"
Sample spreads.
Inked canvas embossments printed on Stonehenge paper; 6 7/8" x 5 3/4" x 3/8"
Scarred provides the context for Stagnant's narrative through the inclusion of text. This text focuses on the complications of living in the aftermath of grief.
Sample spreads.
24 Handmade kozo sheets embedded with dirt and sealed with beeswax; bound in an accordion structure; 11 1/2" x 9 3/8" x 2 "
This book examines the aggregation of taxing life experiences. Coalesce begins with compiling dirt and at various intervals finger marks appear in an attempt to remove this dirt, but ultimately ends with fully covered dirt pages.
Details.
Collagraph and linoleum prints on handmade kozo paper. prints: 11" x 14"
Details.
Dirt on coffee stained Stonehenge. 6 3/8” x 7 ¾” x ¾”
This work is a two signature pamphlet stitch that features ephemeral prints. The prints in this work are achieved by embossing dirt into damp, coffee stained Stonehenge. The more the book is handled, the more it disappears, and by the end of the exhibition the pages will be blank.
Details.
Handmade abaca paper, embedded with dirt, and sealed with wax; mounted to Stonehenge. 8 1/2" x approx. 19'
Details.
Multimedia installation featuring video, 8 light boxes, handmade kozo embedded with site specific dirt and sealed with beeswax, and dirt lines the floor.
Projected on the back wall is a video in which dirt is periodically dropped onto plexi glass until it covers the frame. Then attempts to remove the dirt occur, but these attempts are ultimately futile as the video ends with the frame completely covered. As the video darkens from dirt covering the screen the lighting in the room changes as well. Additionally, viewers hear the sounds of falling dirt, footsteps, and shovels.
Details.
Detail of the dirt that lines the floor.
The dirt embedded in the light boxes has been gathered from specific locations that are of personal significance to me, and the addresses of these places have been embedded in the paper as well. Next to each box is a poem, whose title is the address of the location, and provides context for the significance of the location without being explicit aobut what it is. The light inside each box flickers like a candle, making each feel like a memorial for that memory or place.
Sample poem.
After loosing access to a printing press, I ventured to figure out how to print without a real press during the summer of 2018. My “studio” was a plastic fold out table I covered with a sheet, a large piece of plexi, a broken mirror for ink, and my car as the press.
I designed a jig to hold my plates in place; the front lip is sloped so that the whole jig doesn’t shift when I run over it and the plates were locked in with bits of furniture similar to letterpress printing.
Everything had to be printed wet since I had no real control over how much pressure was applied, printing dry resulted in poorly inked images.
One of the hardest parts was finding the balance between how wet the paper was and how many blankets were between the plate and the tire. Images either didn’t get enough pressure or would show tire tracks.
Eventually the best balance was relatively damp paper that had soaked for about 8-10 min, newsprint, an old pillowcase, the remnants of a quilt, and a folded towel. The towel on top was really important because it absorbed the tire’s treads and did a better job of keeping those marks out of the prints.
Figuring out how many times to run over the plate took time as well. I ended up doing four passes for monotypes and six for collagraphs, but it really varied from print to print. I also set up my plates under my front driver’s side tire because that’s the heaviest part of my car.
Once I moved a plate there was no chance of running over the same print again because it was impossible to line back up with where the treads of the tires had already hit.
The prints to the left are collagraphs and the ones on the right are monotypes. The collagraph to the far left is an example of more prominent tire marks. I eventually stopped doing collagraphs with the car because in order to get the kind of pressure they required I had to either print really damp or use very few blankets, which both result in tire marks.
Detail.
5 3/4” x 3 5/8” x 5/8”
Visitations features letterpress printed text and monotypes executed using my car as a press. Two copies were produced.
This book was the end result of all my experiments with using the car as a press. It explores ideas of loss and the melancholic aftermath of grief. The book progresses from expressive mark making and dark grays to static imagery and muted yellows tones.
Details.
