The prints I have on display at Main Street Arts are part of a new series called “Imeasurable Blues”.
I create my prints in my studio in the TriMain Building as a resident artist in Buffalo Arts Studio and larger prints in the printshop at the University of Buffalo through a community access program called ePIC ( Experimental Print Imaging Center).
I always work in series. Each series is a conversation. These conversations all seem to have a common thread, to explore and express conflicts and contrasts of the physical and mental aspects of being human – or of the rational and intuitive self. In this current series I have ventured past the border of self to the resonant forces found in nature.
My 10 second statement: “Ideas derived from Biology clash with ideas about Psychology, are mediated by Observation and Experience then completed on an Etching Press”.
The press is an essential tool and partner in creation and involvement in the process of printing is essential to my creative thinking.
The prints in this exhibition are Carborundum and Collagraphic Monprints.
A Carborundum print is made from a calligraphic process in which the image is painted on the plate with carborundum (a gritty abrasive powder) mixed with acrylic medium. Once dried the plate is inked wiped and printed.
The Process of Making a Carborundum Print
A drawing with a liquid acrylic mixed with carborundum in made on a polystyrene (plastic) plate.
This plate has combination of lines made with Carborundum and lines made only with acrylic medium.
Close up of plate:
Once the additions are dry, ink (oil-based etching ink) is rubbed onto the plate and into the textured surface of the carborundum lines until the entire plate is covered with ink.
Excess ink is wiped off with tarlatan (material like starched cheesecloth).
I leave much of the ink on the plate – and the marks in the ink by manually wiping. It is now ready to print.
Dampened paper is placed over inked plate on the press bed.
A rubber blanket is placed over paper to cushion and to allow the paper to mold over the raised lines on the plate.
The print is rolled through the press user pressure.
A print is born!
A print and plate.
Some of my prints like the following are layered pieces – This print has ben made with 2 plates, one printed over the other in a separate run through the press.
This is my thinking and working wall at the studio – I am usually working on several overlapping series at once.
This is the other part of my studio filled with prints. BAS is an open studio space; please feel free to visit.
Though I have lived and worked in Buffalo NY for many years, I am originally from Greenwich NY. I moved to Buffalo to attend college first to study nursing (BS in 1972) then continued on to study and make art (BA Empire Sate College 1981, MFA in painting at UB 1985).
I studied intaglio as a post-graduate and learned traditional printmaking methods. I abandoned these soon to discover through trial and error – simpler materials and more direct, less chemical-mediated ways of working.
My prints are unique, one-of-a-kind, hand-pulled pieces that blend traditions from painting, printmaking and collage. They contain a combination of direct non-chemically-mediated printmaking methods that include my personal spin on collagraphic, carborundum printing and monoprint techniques.
Stop by Main Street Arts to see Kathleen Sherin’s prints in our current exhibition the Upstate New York Printmaking Invitational (runs through October 7).
