Night Dreams© 1998. Linda C Everson28″h x 20″w framed

A CLUSTER is a group of similar things or people positioned or occurring closely together. My solarplate print Night Dreams, is currently in an invitational show, CLUSTER, at IceCube Gallery in Denver.

My dreams tend to have clusters of images, ideas, fears, or emotions [...]]]>

Night Dreams
© 1998. Linda C Everson
28″h x 20″w framed

A CLUSTER is a group of similar things or people positioned or occurring closely together. My solarplate print Night Dreams, is currently in an invitational show, CLUSTER, at IceCube Gallery in Denver.

My dreams tend to have clusters of images, ideas, fears, or emotions that keep repeating themselves over and over. And I may have these dreams multiple times… sometimes months or years later. These are called “repetition dreams”. I quite often dream of flying, floating, or falling and I can’t ever stop that process.

In my print, Night Dreams, I included many small figures; some floating, some standing. The figures cluster, swirl, and lurk on top of and around the goddess faces. The multiple faces create a multi-tiered level of mystery. Sigmund Freud said that “dreams are the window to the sub-conscious”.

Bertil Vallien, who’s famous for his sandcasted glass sculptures, often included small floating figures in his vast boat and torso sculptures. His beautiful artwork influenced my own use of floating figures and also the use of vibrant color, transparency, and multiple layers of imagery.

A SOLARPLATE is a steel backed POLYMER PLATE that is light sensitive. Transparencies can be exposed unto the plates by sunlight or UV light boxes. In the Goddess series, I used Kodalith transparencies of photos of goddess faces which I spliced together after printing them in the darkroom. I drew the floating figures onto these transparencies with a opaque pen. After exposure, the solarplate was etched in water which dissolved the unexposed areas, creating textures in the plate.

To create the multiple “flat” background colors (greens, ochres, rust, tan) I made acetate cutouts (like a puzzle) which were rolled with the etching ink and then printed on paper on an etching press. Dark brown and ochre inks were then wiped onto the textured solarplate, and that was printed on top of the flat colors. This required tedious registration and many runs through the etching press to create all the layers of color.

Several years ago, I did a whole series of solarplate prints called the Goddess Series and another called the Torso Series, all based on Greek and Roman sculptures and reliefs which I photographed. In many of those prints, I included small floating figures that swirled through the larger figurative images and/or backgrounds. Some other Goddess and Torso prints that are not in the Exhibit and also are not on my website are depicted below. Please see my CONTACT PAGE is you’re interested in more information.

Mirror Image
© 2002. Linda C Everson
18″h x 11″w image size

Paper Doll Torsos
©2001. Linda C Everson
10″h x 25″w image size

Enchantment of the Trees and Forest
© 1997. Linda C Everson
11″h x 24″w image size

I spent the evening observing and photographing this beautiful sight in an open space from just blocks my home. What I observed [...]]]>

I spent the evening observing and photographing this beautiful sight in an open space from just blocks my home. What I observed was the penumbra, or shadow of earth slowly moving across the moon.  The moon got dark and then reddish. Because the sunlight acts like a prism and only the red light is bent into the shadow on the moon, we get the reddish hues. The sunrises and sunsets are reflected onto the the moon’s surface.

The moon is called a “supermoon” because it’s closes to Earth (perigee) and it appears larger in diameter. “Supermoons” occur 4-6 times a year,

There are 3 types of lunar eclipses: Total, partial and penumbral. The lunar eclipse happens during a FULL MOON. Because the moon’s orbit is slightly inclined to Earth, most full moons are not aligned properly, and so we don’t get an eclipse during our monthly full moons. Lunar eclipses happen about twice a year, but they are not TOTAL, not always at night, which this one was. They say that we’ll not see another TOTAL lunar eclipse until 2033. There have been only five since 1900.

October 8, 2014 was the second of the tetrad of Blood Moons. The first Blood Moon happened April 15, 2014, the third was April 4, 2015, and the final was Sept 27, 2015.

I created several Arborglyph solarplate monoprints inspired by the various supermoons. Image sizes are 6″x 6″.  Some people claim “magic” happens during these special occurrences. The imagery in these monoprints has a mysterious, magical quality. Is it a bird, a plane, a helicopter, or a creature floating near the moon? 

Arborglyph (1 symbol 34) Blood Moon
© 2014. Linda C Everson SOLD

Arborglyph (1 symbol 34) Blue Moon.
© 2014 Linda C Everson

A Blue Moon is the second full moon in a solar calendar month. The moon really isn’t blue, but you often hear the phrase “Once in a Blue Moon”, indicating something that rarely happens. Even more rare is a real blue moon when atmospheric conditions such as smoke and dust from fires or volcanoes give the moon a bluish hue. 

MANDALA comes from Sanskrit meaning “CIRCLE“. It is often a spiritual or ritual symbol commonly associated with Hinduism and Buddhism, but in western culture the CIRCLE motif or MANDALA was popularized by Carl Jung. In Jungian psychology the MANDALA can represent the unconscious self and one’s effort to reunify the “Self” and direct one’s [...]]]>

MANDALA comes from Sanskrit meaning “CIRCLE“. It is often a spiritual or ritual symbol commonly associated with Hinduism and Buddhism, but in western culture the CIRCLE motif or MANDALA was popularized by Carl Jung. In Jungian psychology the MANDALA can represent the unconscious self and one’s effort to reunify the “Self” and direct one’s focus in meditation.

The MANDALA shape also often represents the universe or cosmos, with the outer circle sometimes representing wisdom. According to The Berzin Archives, there are FOUR levels of offering: an outer offering, inner offering, secret offering, and offering of the nature of reality. Berzin also says that some mandalas are NOT round, but can be bowls, palaces, etc…

The mandala is significant in many cultures and religions and often a theme in artwork. Currently, three of my mandalas are being shown in the “Spirituality of the Mandala: Reality in the Round” show at Nails in The Wall Gallery St. Lukes in Metuchen, NJ.

My mandala series, “Little Men and the Inner Circle”, is a symbiosis of primitive figures drawn by my children and my photographs of petroglyphs we visited while hiking in the American west. FOUR is a common element in mandalas and my FOUR primitive figures are filled with various petroglyph symbols of man in his environment. There is a sense of self reflection, wonder, timelessness, centering, spiritual energy and the swirling universe in the artwork. The OUTER CIRCLE in my mandalas supports the INNER CIRCLE of humanity.

My art process involved using my children’s FOUR primative images into which I collaged photographic film positives of rocks, petroglyphs, and other textures. These FOUR transparent primative images were exposed onto zinc plates, etched, and then cut into shapes. The figures were used in ALL of my seven mandala monoprints; each printed with different themes, colors and background imagery.

To create the different backgrounds, I used other printmaking techniques such as relief roll, collagraph, painting on plexi, and embossment. All were inked and printed on paper on an etching press.

You can see more primitive monoprints on my website in the Family Album Hieroglyphics series with includes the Little Men and the Inner Circle mandalas.

A symbiosis [...]]]>

A symbiosis of two art forms was the basis for the “Family Album Hieroglyphic” series – my children’s “stick figures” and my photographs. When my children were young, our family took many trips in Colorado and Utah. We hiked through the canyon lands and visited many unusual rock formations, cliff dwellings, pueblos, petroglyphs and pictographs.

At the time, there was a direct relationship between the primitive “stick figures” my children had drawn and the petroglyphs and western landscapes I was photographing. I combined the two art forms and exposed them on to zinc plates which I etched, inked, and printed on paper on an etching press. That was the creation of this intaglio print series “Family Album Hieroglyphics”.

The intense emotions evoked in my children’s “stick figures” validated many family and cultural issues that are commonplace to everyone. Fears, friendship, loneliness, ethnic and gender issues, strife, pets, holidays, sports, and celestial configurations were captured in their simple, yet complex renderings. By combining my children’s primitive “stick figures” and my photographic backgrounds, I created art images that tell multiple stories with a sense of depth and compassion. The “Family Album Hieroglyphic” intaglio prints ALL tell stories and recollect emotions that we can relate to.

“Man, Full With His Memories” brings back recollections of both friends and foe, happiness and hostility. A faceless tree-like figure is imprisoned by hand holding pairs of smiling figures in “Mr. Lonetree Stands Alone”. This print depicts alienation, loneliness, and the need for relationships. “Women, They’re All the Same…” is a common, but inaccurate statement. Although a satirical art piece, my child’s rendition of women’s hairdo’s is humorous. Are women really so robotic in nature?  “Jack Be Nimble…” is spoof on the well known rhyme and Halloween spooks. “Indian Memories” is as haunting as Edward Munch’s “The Scream”, which is one of my favorite works of art and depicts intense human emotion. “Man’s Best Friend, Or Is It?” tells about our preoccupation with our favorite pet, the dog.

I’m fascinated with many other primitive art forms and enchanted by the symbolism and story telling involved. I’ve visited many “prehistoric” or Upper Paleolithic caves such as Lascaux in France and Cueva de la Pileta in Spain. The stories about the discovery of these caves is remarkable too! In Lascaux, the sophistication of the so called “prehistoric artists” is exemplified by the overlapping of animals, use of perspective, and blending of colors. Egyptian hieroglyphics in later centuries was a formal pictorial writing system that also influenced my art.

Stories We Tell is a common theme in artwork throughout the ages!

LAYERING was a common theme in many of my favorite prints in the show.

I loved [...]]]>

I just saw a wonderful exhibit – Women’s Work: Contemporary Women Printmakers from the collection of Jordan Schnitzer and his family foundation at IDEA Space, Colorado College in Colorado Springs. The exhibit included 56 /5000 prints from the collection.

LAYERING was a common theme in many of my favorite prints in the show.

I loved Helen Frankenthaller’s huge abstract woodcut, Madame Butterfly (2000), with 46 woodblocks used to create the artwork. Although she’s more known for her color field paintings, I love Frankenthaller’s woodcuts even more. Similar to her fluid transparent use of paint with canvas showing through; in this woodcut, transparent inks reveal the surface texture of the woodblocks underneath. She used her ‘guzzying’ technique, which involved using dental tools and sandpaper to raise the texture of the wood for better printing. Lovely layering!

In Sherrie Wolf’s Artemisia Suite prints, still life fruit images were layered on top of old copies of Artemisia Gentileschi’s 17th century paintings of women. Her oppositional use of old and new artwork, and the swirling figures versus the static fruit was intriguing. Sherrie Wolf commented on her artwork,

“Art stretches us by being several things at once. It can be a ripe fruit ready to fall off the canvas onto the floor, but also, when viewed up close a collection of brushstrokes on a flat surface.”

As a photographer/printmaker, I liked Hung Liu’s lithographs that were based on old Chinese photos. “My prints are metaphors for memory and history.” she said. The photos became more subjective and reinterpreted with her painterly style of Abstract Expressionism. Also, the layering of landscape imagery such as wildflowers and birds in Hung Liu’s added another dimension of symbolism of Chinese women. Ironically, in China everything had to be “official“, and hence Liu “broke the rules” in her Unofficial Portrait series. Her past history of the Cultural Revolution, her art training in dogmatic China, and her present status as an American art professor, show the dual nature of her images and style. The layering of multiple themes of womenhood, culture, and aesthetics are implicit in her “portraits”. “Printmaking is about layers”, Hung Liu explains on page 5 of Painterly Proofs: Prints by Hung Liu.

It was great to see an exhibit of some of our best contemporary women printmakers! What I thoroughly enjoyed was that the artists used many conventional printing methods in a contemporary manner, and there weren’t any monotypes in the show.