Olin College of Engineering
DigitalCommons@Olin
2014 AHS Capstone Projects
AHS Capstone Projects
Spring 2014
The Boundary: Intaglio and Relief Monoprints
with Collage
Irene Hwang
Olin College of Engineering, [email protected]
Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.olin.edu/ahs_capstone_2014
Part of the Art and Design Commons, and the Art Practice Commons
Recommended Citation
Hwang, Irene, "The Boundary: Intaglio and Relief Monoprints with Collage" (2014). 2014 AHS Capstone Projects. Paper 13.
http://digitalcommons.olin.edu/ahs_capstone_2014/13
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the AHS Capstone Projects at DigitalCommons@Olin. It has been accepted for inclusion in
2014 AHS Capstone Projects by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Olin. For more information, please contact
[email protected].
Title: The Boundary
Artist: Irene Hwang
Description: Intaglio and relief monoprints with collage
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
When we see that we are actors in natural cycles, we understand that what nature gives to us is
influenced by what we give to nature. So the circle is a sign of an ecological insight as much as of gift
exchange.
--The Gift by Lewis Hyde
Almost universally, the circle is a symbol of unity, wholeness, and perfection. Looking at the projection
of the home that we call Earth, it is also a circle; it is whole and perfect. To me, nature is perfect because
everything has learned how to live in coexistence and in a way that ensures balance. Change is
inevitable, and Earth has gone through many of them, but the presence of humankind has greatly
expedited and increased the unpredictability of change. Think melting glaciers, increased rate of species
extinction, and more severe weather systems just to name a few. Earth is a circle, but society, which is a
human construction inserted into the natural cycles of the environment, certainly is not. Human
infrastructure and technology development in the last century and a half starting with the Industrial
Revolution coupled with recent explosive population growth have put us on the path towards breaking
the boundaries of the circle – a path with dangerous gifts that are difficult to predict. The impacts of
providing stuff, such as power plants, buildings, cars, and consumer electronics, for so many people
have already resulted in an imbalance in environmental systems like the carbon and nitrogen cycles. The
environmental problems that we are facing are not caused by one factor but rather the accumulation of
many of them.
With this series of sequential prints, I wanted to visually convey the accumulative effects of human
impact on the Earth. I accomplished this by using two distinct processes to represent the two entities.
The copper plate engraving of the circle represents the environment and the planetary boundary in
which we live. The circle image does not change across the prints because the boundary is inflexible, but
the color of the circle, which indicates the state or healthiness of the environment, changes based on
the level of human impact. The copper plate was also allowed to pick up scratches as I worked on it to
reflect natural changes over time. In contrast, the paper overlays represent human impacts. Each
overlay is a contributor to the current unsustainable state of the world; it is not printed onto the paper
directly but rather attached as an addition to the natural environment. Individually, the circle
(environment) can still be seen behind the overlay, but as more and more layers are added, the less can
be seen until there is no space left and the circle cracks, after which it is unknown what happens next.
INCORPORATED TEXT
This is the text that was meant to be incorporated into my final work. These written pieces that I have
collected reflect the meanings and emotions of the printed pieces and will be displayed with them.
Although I was not able to integrate them in the end, I found them to be useful pieces of inspiration
during the semester.
"What is the good of having a nice house without a decent planet to put it on?"
--Henry David Thoreau
“We're in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyones arguing over where they're going to sit”
--David Suzuki
“All I care about, and cherish, is on this one planet.
It is my home, the home of my family and friends, and the home of another 7 billion people. It is also the
home of beautiful forests, mountains, savannahs, oceans, lakes and rivers and of all of the species living
within. Our planet is beautiful, but our planet is also fragile.
We have the ability to save our home, to protect our planet. Not only for our own benefit but, above all,
for generations to come. We have the solutions. Everyone can make a contribution by making better
choices in how we govern, produce and consume. Taking better care of the planet is in our hands.”
-- André Kuipers, Astronaut, European Space Agency
Epitaph on the World by Henry David Thoreau
Here lies the body of this world,
Whose soul alas to hell is hurled.
This golden youth long since was past,
Its silver manhood went as fast,
An iron age drew on at last;
'Tis vain its character to tell,
The several fates which it befell,
What year it died, when 'twill arise,
We only know that here it lies.
Nature by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
As a fond mother, when the day is o'er,
Leads by the hand her little child to bed,
Half willing, half reluctant to be led,
And leave his broken playthings on the floor,
Still gazing at them through the open door,
Nor wholly reassured and comforted
By promises of others in their stead,
Which, though more splendid, may not please him more;
So Nature deals with us, and takes away
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,
Being too full of sleep to understand
How far the unknown transcends the what we know.
[O]ne of ecology’s first lessons was that, beneath all the change in nature, there are steady states
characterized by cycles. Every participant in the cycle literally lives off the others with only the ultimate
energy source, the sun, being transcendent. Widening the study of ecology to include man means to
look at ourselves as a part of nature again, not its lord. When we see that we are actors in natural cycles,
we understand that what nature gives to us is influenced by what we give to nature. So the circle is a
sign of an ecological insight as much as of gift exchange. We come to feel ourselves as one part of a
large self-regulating system…
--The Gift by Lewis Hyde
The circle of gifts enters the cycles of nature and, in so doing, manages not to interrupt them and not to
put man on the outside. The forest’s abundance is in fact a consequence of man’s treating its wealth as
a gift… With a simple give-and-take, the hunters may begin to think of the forest as a place to turn a
profit.
--The Gift by Lewis Hyde
Hyde, Lewis. The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. New York: Vintage, 2007. Print.
INSPIRATION
My original project was the sequential etching of a copper plate, where a single plate would be etched
and printed continuously. The main idea conveyed by that process is that human impact on the natural
world is not reversible – there is no undo button. That is not to say that some negative human impacts,
such as oil spills or deforestation, are not repairable, but they must undergo a long and expensive
process in order to be restored to a similar state. Sequential etching parallels that process. Making a
mistake scratch onto the plate permanently changes it. The scratch can be burnished away, but it’s a
time intensive process and there is no guarantee that the plate will return to the same state as before.
Much of the inspiration for this art process came from Hugh Merrill’s The Lucky Dragon Suite and Torso,
which are both sequential print works. To him, this process was an “act of making and remaking. It
records both the changes in the material and the interaction between [him]self and the subject.” 1 I liked
1
http://www.hughmerrill.com/ld.html
this method of printing because it captured the artistic process, which I think is really important, and
because I felt it represented the changes to the environment in the way that I wanted. But, as I worked
on my prints, I realized I did not want to keep altering the plate. Instead, I became drawn to using
stencils and overlays on the existing image I had of the shaded circle. But like in Torso, I kept the same
shape outline in all of the prints but altered the interior with each step. The resulting prints are still
sequential, but they were not made from sequential etchings.
Merrill, Hugh. The Lucky Dragon Suite. 1985. Hugh Merrill Studio Work. Hugh Merrill. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.
<http://www.hughmerrill.com/ld.html>.
Merrill, Hugh. Torso. 1991. Hugh Merrill Studio Work. Hugh Merrill. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.
<http://www.hughmerrill.com/torso.html>.
GENERAL REFERENCES
These books were used as references for different printmaking techniques. They provided me with a
refresher on techniques since it had been more than half a year since I had last printed as well as
showed me many possibilities that I would have never thought of on my own. Since I wanted to be
exploratory as part of the capstone process, I used techniques and print examples in these books as a
launching point for ideas.
Grabowski, Beth, and Bill Fick. Printmaking: A Complete Guide to Materials and Processes. London:
Laurence King, 2009. Print.
Pogue, Dwight W. Printmaking Revolution: New Advancements in Technology, Safety, and Sustainability.
New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2012. Print.