Email marciawilson@earthlink.net
MARCIA SANDMEYER WILSON ETCHINGS Here it is June 2009 and I have not written on this page for about ten years or more! It's been so long since I've done etchings that now I'm only answering questions from people who have bought them at yard sales or thrift shops! Here's a reply I just made to somebody who bought an etching called "grandma's last vacation." Thought I'd share my process with you, and hopefully I'll locate a photograph of that print to post along with this explanation, since this technique is different from the methods I described below. Also, please forgive my lack of punctuation. On email, i'm very sloppy. That's the joy of it.
hi
ok i'm at my computer now not my cell phone so i can reply at more depth about "grandma's last vacation".
that etching is made on a magnesium plate.
i like to use free things for artwork, or next to free.
back in the 80's and early 90's printers still used magnesium plates for advertising stuff...i dunno what,
but i could look in the yellow pages for printers and ask if they had scraps of magnesium plates for sale
and i'd pay them like ten bucks for a stack of plates.....
after a while i got wise and asked them to cut them for me first, to a relatively square size.
magnesium dust is incredibly flammable they say....or at least if it burns it cant be put out by water; you have to smother it...
so maybe thats why printers switched to polymer plates.
but then, i used photosensitive plates that had pink emulsion on one side and green paint on the other. i ignored the photosensitive part, just used that emulsion as a resist, to resist acid.
you have to cover all sides of metal plates when immersing in acid.
the pink side of each magnesium plate gave a very FAT line, meaning the acid ate thru it quicker. the green paint side gave a thinner line, meaning the acid ate thru that side more slowly.
being frugal, i got the idea of scratching thru BOTH sides at the same time. after all, i got only one shot at the acid. there was no way to make a correction.
not like using copper, brass or zinc plates in acid.
so i would take a plate, always an odd size since they were scraps not intended to be used the way i did, and i would scratch a design on both sides, usually.
then i would use shellac to paint the sides and any flaws (scratches on the plate already; they were never perfect).
i had tried other substances to paint over scratches, but they never worked. shellac was best. of course to remove it, i had to use alcohol.
then i would go to the back yard OR used my stovetop with the vent fan roaring, with a pan of water nearby, and immerse the plate in nitric acid while holding my breath. this took a very short amount of time, haha.
i would watch carefully because it all depended on the strength of the acid which gets weaker over time, and i never thru my acid away, just kept using it over and over until it died.
i used a tupperware kind of plastic covered box to store the acid, and leave the top off the box or just cover it briefly while biting the plate.
i would wait til the acid kind of boiled around the edges of the plate, because magnesium makes the nitric go CRAZY...and kind of brown smoke would curl up from the open parts of metal. I never left it in long enuf to find out whether it exploded or burned or whatever if i had not removed the plate,
i'd reach in with a rubber gloved hand and pull out the smoking plate (feeling very warm) and plunge it into cold water. end of biting process.
the lines bitten would vary from one side of the plate to the other. odd, huh. the acid would be hotter on one side than the other.
nowadays it's just too much of a drag to find nitric acid..... and a real pain to store it.
i have a plastic trunk under my back deck where i keep all my old acid. i wonder how it is after 10 yrs or so.
so that's how i made the plate, which i printed on my etching press, after rubbing thick etching ink into the lines and wiping off the top surface. that's called intaglio printing.
i should post this on my website. think i will. too bad i dont have a photo handy of the image. can you email one to me plz?? otherwise i'll have to dig around for the plate and try and make another print. or, i could post photos of DIFFERENT plates made on magnesium plates i suppose. well, we'll see.
now for the design and its meaning. like i said i work on BOTH sides of the plate, usually.
second fact, i do my best work while talking on the phone. cant have people in the house cause i live in squalor and also they might ask for something like a drink of hot tea and i'd have to get up. on the phone i can work in peace and hang up when i'm finished with the artwork whatever it is. of course i have to have friends or relatives who like to talk, and fortunately, i have some of those. plus, i like to talk myself! although,btw, if i'm not working on art, i hate to talk on the phone. go figure.
ok. so while talking on the phone i saw i think it was an advertisement in a newspaper and also a photograph. it was probably lying on the kitchen table right in front of me while i talked on the phone. there's always a pile of junk on my kitchen table.
the woman (granny) was a photo i think, and the tiger with the sign was part of maybe an advertisement for a restaurant or something. i'd have to see the print to know which i did first. but while talking on the phone i'm sure i doodled the way you do a telephone doodle on a scratch pad only in my case i had to finish this plate so i doodled on the back side, that entire image.Ý oh. if granny is in the rectangle the tiger is holding which i think it is, yes. then i did the tiger and the sign first, and filled in granny later, from a photo also in the magazine or newspaper, whatever was lying on my table, haha.
the title came later. i'd bring the etching to art shows in my bin of loose etchings, and if somebody was interested in buying it, i'd ask him or her what to call it.
somebody said granny's last vacation and so that's what i called it.
i never sold many copies. maybe 10 or fewer of that image.
i dont remember but i probably did it in the early 90's.
you say it's b/w not colored. i used to hand color my etchings w watercolors but as time went on i lost energy. it happens when you get old and fat hahaha, so i started selling them unmatted from my bin as is, with no hand coloring.
now i dont have time to make etchings, let alone hand color them. i take a nap after every meal! and i eat lots of meals during the day!
so that's the story of your etching!
marcia
the etchings below are done in a different manner, i think.
Here are some of my most recent etchings, done in the fall of 2000. They are very tiny, measuring only about one or two inches on each side.
The subjects of these etchings are "Sisters" (sometimes called "friends") on the left,
"Jumprope"next, and then "The Tooth Fairy," and "Punishment."
I came up with the idea of sisters while talking on the phone to my friend (a fine jeweler)
Ann Davis. I seem to do my best thinking in doodles while talking with her.
Jumprope is a "copy" of one of my oil painting subjects. It stems from a self portrait
of myself at age 5 with the two dogs I own now.. and represents my happy present state of
life, now that my hormones are gone.
The Tooth Fairy is another copy of an oil painting theme of mine...actually, I first made
the tooth fairy as an etching in 1977, but it is a very large etching... and now I prefer
to work small. It's so much easier to transport small work to shows and I don't have to
listen to people saying they don't have a place to hang it.
Punishment is a subject that occurred to me while leafing through a book on collage. I
passed a collage by that title and went on to make a painting of it at an art show later
in the day (without consulting the book). Of course my painting was very different from
the collage... I sold the painting so I made this little etching to remember it.
I usually watercolor my etchings when they are finished to give them a more irresistible
quality. When I used to make only black and white etchings for art shows,
another etcher told me, "put a little color
on them and watch them fly right out of the bins." He was right. Ever since then I have
watercolored my etchings, resisting the trend of other artists to sell reproductions,
which are so much easier to make! I never seem to paint an etching the same way twice.
Here are the same four etchings, with some watercolor added.
The photo of me watercoloring a larger etching was taken at the Roycroft craft show in East Aurora NY in 1999. I'll scan a few colored etchings onto this web page so you can see the difference between b/w and watercolored ones.
I love to work small, (which is silly, considering the fact that my eyesight is getting less sharp every year) so I had my boyfriend cut up some copper into little pieces. I have etched these plates in the "open bite" method, which I learned about 11 years ago from a Russian printmaker named Sergi at Rutgers Center for Innovative Printmaking in NJ.
The technique consists of blocking out my main images with a "resist" which means painting a black tarry substance called "hard ground" onto the plate with a brush in the most generalized terms. Then I put the plate into a type of "acid" (actually it's a "salt") called ferric chloride, and the mordant (which means anything that bites) bites away the part of the plate that is not protected by resist.
I do this about seven times, each time blocking out more and more of the plate..... often
removing all of the previous resist and starting all over again.
Sometimes I draw lines through the resist, and get the little features or dress patterns.
Sometimes I make patterns such as the rug with blots of resist...
Here are some more of my new etchings, some colored, some still black and white. Two are very tiny indeed, only one inch wide. they are made on little pieces of copper. The smaller the plate, the more free I feel with my subject matter.
The left etching is called "Staying Together" and represents me and my boyfriend. I am guessing that the reason why he remains a bachelor is because he fears married life would make him feel like a dog on a leash.
The next etching is called "Bad Dog" and represents the many dogs I have had who soiled my living room rug.
After that comes "Home" showing my memory of the many fights I used to have with my ex husband when my children were young. (But if I had waited to grow up until I had children, I would have been in my 60's, so I guess there's no use regretting the past.)
The clothesline etching is called "Housewife" and is another version of one I made almost twenty years ago, of a woman hanging out to dry. That image just jumped into my subconscious one day and I grabbed it and turned into a popular etching.
The etching on the right is a woman on a swing over two cows in a pasture. I was talking
on the telephone
to my friend Ann when I started this etching, intending to place some clowns underneath
the woman in the swing. "I like cows instead," she said, so there they are.
Here are still more of my new little tiny etchings. I have a LOT of them, so I won't have time to show all of them.
On the left is a woman selling her soul to the devil. It is a copy of an oil painting that I have shown lower down on my web page. If you're wondering how I get such great colors in watercolor, it's because my friends recommended some fiercely expensive watercolors made by "Schmincke". They cost over $200 a box but I think they're worth it.
Next is an etching called "It's Over," showing a fat lady singing. Once again, I started this etching while talking on the phone to my friend Ann. "What should I do next?" I asked her, and she said, "Make an etching of a fat lady singing and call it, 'It's Over!'." Brilliant woman, my friend Ann.
After I finished that etching, I phoned Ann to tell her what a great success it was. "Did you etch her in her full regalia?" she asked. Whoops. Right away the image of one of those women dressed up like a valkyrie in a Wagner opera came to mind, so I made this second version of the same idea, "It's Over!"
Red Riding Hood is a favorite theme of mine, so I could not resist doing a little version on a tiny piece of copper.
"We Three" represents me (the youngest), my sister and my mother waiting for the bus to go
Christmas shopping at Altmans Department Store
in New York City during World War II. We would eat in the Charleston Gardens.
I was allowed to select a present for
myself for $10 and I always selected a beautiful doll.
The etching on the left depicts my friend Ann, the one who gives me such good ideas over the telephone. I copied a sketch from one of my sketchbooks. When I go out for breakfast with my friends I always sketch them and my friends find the results very disappointing.
The Annunciation is the last remnant of my course in Italian Painting in college. It used to be my favorite theme when I had hormones, but now that I am a grandmother, I'm much more interested in other subjects.
The Sunbather is my contribution to memories of summer, even though I have not dared
to put on a bathing suit for the past fifteen years.
My newest etchings are made with the "sugar lift" method. This cat was drawn on
a brass plate, using a mixture of sugar with a little water and a drop of detergent.
It was kind of like drawing with pancake syrup.
The idea is to draw with something that is water soluble, and the soap makes it "stick"
to the brass. When the sugar is dry, I paint the plate with hard ground, that is
not soluble in water. When the hard ground is dry, I soak
the plate in warm water and gently rub the sugar parts with my fingers until it lifts off, revealing
lines of metal that can be bitten in ferric chlorite solution.
This makes a nice velvety half tone when the plate is printed on paper. The background
is made with "soft ground" and real lace. The cat is my cat, Vincent, taking a nap on
the kitchen table while i sat and sketched her.
She was named for her broken ear, after Vincent van Gogh.
My other new etchings
are about my grandparents and religion. I made these etchings
after being invited to a surprise birthday party for a religious artist friend of mine.
I thought she might like a home made book about religion. Since I am not at all religious
myself, I used for inspiration
my four grandparents who were all devout Methodists except for one Presbyterian (Granny).
I never got the book finished in
time for the birthday party but I enjoyed working on the images anyhow. My only "rule"
was that I not refresh my memory with any photographs;
I just concentrated on imagining myself back in the places I remembered.
This one is of my maternal grandmother nee Vena Gibson about 1949 in Clarks Summit Pa., listening to her favorite religious radio station. The Sunday morning program had theme music which was "Heavenly Sunshine." The picture on the wall is my memory of an engraving called "The Dying Stag," which I am told represented the crucifixion.
These are my first attempts at photo etching, using non toxic emulsion called Imagon
from Dupont that comes in 10 foot rolls.
I pressed it onto a copper plate in a darkroom and exposed the plate with a light box
vacuum-pump combination. This new technique means that now I can now make etchings from
pages in my sketch book.
I got enthusiastic about detailed drawings while reading the new
R. Crumb Coffee Table art book. He said that he spends a lot of time cross hatching
his images, and that was just the information I needed to give myself "permission" to take my
time instead of trying to knock out things in ten minutes.
Now I spend a week drawing an image if I like; what luxury!
I learned this photoetching technique at the Art Center of Northern NJ in New Milford from Sylvie Germain-Covey who also teaches at the Art Students League, the Manhattan Graphics Center in NYC, an the Newark Museum Arts Workshop. I like to take a printmaking class whenever I find a good teacher who lets me do my own thing because that way I know I am going to keep making new images, with new techniques.
My maternal grandfather Harry Clark Hubler was
the sweetest man
you could imagine. My memory of him is saying prayers at the dinner table. He thanked
the Lord for his children and grandchildren and for bringing his family together. That
left a lasting impression on me since nobody had ever thanked the almighty for me before.
This grandfather loved animals of any kind and his cocker spaniel was no exception.
My grandfather's religious principles were costly. He was an attorney who refused to
handle any divorce cases (since he did not believe in divorce) and he also refused to
defend any person whom he did not believe was completely innocent. He died
a poor man, financially speaking.
Christmas 1942 is the name of this etching, which
I made in December 1999. It shows my father leaving for the office (years later we realized he was really
going to his second household in the city), and my mother looking depressed because all she got was
a ball point pen from him for Christmas. I gave her a pair of plastic button earrings that cost me
a nickle at Woolworths. I am thrilled to receive a new doll and my sister loves her new roller skates.
My bull terrier Betsy is always happy to be near my mother.
This is a photo etching. I used a pen and ink drawing from my sketchbook, first xeroxing it 78% size onto a transparency (courtesy of Staples office supply store that has a nice xerox machine), then going into a darkroom to first press photosensitive emulsion onto a copper etching plate using Dupont's Imagon or Riston which is emulsion sandwiched between two sheets of clear plastic. Secondly, I expose the plate to light using a lightbox, and last I develop the emulsion with a solution of soda ash and water. Then I bite the plate with ferric chloride and print it intaglio (meaning ink in the lines as opposed to a top roll) with black etching ink.
I made this etching nice and dark because I was feeling a little cranky when I drew it. And I remembered that my mother had just come home from the hospital after having had a miscarriage that year. No wonder she was depressed.
There is a Santa Claus handkerchief hanging on the wall on the left side of the etching. This
came from my Grandfather who used to hang it on the wall every Thanksgiving and say "This is the
start of the Christmas season." The handkerchief had a date on it of about 1875 which I guess is
when that poem of the Night before Christmas was written.
Etchings of People on the Beach inspired by Reginald Marsh
photos from the late 1930's, around the time I was born. I etched these on
magnesium with nitric acid and printed them on paper. I will hand color
them with watercolors. They are part of a series of beach scenes I made in
March, 1997.
By the way, an explanation of how I made etching plates with magnesium and nitric acid is at the top of this page. This is a perfect example of a plate made that way, only this etching has been handcolored with watercolors. I colored each etching individually and used the best watercolors I could get. I did all my work at craft shows which meant I was very busy all day long. When I started devoting my time to oil paintings, I gave up etchings because (a) i worked on oils, not etchings at shows and (b) at least with oils I am doing something new. Watercoloring etchings is fun only the first few times; after that it gets repetitive.
I Love My Sister is the title of this little etching, made in 1983 on a
magnesium plate etched with nitric acid. It is based on a snapshot I took
of my granddaughters in Hawaii in 1988. It is handcolored with
watercolors. This is one of my most popular etchings.
My Mother as Queenis the title of this etching, made in January of 1990.
I had made many
images of Queen Elizabeth I before I realized I was really thinking of her
as my mother, a person I looked up to but who had quite a temper and who
had to be obeyed. The two pug dogs represent the kind of people my mother
liked to have around her I guess. They could represent my sister and me,
but one of the pugs is a male. I used to own a male and female pug so
maybe that is it. When I do art work I don't always know what I am doing
until after the image is finished. This etching plate is made of brass and
it was etched with nitric acid.
Growing Up Neurotic is the way I
remember my relationship to my family. My father was never home, I was
often in trouble with my mother and my sister, and I comforted myself with
stuffed dolls, later replaced by food.
Tying the Knot is one way to look upon marriage. Sometimes I try and imagine what my
bachelor boyfriend thinks of the institution, and this leads to a lot of
fictional etchings which I will scan in from time to time. This etching
was made 6 years ago, after we'd been together only eight years.
There is still hope that the boyfriend will marry me-- as I recall,
he said he will do it as soon as he loses his hearing, his mind, or
when hell freezes over. So there are three opportunities for this
to happen.
In Pursuit of the Elusive Bachelor is an etching I made of me chasing the boyfriend who has never yet "popped the question." He says three husbands are enough for any woman.
This etching was made using nitric acid on a magnesium plate, printed on rag paper and watercolored.
When I make "mistakes" on magnesium I have no way of correcting them, so there is usually quite a bit of "falsebite" or little scratches in the etching. Still, I like that metal for etching because it's quick and easy to work with. I generally scratch a drawing on both sides of the plate so the acid bites them both at once and usually I get at least one decent image out of it.
Going Down for the Last Time is an etching I made in memory of my mother. Her last wish was that I not be told of her illness or death so my sister and stepfather kept this secret from me for 31 days. I found out on November 12, 1991 when I called my sister in Kansas to wish her a happy birthday. I figure anyone who can carry a grudge to the grave deserves to have an etching in her honor.
Since I can only bite a magnesium plate once, I
added the texture in the sky using a little electric engraving tool-- the
kind you would use to write your kids' names on their bicycles.