
February – the gray month. The month of love. The month of monumental loss. A month of endurance until the spring comes.
This image has been unfinished for at least 4 years. It is reductive so there isn’t an undo button if you screw up. It began as a lino cut – and I printed it with too dark. I was in a hurry, anxious to finish, almost there – almost – and the reality hit – too, too dark a value for the image to make any sense.
Image redone – printing along, aware of the value of my inks – about half way through the edition and the layers of ink – and Bitchzilla – (the press) decided to slip. It is a Dickerson style of press. Although all of my press experience helped, it didn’t set things right and the edition died.
The printed image laid fallow – next to its stillborn twin (the one where the press slipped) in the flat file.
2 Winters came and went.
I returned. I do have the tenacity of a Terrier. This time on wood. This time on my press (Little John). This time, with time. With a resolve to honor a memory. After all, that’s a large part of the image; the memory of that which I lost, misplaced, was taken or abandoned, cared for by the crows.
So, the memories are protected by those sentries, the crows: the string “too short to save”, the missing mending, the lost and broken rosary, the gear wheel that kept things going.
And it is done and the print has been named, Sentries.
Tomorrow it heads to a national exhibit of work focusing on Fairy Tales –
ONCE UPON A TIME:
Fairy Tales, Fables and Myths,
March 24 – April 16, 2016
At The Arts Council Fayetteville/Cumberland County
Fayetteville, North Carolina
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