LIZ CHALFIN

TRAVELS

Printmaking is my medium because it is process heavy and gives me unexpected results to respond to. At each point in a process there is an opportunity for creative intervention, and I exploit the way an image transforms through each stage of a process. Often my work begins as a photograph, becomes a drawing, is made into a printing plate, and then is further transformed through inking and printing.

My art making is informed by my travels (near and far, large and small), as much as by technical innovations in the printmaking medium. I work primarily in intaglio – from copper and aluminum plate etching to the more contemporary forms of photopolymer intaglio. I use the structures of prints and artist’s books to create an experience for the viewer that is both intimate and panoramic, and strangely nostalgic.

Malecon, the book, began as a series of graphite drawings of the wall and road that separate Havana, Cuba from the sea. Through a convoluted process involving photography, drawing, digital manipulation, photopolymer etching, hand printing and waxing, the pages of the book emerged. Malecon is about one way I remember the feeling of this place; a place that is often filled with people and sound, and sometimes with emptiness and quietude. A place where sea rise is a palpable inevitability.

I began making Artists’ Books as a way to bring closure to a series of prints and to re-contextualize images from the past. I take a body of prints and reconfigure them into books that re-imagine the subject matter and present it in a new format. Long panoramas become stab-bound books; big prints folded into accordions reveal fragmented scenes; waxed Asian papers become translucent. In this way, I change a narrative and create a new viewing experience.

Liz Chalfin and Sheldon Carroll traveled to Venice, Italy for three weeks in February – March 2020 (sandwiched between Carnivale and Covid 19) as part of an artist-in-residence exchange with the Scuola Internazionale de Grafica. The inspiration for these photo etchings were the faces of the hundreds of keystones, which adorn the bridges and walkways of Venice. These “mascaroni” protect the citizens of Venice from the devil who might rise from the depths of the canals.