NOTHANDO digital print
QUEST OF THE MAGI oil ink, cotton paper
JACK AND JILL oil ink, cotton paper
THE SLEEP OF REASON oil ink, cotton paper
NOTHANDO is a digitally rendered image constructed from a 20-year-old photo I shot of Nothando Zulu, Master Storyteller, and original member of The Black Storytellers Alliance (BSA) I was privileged on more than one occasion to see her mesmerize groups of both preschool students and adults with her magic transitional story of the eagle raised as a chicken.
I am often fascinated that photo-engraved plates and prints exist not only as documented moments in time, but also as tangible objects pressed directly from those moments like ‘photo-fossils’.
The printmaking suite on display is a series of three etched and engraved prints using the surface of copper plates. All three were made within 10 years of each other. The thematic element of ‘stairs’ present in each image is totally coincidental.
All compositions are from photos that I shot in the 1980s and 1990s. Photography techniques include computer-assisted an acid-etched images as well as direct scrapping and marking. The plates are surface ‘inked’, covered with paper, and cranked through a printing press. The plate’s physical impression and the visual ‘inked’ impression from the plate both become part of the resulting print image whose surface can be felt as well as seen.
_Bill Jeter