Lithograph 12: The 3 Chemo Muses
This was the last class of 2018, the final litho of the year.
In my thesis etchings, I always had 3 angels in the foreground. Here, I was thinking of how I like my friends in 3s also, everywhere, anywhere, anytime I find 3 a good number as the best of any experience.
This here is my 3 different types of chemo and my interpretation of how it needs to kill everything, before it even starts healing. The irony is, how my etching and aquatint thesis in 2000 was about - How you need destroy yourself completely before rebuilding. Naked and skinned is how we begin - the degeneration in rebirth.
The lady with 3 faces represents my hardest chemo yet. Where it affected my brain and I had dissociated nightmares, both waking and sleeping. It made me wonder if truly hell and limbo was what I was experiencing for my sins. The invisible burning skin, the rotting toes, acrid mouth feel, loss of appetite, lost muscle control and vision that would wager between infections and haze of blur. I didn’t know who I was and where I was and didn’t care, I wailed in the shower like a whale. And I cried all conscious time. I was hungry but I hated food - diarrhoea and nausea played chess on my rotting and shedding carcass.
In my thesis etchings, I always had 3 angels in the foreground. Here, I was thinking of how I like my friends in 3s also, everywhere, anywhere, anytime I find 3 a good number as the best of any experience.
This here is my 3 different types of chemo and my interpretation of how it needs to kill everything, before it even starts healing. The irony is, how my etching and aquatint thesis in 2000 was about - How you need destroy yourself completely before rebuilding. Naked and skinned is how we begin - the degeneration in rebirth.
The lady with 3 faces represents my hardest chemo yet. Where it affected my brain and I had dissociated nightmares, both waking and sleeping. It made me wonder if truly hell and limbo was what I was experiencing for my sins. The invisible burning skin, the rotting toes, acrid mouth feel, loss of appetite, lost muscle control and vision that would wager between infections and haze of blur. I didn’t know who I was and where I was and didn’t care, I wailed in the shower like a whale. And I cried all conscious time. I was hungry but I hated food - diarrhoea and nausea played chess on my rotting and shedding carcass.
It was the king of chemo, it was the queen of chemo. It was the chemo of chemos. At the time I created this litho it was 7 down , and only 8 more to go...
This is an experimental stone with some new materials introduced - like permanent markers, pilot markers, direct tusche crayon rubbings, tusche with aguarrás, gum Arabic, and various crayons scrapings.
Experiment: Gum Arabic masking, tusche with aguarrás
Experiment: permanent markers, pilot markers, direct tusche crayon rubbings. Result except for the brand sharpie none of the other brands worked.
Test printed the 3 chemos. 5/7 result :/ As it was super hot and humid, and the ink no matter how much carbodrum you put in would not come to the right consistency. It was super liquid, making it hard to print - so we stopped at 4 test prints.
The sharpie turned out excellent. Marks made by ‘pilot’ washed out completely... bad ink and my over inking killed the tusche.
So, mid process I added in more gum Arabic, more aguarrás, and cleaned up the excess build up, and it saved the stone.
Also, I had two almost fainting spells and basically I am super unhappy with chemo making me Intensely weak. So much to do and zero energy :/ Had watermelon juice and a quick fruit salad to pick up. But it was not enough. I need those adrenaline booster injections to get me through such moments!
The sharpie turned out excellent. Marks made by ‘pilot’ washed out completely... bad ink and my over inking killed the tusche.
So, mid process I added in more gum Arabic, more aguarrás, and cleaned up the excess build up, and it saved the stone.
Also, I had two almost fainting spells and basically I am super unhappy with chemo making me Intensely weak. So much to do and zero energy :/ Had watermelon juice and a quick fruit salad to pick up. But it was not enough. I need those adrenaline booster injections to get me through such moments!
The 3 Chemo Muses
4 Hanehmühle Editions (300gms printing paper)
