For several years Robin McCloskey’s work has explored the
manipulated
landscape. Two Bay Area features, the redwood forest and
the Baylands,
have figured prominently in this work. As Robin hikes this
terrain, she
is awestruck to think of its nearly total transformation
in little less
than 200 years. Despite this reshaping, traces of past
inhabitants aren't
hard to discern: places with Spanish names abound, and
exiting the freeway
at Ashby in Berkeley, she passes Shellmound Street, a site
for more than
1,000 years of a Native American settlement.
Robin tries to imagine previous inhabitants standing where
she does,
looking at the places that have become familiar to her,
fascinated with
the idea that the land on which we now live and work
harbors secrets from
those long gone. Remnants from this past, entombed beneath
our feet, mirror
the personal memories and secrets buried in the mind and
heart.
Robin is currently at work on a series of prints, which
explore this
idea of landscape and memory. Specifically, the landscapes
include both
a typical view and its imagined underground aspect. The
work begins with
the building of a sculpture, composed primarily of soil,
to represent the
underground portion. Embedded in the dirt and mud are
everyday objects,
that anyone might have owned and used. Some of these may
have personal
significance, having once belonged to family members,
though they are objects
much too ordinary to be considered heirlooms.
The structures are photographed and digitized, combined
with the more
prosaic landscape photo, and manipulated in Photoshop to
create the sense
of seeing above ground and below. The computer montage is
output as film
and exposed on to a plate to create a photo-etching. The
photo imagery
is augmented with traditional printmaking, drawing or
monotype, to add
color and a handmade mark. Working in this manner allows
Robin to layer
the present with the past, and the experimental with the
traditional, in
terms of both content and technique.
Demonstration: Digital Chine-Collé
(Friday
afternoon)
