Laura Widmer
As a trained printmaker, Laura Widmer inhabits an interesting position as a visual artist. Printmaking, and specifically relief printing, combines a technology based in the methodologies of 400AD[25] with a 21st century vernacular; a process both ancient and contemporary that yields works that have an amazing investment of time to produce. Widmer suggests that these technologies are always changing and evolving, and as such, every printmaker must always evaluate the “why” of each method chosen and be involved with the time and the process that incorporates the technologies for the right reasons [26]. Printmaking allows the artist to exhibit work in multiple places at the same time and have a connection to the global printmaking community. Because of this versatile nature of the print media, Widmer is able to quite successfully live away from the cultural centres where the meanings within the visual culture are fabricated and produced.
Widmer states that she is drawn to the tactile, haptic, time-based experience, which all of the printmaking disciplines demand. She has a personal history of making art at home, and this gives her gaze of the everyday a compelling intention. It is obvious that through her discipline of observing and questioning the world around her, her art has changed the way that she lives her life.
Widmer is concerned that many paths and avenues of artistic thought are shut down and ignored, or deemed of no consequence. She suggests that it is a result of our societal obsession with newness. These ideas also intrigue me and I have often wondered about the use of the word cliché as a word of dismissal with regards to critique of visual language. The word itself is borrowed from the French language and was used when type was still handset; the careful making of a reproduction, as in the case of words often used in writing. Widmer suggests that perhaps the importance of clichés is how we connect to a common experience and acknowledges that “this has shut down the pine tree” for everyone but the iconic Tom Thompson[27]. She also feels that the current critical discourse surrounding the visual arts dismisses the traditional gaze found in the genres of still life, portraiture and landscape, and sees that this attitude of manufacturing of privileged practices is lessening the discourse, rather than enriching the conversation.
Widmer states that her relief printing work is an accumulation of information in the thousands of marks that compile an image and this is very evident in her interest in the genre of portraiture. The process of working on a lino-cut print expresses the investment of time in an effort to “know” someone, however futile this act may be at times. Even with the inclusion of a wrong mark, as the reductive method does not allow for a reworking of any mark, can mirror metaphorically the real life aspect of relationships. This process of mark making reflects the constant problem solving and evaluation necessary to produce any of Widmer’s images, given that the size of these prints are often two feet by three feet, or larger. Looking at Widmer’s portraits, I stand before the array of information that is expressed in varying widths of line and find that I am looking at these faces as if I am in conversation with them. I leave knowing something about these people named Dave, Dobar Dan and Phahnsie Knahnsie, and by extension, I know something more about myself. The critical theorist Judith Butler insists that in order to have an account of ourselves, to begin the story of ourselves, we can only do so if there is a “you” to hear us.[28]
Scale is something that does not intimidate Widmer, and one can see this in her large scale lithograph portrait work. As with any printmaking process, one cannot be a personality that is interested in the approximate. However, it is my opinion that lithography holds a particularly demanding attention from the artist. Before one even begins to draw and craft the image on the limestone, the stone drawing surface must be prepared and involves graining, leveling, and washing. And once the drawing is executed, then one must etch the image on the stone. This is a wonderfully complicated process that takes into account a variety of factors regarding the density of the image and the medium used to execute the drawing. One also must not forget the considerable skill required to successfully operate the press that delivers the pressure to the stone which will transfer the image onto the paper, not just once, but identically through all of the layers and editions. Taking all of this into account, I am held in the act of “looking” in front of these lithographic portrait works. Widmer’s use of portraiture is a complicated social negotiation, which, again, reflects our daily lives and the everyday. She must ask permission to do the portrait, and this initial act opens up a relationship between Widmer and her subjects; this opportunity of connecting succeeds in opening up unexpected dialogues and observations that ultimately lead to a very personal expression that investigates the binary relationships which juxtapose the public with the private, the personal with the social.
To articulate her view of the everyday, Widmer also turns to the camera and the screen print process. The photo-montage titled “Sink” has been labeled “housewife art” in a critique session. The image is a montage of twelve photographs of Widmer’s kitchen sink over the course of a day. The ever changing collection of dishes and cutlery reflects the meals delivered throughout the day and is the intersection of the domestic space and the passage of time, as the shift of the natural light of the morning yields to the artificial light of the evening. I would have to wonder if the person who so readily dismissed this image has ever looked after a house day after day, or involved themselves in creating a space for home and family, as being home-less does not grant a position of privilege or knowledge. Another print of a grouping of forks also speaks to Widmer’s aesthetic, and just like aspects of the Buddhist faith, it shows an awareness of the “here and now” in a poetic grey scale. The forks print, titled “Reflections” is a mulit-layered reductive linocut print made from the repeated cutting and printing of a single plate. The plate is destroyed in the process as more and more material is removed from its surface in order to print subsequent layers in increasingly darker tones.
There are aspects of humour at work as well; her choice of Alphagetti to use as text placed on a piece of wonder bread to articulate profound ideas given to us by Shakespeare successfully subverts and juxtaposes hi-tech and low-tech methodologies and the resulting image becomes something new and interesting.
Whichever medium of the printmaking process Widmer chooses, there is a record of each proofed stage. For instance, in the work titled “Dan”, there are nine distinct stages that can stand alone as works of art that have led to the final print that is then editioned. She understands each of these “proof stages” as having the potential to be a new point of departure for a future work. Widmer suggests that this working methodology of combining a laborious process with an image in which she must observe carefully mirrors our human condition; a process that becomes a metaphor for the search for the ultimate meaning of life.[29]
A lithograph titled “The Conqueror Worm” visually expresses her interest in the ideas held in the Edgar Allen Poe poem of the same title. In this image, text from the poem shares the picture plane with two self-portraits that result in an image that exudes melancholia. This is a lithograph, and the first layer of this print is a transfer of a photographic image onto the stone. Then a second layer of handwritten text is added. The print is a bold grey scale that emphasizes the formal design elements found in the composition that underscores Poe’s 1843 work which discusses the inevitability of death; the mimes in the poem are watched by an audience of weeping angels. Widmer states that for her, the poem is a reflection on our mortality and our human condition.[30] The poem speaks to our failure to see beyond ourselves that leads to our ultimately futile repetitive cycles of reaching and striving for things that are unimportant. “Life is such a strange experience because these huge questions about what it’s all about are juxtaposed against the minutiae of our lives (which is why I tend to get agitated in the toothpaste aisle). Art is a magnificently hopeful act against this backdrop.”[31]
A complicated and confounding image titled “Pearls” is a relief print that is a frontal view of a female face up to the nose, draped in many strands of a pearl necklace. It is typical of Widmer’s committed line work which is a process that allows for pauses, reflections, and an opportunity to make changes. It amuses Widmer that pearls, an object of great charm and beauty, begin as an irritant that causes a coating process of concentric layers that reflect a luminescence mirrored in the shell of its creation. Widmer admits her irritation with this work, a frustration with the image. However, as a viewer, I gaze at this work and find the work visually commanding, perhaps because of these issues intrinsically embedded within the image.
As a trained printmaker, Laura Widmer inhabits an interesting position as a visual artist. Printmaking, and specifically relief printing, combines a technology based in the methodologies of 400AD[25] with a 21st century vernacular; a process both ancient and contemporary that yields works that have an amazing investment of time to produce. Widmer suggests that these technologies are always changing and evolving, and as such, every printmaker must always evaluate the “why” of each method chosen and be involved with the time and the process that incorporates the technologies for the right reasons [26]. Printmaking allows the artist to exhibit work in multiple places at the same time and have a connection to the global printmaking community. Because of this versatile nature of the print media, Widmer is able to quite successfully live away from the cultural centres where the meanings within the visual culture are fabricated and produced.
Widmer states that she is drawn to the tactile, haptic, time-based experience, which all of the printmaking disciplines demand. She has a personal history of making art at home, and this gives her gaze of the everyday a compelling intention. It is obvious that through her discipline of observing and questioning the world around her, her art has changed the way that she lives her life.
Widmer is concerned that many paths and avenues of artistic thought are shut down and ignored, or deemed of no consequence. She suggests that it is a result of our societal obsession with newness. These ideas also intrigue me and I have often wondered about the use of the word cliché as a word of dismissal with regards to critique of visual language. The word itself is borrowed from the French language and was used when type was still handset; the careful making of a reproduction, as in the case of words often used in writing. Widmer suggests that perhaps the importance of clichés is how we connect to a common experience and acknowledges that “this has shut down the pine tree” for everyone but the iconic Tom Thompson[27]. She also feels that the current critical discourse surrounding the visual arts dismisses the traditional gaze found in the genres of still life, portraiture and landscape, and sees that this attitude of manufacturing of privileged practices is lessening the discourse, rather than enriching the conversation.
Widmer states that her relief printing work is an accumulation of information in the thousands of marks that compile an image and this is very evident in her interest in the genre of portraiture. The process of working on a lino-cut print expresses the investment of time in an effort to “know” someone, however futile this act may be at times. Even with the inclusion of a wrong mark, as the reductive method does not allow for a reworking of any mark, can mirror metaphorically the real life aspect of relationships. This process of mark making reflects the constant problem solving and evaluation necessary to produce any of Widmer’s images, given that the size of these prints are often two feet by three feet, or larger. Looking at Widmer’s portraits, I stand before the array of information that is expressed in varying widths of line and find that I am looking at these faces as if I am in conversation with them. I leave knowing something about these people named Dave, Dobar Dan and Phahnsie Knahnsie, and by extension, I know something more about myself. The critical theorist Judith Butler insists that in order to have an account of ourselves, to begin the story of ourselves, we can only do so if there is a “you” to hear us.[28]
Scale is something that does not intimidate Widmer, and one can see this in her large scale lithograph portrait work. As with any printmaking process, one cannot be a personality that is interested in the approximate. However, it is my opinion that lithography holds a particularly demanding attention from the artist. Before one even begins to draw and craft the image on the limestone, the stone drawing surface must be prepared and involves graining, leveling, and washing. And once the drawing is executed, then one must etch the image on the stone. This is a wonderfully complicated process that takes into account a variety of factors regarding the density of the image and the medium used to execute the drawing. One also must not forget the considerable skill required to successfully operate the press that delivers the pressure to the stone which will transfer the image onto the paper, not just once, but identically through all of the layers and editions. Taking all of this into account, I am held in the act of “looking” in front of these lithographic portrait works. Widmer’s use of portraiture is a complicated social negotiation, which, again, reflects our daily lives and the everyday. She must ask permission to do the portrait, and this initial act opens up a relationship between Widmer and her subjects; this opportunity of connecting succeeds in opening up unexpected dialogues and observations that ultimately lead to a very personal expression that investigates the binary relationships which juxtapose the public with the private, the personal with the social.
To articulate her view of the everyday, Widmer also turns to the camera and the screen print process. The photo-montage titled “Sink” has been labeled “housewife art” in a critique session. The image is a montage of twelve photographs of Widmer’s kitchen sink over the course of a day. The ever changing collection of dishes and cutlery reflects the meals delivered throughout the day and is the intersection of the domestic space and the passage of time, as the shift of the natural light of the morning yields to the artificial light of the evening. I would have to wonder if the person who so readily dismissed this image has ever looked after a house day after day, or involved themselves in creating a space for home and family, as being home-less does not grant a position of privilege or knowledge. Another print of a grouping of forks also speaks to Widmer’s aesthetic, and just like aspects of the Buddhist faith, it shows an awareness of the “here and now” in a poetic grey scale. The forks print, titled “Reflections” is a mulit-layered reductive linocut print made from the repeated cutting and printing of a single plate. The plate is destroyed in the process as more and more material is removed from its surface in order to print subsequent layers in increasingly darker tones.
There are aspects of humour at work as well; her choice of Alphagetti to use as text placed on a piece of wonder bread to articulate profound ideas given to us by Shakespeare successfully subverts and juxtaposes hi-tech and low-tech methodologies and the resulting image becomes something new and interesting.
Whichever medium of the printmaking process Widmer chooses, there is a record of each proofed stage. For instance, in the work titled “Dan”, there are nine distinct stages that can stand alone as works of art that have led to the final print that is then editioned. She understands each of these “proof stages” as having the potential to be a new point of departure for a future work. Widmer suggests that this working methodology of combining a laborious process with an image in which she must observe carefully mirrors our human condition; a process that becomes a metaphor for the search for the ultimate meaning of life.[29]
A lithograph titled “The Conqueror Worm” visually expresses her interest in the ideas held in the Edgar Allen Poe poem of the same title. In this image, text from the poem shares the picture plane with two self-portraits that result in an image that exudes melancholia. This is a lithograph, and the first layer of this print is a transfer of a photographic image onto the stone. Then a second layer of handwritten text is added. The print is a bold grey scale that emphasizes the formal design elements found in the composition that underscores Poe’s 1843 work which discusses the inevitability of death; the mimes in the poem are watched by an audience of weeping angels. Widmer states that for her, the poem is a reflection on our mortality and our human condition.[30] The poem speaks to our failure to see beyond ourselves that leads to our ultimately futile repetitive cycles of reaching and striving for things that are unimportant. “Life is such a strange experience because these huge questions about what it’s all about are juxtaposed against the minutiae of our lives (which is why I tend to get agitated in the toothpaste aisle). Art is a magnificently hopeful act against this backdrop.”[31]
A complicated and confounding image titled “Pearls” is a relief print that is a frontal view of a female face up to the nose, draped in many strands of a pearl necklace. It is typical of Widmer’s committed line work which is a process that allows for pauses, reflections, and an opportunity to make changes. It amuses Widmer that pearls, an object of great charm and beauty, begin as an irritant that causes a coating process of concentric layers that reflect a luminescence mirrored in the shell of its creation. Widmer admits her irritation with this work, a frustration with the image. However, as a viewer, I gaze at this work and find the work visually commanding, perhaps because of these issues intrinsically embedded within the image.