Marking Time
Marking Time is a series of prints that involved a posthumous "collaboration" with my mother in which I integrated her date book entries with images and text based on her life. The elusiveness of "the other" becomes apparent when comparing different prints from the series. The variety of images conveys the complex multiple identities that make up an individual. References to teaching, parenting, theater, science, health, literature (primarily Shakespeare), alchemy, music, and religion offer glimpses of a life but no clear definition. The record of the minutiae that make up our lives conveys the core of who we are and what we care about. The regularly repeating calendar grid in these prints unifies the disparate images used.
In these prints I also examine the role calendars play in shaping our shared experience of time. The calendar serves as the site that marks significant public and private events. The mass-produced, printed information found on a calendar signifies cultural significance. Handwritten additions, on the other hand, convey private importance. Calendars function as a record of public and private responsibilities and cultural and individual values. Calendars have the ability to reveal the political, religious, and economic forces that control our lives. They also serve to connect each individual household to the larger social whole (or reveal a lack of connection). Calendars foster cohesiveness and community and also reveal the subculture of their owners.
Color trial proofing is the preliminary process I used for each edition in Marking Time. This involved printing several color variations of each print run to determine the most successful color combination. The edition was based on the most successful proof. Rather than throw the color proofs away, I began to add additional elements to those discarded proofs during later color trial proofing sessions. Since all the prints in Marking Time were the same format; had a similar grid-like structure; and included similar elements such as the calendar and text; they could be recombined successfully. The resulting Marking Time mono prints evolved in a spontaneous manner. The printing sessions became an avenue to explore unexpected directions.