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Artworks
Heather Lee Birdsong
Absit Omen, 2012two-plate, two-color intaglio etching on Hahnemuhle paper12 x 8 7/8 inches (plate size, as shown)
22 x 15 1/2 inches (paper size)Edition 1 of 1 (1st state) TPThis is the only artwork I've ever dreamed into being: in my dream, I had completed the crow-head border and was working out a sketch for the central image. Whenever...This is the only artwork I've ever dreamed into being: in my dream, I had completed the crow-head border and was working out a sketch for the central image. Whenever I have a vivid dream, it is always intensely and minutely visual. Crows, when they appear, often do so as messengers (once as my father, who died when I was very young) and markers of moving from one place to the next, in the magical and seamless way that one travels in dreamland. I was reading darkly comic Slavic folk tales and regularly hiking past the so-called Witch's Castle in Forest Park, which no doubt inspired my subconscious. As in the dream, I created the crow head plate first, and the central drawing on a separate plate of the same size. This allowed me to print in two different blacks: cool for the crows and warm for the figure and ruins. The difference is very subtle, but gives a sense of depth to the image.5of 5
