Near Hugonin Battery
Sea Stories is a series of twenty (51 x 71 cm) multicolored monoprints which combine stone lithography with collagraphy and printed wood grains. The images are taken from objects washed onto the shores of McNab’s Island; a five mile stretch of land located at the entrance to Halifax’s harbour. Flotsam such as weathered wood, fragments of lobster traps, nets, ropes, keels from fishing boats and even sandals have either been rubbed onto transfer paper or directly inked and pressed onto each print. The rich layering process, which builds the monoprints’ characteristics, is an attempt to mirror water’s natural ability to sculpt and smooth surfaces. Each print is titled to correspond to the area of the island it most resembles and where many of the foreground objects were found. The names act simply as poetic labels to specimens, because although some of the prints stand up on their own, the twenty prints together are considered a single piece of work. The use of the repeatable image and the deliberate sequence of the monoprints, echoes the tide’s shifting compositional drama at the water’s edge. The admittedly subjective and serendipitous process of collecting and repositioning “historical data” found at McNab’s Island, intentionally shadows an archeologist dig. What Sea Stories tries to visualize is that the results of records drawn, both past and present, are abstract compositions built on real and solid objects. In essence, the series is a celebration of history’s biographers, their tools and imaginations, as well as printmaking’s virtuosity, and the maritime tradition.
By Strawberry Battery
