THE PRINTMAKER'S STUDIO
Artist・ Claire Illouz
Getting to C.Illouz.’s studio means going out to the country, but not exactly to peaceful surroundings – it is rather like entering a zone of turbulence. Strangely enough, this wooded haven does not provide the engraver with quiet or bucolic images.
Indeed, she much prefers a constant confrontation with major problems, like , for instance, catching onto the plate, then onto paper, the Sound of Wind in trees or the rendering of frightening mayhems at work in Nature . Such is the challenge she takes up before the camera’s eye.
In her artist’s Book inspired by 3 poems by Emily Dickinson, (among which “Of all the Sounds dispatched abroad”), moving branches literally burst onto the paper, released from the constraint of plate edge, crossed as they seem by electric oscillations. Here, the delicate finesse of drawing is enhanced by the vigor of the Artist’s own original printing process. It allows the viewer to see, and to imagine, as a free view, the off-space of the print.
As we reach the end of this bold hand to hand session of plate, press, ink (blacker and blacker), and paper (a very resistant Chine), her trees become alive, as tormented and complex as human beings. And then suddenly, from the heart of this silent print, rises the howling of Wind.
