Elegant Jellyfish
Century Plate Lithograph and Monoprint on Plike paper, 2017
ARTIST STATEMENT
I completed the Professional Printer Training Program at the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico to master this almost alchemic and dying art form, while learning new, safer and experimental techniques. I have spent the past two and a half years experimenting with new materials and developing new techniques to create lithographs on paper using non-toxic processes.
I have been haunted for years by reportage and images of migrants stranded at sea, people who risked everything to reach the Florida coast from Cuba and Haiti. The numbers continue to rise, as people fleeing Syria, Egypt, Somalia and other nations desperately try to reach European shores. More still are braving the journey from the west coast of Africa for economic reasons. Life jackets appear, floating in the water as eerie signs of those who’d drowned. Sadly, for hundreds of people nearly every week, their floating life jackets are all that is left of them.
From there, I turned to making prints of sea creatures, as a sort of light relief from the previous subject matter. I’ve been getting caught up in creating fine layers and aqueous details, to give an underwater feel to the prints. This has paired with my research and development of new, non-toxic etches for lithographic tusche washes painted on re-usable Century Plates. Elegant Jellyfish takes a fantastical look at the natural world that lies beneath the surface of the sea, based loosely on 16th century specimen collection and illustration. At the current rate of destruction, climate change, pollution and over-fishing – all caused by humans, imaginary sea creatures may be all we will have left.
BIO
Corinne Rhodes runs Cherry Press printmaking workshop in Rutland, MA. Rhodes studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University, the University of New Mexico and Tamarind Institute of Lithography. She teaches non-toxic Century Plate lithography, traditional lithography and other printmaking techniques at Cherry Press, Bennington College, EFA-Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop and Rhode Island School of Design. Rhodes has taught Century Plate demonstrations and workshops at Brandeis University, Rhode Island College, Rhode Island School of Design, Zea Mays Printmaking and elsewhere.
Rhodes exhibits her artwork nationally, including at: Exit Art, Evanston Art Center, Fitchburg Museum of Art, New Mexico State University, University of New Mexico, University of Wisconsin and Wheaton College. Rhodes has exhibited internationally in Canada, Ireland and the United Kindom, including curatorial work at Instituto México Norte Americano de Relaciones Culturales and two juried exhibitions at the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo León, in Monterrey, México. She has painted murals in the U.S. and México.
Rhodes is a recipient of grants from ArtsWorcester’s Material Needs, Bennington College, Brigit Skiold Memorial Trust, the British Arts Council, Dublin City Council and the Lower East Side Printshop’s Key Holder Residency Program.
Rhodes published Cherry Press: Century Plate Lithography Part 1 in July, 2019. Rhodes served as a juror for Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Drawing & Printmaking Fellowship Panel in the fall of 2019.
