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Creativity as Content: The Sequential Prints
of Hugh Merrill Hugh Merrill will exhibit works from two series of sequential black and white etchings at the Printworks Gallery in Chicago in October 1996. Both Facts of Fictions and Rules For Writing the Dead are marked by the appearance and disappearance of architectural and pre-industrial forms. This interview is the result of long conversations between Merrill and noted sculptor, ceramist, and writer Jim Leedy. Leedy and Merrill are close friends who have conversed about obsession, creativity and art for many years. This interview is a condensed version of the unraveling and continuos conversation between the two artists. Jim Leedy is one of the best known ceramists in the world. He is noted for his abstract expressionist works for the early 1950s when he and his close friend Peter Voulkos transformed the definition of ceramics. he is presently a full professor at the Kansas City Art Institute and a founder of the Leedy-Voulkos Gallery in Kansas City, Mo. Hugh Merrill is an internationally recognized artist and writer especially known for his work as a contemporary printmaker. He has worked in many areas over the past five years, producing large figurative mobiles for the Edmonton City Hall, an eight-story glass pyramid in Alberta, Canada. His installations have been exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Forum in Santa Barbara, California, at the Arlington Museum, Arlington Texas and The Indianapolis Contemporary Arts Center. While his creative and theoretical efforts have taken Merrill in a number of directions he has always returned to and been grounded in creating etchings. Merrill’s use of printmaking is based on the most basic manipulations of the etching process. He says "technically what I do can be learned in the first few weeks of any printmaking course." He has taken the direct drawing-based manipulation of the plate to a level of artistic investigation focused on image, sequence, and content. He is not interested in print as a multiple and does not pull editions. He instead works the plate sequentially, pulling individual impressions then changing the plate to create new and disturbing images. The images are sequenced together to form visual narratives of remarkable power and insight. Leedy: For over 10 years, since the creation of the Lucky Dragon Suite, you have created sequential etchings, creating a sequence of images from the same plate, what is it that attracts you to this particular process? Merrill: I have always been interested in Rembrandt’s etching, The Three Crosses. There are several states of this print and each explores a different emotional possibility of the crucifixion scene. This led me to question what comes next, and led me to begin to working sequentially. It is a process that’s deeply rooted in a creative dialogue with the materials. The plate becomes a memory surface; the sequential process points out the infinity of creative possibilities and is a test to the finite life span of the etching plate. Creativity and ideas are continuos, materials are finite and concrete. It is the dialogue between the two that is at the heart of this work. Leedy: Most printmakers create editions; they develop the matrix proofing it until it reaches the image they are after, and then pull a small editions. You pull one print then change the plate to create the next image. Man, what’s going on here? Merrill: Jim, it’s much like your own attitude toward your ceramics, you throw out the rules to find what works for you. The sequential process suits my creative purposes, it means each day’s work is both an independent statement and a part of a larger narrative. The plate is a memory surface that leaves traces of past activity, new ideas and images are altered by the information that has gone before, at some point the space created by the surface of the plate takes on the depth, complexity, and contradiction of my thinking. Leedy: What do you mean that the etching plate is a memory surface? Merrill: For me the etching plate is a concrete and tangible memory surface, its physical manipulation references the mechanics of memory itself. The plate records an act of drawing, and through the abrasiveness of the etching process that action is sublimated, becoming a ghost image. With each change in the plate the present is haunted by the remnants from the past. Like memory we see through our own past experience, so the image I am working on at anytime is changed through the past manipulations of the plate. I feel the process is very close to the way real memory works. Leedy: Memory seems to be a driving force in your work, but your work is not specifically autobiographical. How do you perceive and use memory? Merrill: First off memory is not organized like a library or computer. Information is not filed away in the memory for instant future recall. We do not predetermine what will be remembered or when it will be recalled. Images flow across the surface of my memory, recall is often a matter of associations that can be brought on by a smell, an object, or sound. At this point in my life I am not interested in autobiographical storytelling, but I am very interested in the way my memory can create an infinity of associated and meaningful images. When I am working sequentially, manipulating and changing the plate I obtain access to a level of knowledge that is not available through analytical and logical methods of thought. The process allows me to bring to light information that is seemingly important yet far away. Leedy: You see memory as intuitive, as fluid. You seem less concerned with analytical communication than expression. What are your feelings about the viewer, communication, and content? Merrill: Communication is an interesting word, one whose meaning has been reduced to sound bites for popular culture. I do not wish to speak to the viewer in a simple iconographic language. I think highly of the intelligence of the viewer. My images and their sequence are meant to provide the viewer with the space for prolonged speculation. It returns us to memory. The works will act as a process for the viewer to recognize their own perceptions, to speculate on meaning based on the experiences and knowledge that they bring to the viewing experience. Content is mistaken for understanding. When I look at certain works of art I realize something profound has come into being but the moment I try to break it down, to dissect it, the meaning retreats. Analysis is both the apex and the burden of western thought. To understand and to know are quite different things, knowing is complete, it is physical as well as mental. I am trying to communicate a sense of knowing for the viewer, an intersection of physical and mental gestures organized in a narrative sequence. Leedy: The images in the Rules for Writing The Dead are of North American Indian fish traps and baskets. These objects, through a sequence of four or five impressions, dissolve into chaos then to an Oriental, gray undefinable space. Is this a correct reading of the work? Merrill: I am interested in fluid images. The image is a stage in an unraveling progression. I am interested in placing objects in a space that is fluid, that both recedes and is momentary. The object is always confronted by change -- change from both outside and the object’s own entropy. The basket images are from anthropological engravings of Indian baskets. This is important to their understanding. They are already one step removed, turned into scientific information, and I continue that process of change and absorption through the etching process. Leedy: The ongoing series Facts of Fictions begins with a large unraveling form seemingly made of a basket-like material, Can you talk a little about these impressions? Merrill: Yes. This series has gone on for several years and is intended to continue indefinitely. I have gone through a number of zinc plates in working on this series. Again the individual images and the complete narrative is about flow, change and motion. It begins with an impossible dirigible; without the ability for self-direction the form is torn apart from its interior. This leads to images of male warrior heads, soldiers who fought in the French Marines in Vietnam, just the heads floating like Mao in the Yellow River, no arms or hands, the heads dissolve into a debris field of cultural clutter and finally to a series of hands. Leedy: What comes next? Merrill: (Laughter) The next image of course! Leedy: You are working on a project with the French artist Christian Boltanski. What draws you to his work? Merrill: I am helping create a collaborative installation between Boltanski and children in Kansas City, Mo. He is doing an exhibition and installation sponsored by the Kemper Museum and the Museum Without Walls. The aspect of his work that interest me is his ideas about memory, that the past is a form of death, and remembrance is stimulated by artifacts. His works are not didactic, their meanings reside in the response of the viewer. He works with grand subjects such as death, with historical references such as the Holocaust, he avoids making them sentimental by creating distance, it is these qualities that drew me to become involved in the project. Edited by Sharon Hartbauer |