A native New Yorker, I was born into an American working class family and grew up in an ethnically diverse but close knit neighborhood in upper Manhattan. In retrospect, I now realize that my interest in the lives of ordinary people began as a child, when I came to know the stories, and the hope and fears of our neighbors. So too did my interest in making art. In 1956 I was introduced by friends to a small community of courageous German Jews, survivors of the Holocaust. Among them were my husband to be and his parents. In years to come after raising my own family, completing degrees in fine art and eventually majoring in printmaking, I began to devote much of my art to telling their stories.
To transform this personal history into visual art, I explore printmaking methods that can capture a bittersweet, yet nostalgic mood.
My printmaking techniques range from engraving, etching, solar plate, silkscreen, collagraph, monotype and combinations of two or more of these methods. Just as memories of the past are often layered and allusive, so, too, are many of my prints. Moreover, these printmaking techniques can be used on virtually any material on which ink can be applied, not just paper, but cloth, wood, plastic and metal. As a result, with the exception of my etching, many of my prints become so technically complex that they cannot be editioned; instead, they are unique impressions. One of the great joys of printmaking is that its processes can, and often do, unpredictably contribute to the artist’s work. Example: diminished edges from too much light exposure in a solar plate may give the print an old world look or suggest the passage of time and memory.