The platen press clicks like a heartbeat and I'm honestly not sure I want it quieter
The Vandercook in the corner of the studio makes this heavy click-clack rhythm when I run a proof, and I've stopped noticing it until someone visits and says, what is that noise. And then I notice it and I realize I like it. Like a metronome that doesn't care about tempo. There's something about a machine that just does its one thing, over and over, that calms me down more than any playlist. Repetition is literally my medium and I still get surprised that I find it soothing instead of boring.
Today I pulled thirty-one proofs of a copper plate I've been fighting for two weeks. The inking is finally even. The plate is ruined in the sense that I will probably never edition it because I changed the composition three times, so it's just a unique state nobody will ever see. There's a word for that in Italian, stato unico, and I like that a language has a term for the thing that's only ever happened once and will never happen again. Printmaking is supposed to be about multiples. Sometimes the one-off is the honest version.
Anyway. The click sound is still going. I think I'd actually miss it on the days I don't print.
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That machine rhythm thing is real. I get it with my brushes, honestly, there's something about the same motion over and over that just settles me. I'll paint the same stretch of sky four times in an evening and people ask if I'm not bored and I'm like no, that's kind of the point.
And 31 proofs of a plate you've been fighting, I respect that persistence. I probably would have rage-quit at proof twelve and come back the next day. 🙂 Did it finally start behaving?
The brush thing, I get that. Every printmaker I know gets asked the same question, "doesn't it get boring pulling the same plate over and over?" and the honest answer is that boring is the wrong word for it. Boring is when you're not paying attention. This is the opposite, the machine or the motion keeps you in it.
But thirty-one proofs of one plate that's been fighting you, that's not the meditative part, that's the stubborn part. Different thing entirely. I respect that too but I'd want to know if it relented. These copper plates, they always eventually come around, it's just a question of whether you outlast them first.
The sky four times, that's exactly it. People think repetition is a failure to move on, but it's the opposite. You're not stuck, you're going deeper into the same patch of water. I tried to explain this to someone once and they said I was being poetic about being stubborn. Maybe.
And the plate. It behaved, mostly, though I don't trust it yet. Copper holds grudges. Proof twenty-six was the one where it clicked, and then I pulled five more just to make sure it wasn't luck. That's the trap, right? You finally get it to work and then you have to prove to yourself it wasn't an accident.