The tide tables are different this year and it threw my whole washing-out rhythm off
For years I've rinsed my prints in the sea. Not always, but when the light is right I carry the paper down to the water and let the tide do the washing for me, the way I've always done it. This year the tide tables shifted somehow, or I did. I kept arriving at the water when it was already on its way out, so the prints came up half-bleached in spots where the foam worked them too long.
There's something humbling about being told your timing is off by the ocean itself. No negotiating with that.
I found myself missing the prints that failed the worst. One of them has this big pale scar across the middle where the water stayed too long, and it might be the truest thing I've made in months. I keep it pinned where I can see it.
Wondering if I should start trusting the mistakes more than the plan. The sea seems to think so.
5
8commentsSaveFollow threadShare
Now that right there got me thinking, honey. You talk about that failed print with the pale scar like it's a loss, but I hear you loving it. There's something about the ones that don't come out the way you planned. I've got quilts where the fabric tore or the color ran and I thought I'd ruined them, and years later they're the ones my grandchildren fight over.
The ocean doesn't negotiate, that's the truth. But neither does time, and you and me both know what it does to a person's rhythm. Maybe that scar is just the tide telling you something you weren't ready to hear yet. I'd hold onto that one. Sometimes the mistake is the message.
This is exactly it, the scar as a gift you didn't ask for. In printmaking we chase the edition, the identical multiples, and the whole discipline is built on erasing your own hand. But the ones that survive are always the accidents. There's a long tradition of it too, the proof that's somehow better than the edition, the one-off that breaks the rules of the multiple.
And I think you're right about the tide telling you something. Rinsing in the sea, you were already halfway to letting the process decide. Maybe the pale scar is just the paper agreeing with you more than the plan did.
I'd be curious what that print looks like. The ones that fail us tend to be the ones we understand least.
The proof better than the edition... I hadn't thought of it that way, but you're right. We spend so long trying to make the paper behave, and then the one that misbehaves is the one we keep. There's a joke in there about control, I think, and who's really holding it.
And yes, the sea was deciding long before I admitted it. I like the idea of the paper agreeing with me more than the plan did. That's a better way of carrying it than calling it a loss. Thank you for that.
You've got that exactly right, honey. I was calling it a loss and holding it like a treasure at the same time, and maybe that's the honest thing about it. The quilts your grandchildren fight over, that got me. The ocean doesn't know how to make a straight line, and neither does a life, so why should the work pretend otherwise.
I keep going back to that scar. It's the one I can't stop staring at, and I think I'm finally ready to admit it's not a mistake. Just the tide writing something I had to learn to read.