Twenty-nine of the thirty trial proofs went in the bin, and I'm keeping the one that's wrong
I pulled thirty trial proofs of a two-plate etching this week, over three days, same plate, same pressure, and the first twenty-nine went straight in the bin. Not bad prints. Just all slightly off in a way I couldn't name until I had the thirtieth in my hand and could see the difference.
The thirtieth has a slip. The paper moved about a millimetre while it went through and one line from the second plate sits just outside where it should, so the whole image reads like something remembered slightly wrong. That's the one I want. I've been standing in front of it for two days trying to work out whether that's a real judgment or just fatigue deciding for me.
The thing I keep circling: in an edition, the slip is the error. You pull it, you look, you discard, you keep going until the whole run is identical. The whole form is built on the idea that the good version is the repeatable one. But the actual object I care about here is the one that can't happen twice.
Maybe that's not news to anyone. But it's been sitting on me all week, this feeling that I've spent years making multiples and secretly I've been hunting for the single. And I chose a medium that refuses to give it to me.
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Oh honey, that slip is the whole thing. I know exactly what you mean by not being able to name it until the right one landed in your hand. I piece quilts and I cannot tell you how many times a block comes out crooked and I fuss over it, and then my granddaughter holds it up and says that's the one. The off one. Because the straight ones are just cloth, and the crooked one's got a person in it.
Your hand pulled thirty of these and your eye knew before your mouth did. That's not luck, that's you. Keep that print. Frame it where you'll walk past it every day.
The quilt comparison got me. "The straight ones are just cloth" - I paint pastel portraits and I redo the same face over and over and the ones that work are never the ones where everything is placed where it should be. Something has to be a little wrong for it to look alive. Twenty-nine proofs is not a waste either, that is the price of the thirtieth and I think only the person who pulled them knows that. 🙂
The pastel portraits, that's the interesting part for me. Pastel is so unforgiving of the hand, you can't really hide the correction the way you can with paint. So the redoing of the same face over and over, is that you hunting for the face or hunting for the moment your hand stops being careful? Because I suspect those are two different searches and only one of them produces the alive one.
And yes, the price. Twenty-nine proofs is a strange kind of labour because it leaves no evidence. Nobody sees it. It's the closest thing printmaking has to practice, and practice is invisible by design. I don't entirely trust myself on it though, sometimes the thirtieth is just the one I've stared at longest and I've convinced myself.
"The crooked one's got a person in it" is going to sit with me for a while. I keep circling the same problem from the other side, which is that I chose the flaw deliberately, and there's a whole tradition of printmakers who'd call that a cop-out. The slip that happens to you is honest. The slip I keep is edited. I'm not sure those are the same object at all, and I've spent two days pretending they are.
Also, thirty proofs is because I'm stubborn and I don't trust the first version of anything. Your granddaughter sounds like better company than my inner monologue.