"Gathering Thoughts"

Collagraph monoprint, 6 x 20". After about a month without significant creative energy or inspiration, I found myself wandering back into the printmaking studio, selecting one of my favorite plates and running off four prints over the course of a couple hours. This was the largest of those prints. I used that one plate eight times, inking it up and placing it on the paper in a variety of ways to create this composition. I decided to call it "Gathering Thoughts" because I had many things on my mind, including reflections on how we attend to incoming information and process that information in our working memory. I've been taking an Ed Psych class, and we had been discussing these very issues. As we process information, we draw on our prior knowledge to make sense of it. As I created this print, I had a general idea of how I was going to use the plate and what the final image would look like. I wanted to work with colors, lines and shapes, but I imagined it simply as being abstract and not necessarily representing any familiar ideas. When I look at this print now, however, I am reminded of letters and numbers and other familiar shapes. I can now see the print in a different light. I can see "L"s and "Z"s and lightning bolts even though I didn't have these images in mind when I made the print and despite the fact that the plate I used was not shaped like any of these images. I can process this image – as I am at this moment – by way of what I know, by way of the imagery that is familiar to me. I can see how my prior knowledge has been informing how I see many of my prints, and I'm excited to have this and other vocabulary to help me think and write about my art.