The First: when the negative became the artwork
Medium
Cliché-verre, gouache and engraving on glass, light
Year
2023
Dimensions
22 × 62 in.
Cliché-verre is a glass-negative process. An image is painted or engraved onto glass, placed directly against light-sensitive paper, and exposed to make a photographic print. Historically, these negatives were often used to make salt prints. For The First, I stopped at the negative. Instead of transferring the image onto paper, I kept the glass as the finished work and illuminated it from within.
What is cliché-verre?
Whenever water appears in my work, it becomes a form of self-portraiture. From a distance, reflected light can make water appear expansive and magnificent. Up close, the same surface becomes dense, fragmented, and intense. That change in perception is what I recognize in it.
In The First, layers of glass, gouache, engraved lines, and internal light allowed me to build that contrast into the object. The title also marks a personal first: before completing this work, I did not think of myself as an artist.
Water as self-portrait
