Composition, color and craftsmanship

Shelley Thorstensen - The Preponderance of Evidence
The Print Center
1614 Latimer Street
Philadelphia, PA

This was a show of prints on paper using various printing processes such as lithography, etching, screen printing and relief printing.


"Charge" silkscreen 7 x 10 inches

I'm still thinking about Shelley Thorstensen's work. My experience of seeing her series of framed prints spread across four walls of the room. I carefully looked at each print up close, engaging in the layers of color and form. I loved them. The layers. The subtle depth of color. The play of light. The outlines ~ the gentle repetition of the drawn lines, precise yet sensual. Wondrous moments of visual pleasure, upclose and personal with the detail. From further away the blocks of light or darkness take on larger, organic forms. The opening reception was on a freezing, rainy night and to feel the color and have that experience with the work was remarkable. I think Shelley's work is about process of making beautiful spatial images. This abstract, atmospheric world of warm hues was truly beautiful, visually and conceptually.

Upon more reflection because of writing this blog, I was thinking about my experience of standing in front of Shelley’s work. I was thinking about the physical form of the paper, the process the paper had been through the printing, Shelley’s craftsmanship, working the paper, printing process and the image, and the materials being inherent to the making of the image. It made me appreciate the prints in a way I hadn’t considered, as corporeal objects, and through this reflection, I couldn’t help but think of my own physicality, substance as a body standing in relation to the work. My body, my materiality vs the materiality of the work, and our temporality. Body to body.

"A lot of those songs were the response to what struck me as beauty, whatever that curious emanation from a being, or an object, a situation, or a landscape. You know, that had a very powerful effect on me, as it does on everyone. And I prayed to have some response to the things that were so clearly beautiful to me, and they were alive."

Leonard Cohen, from the film “I’m Your Man”