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Making pictures, telling stories
Printmaker Hilary Copeland-Glenn experiments with the unknown
By Penelope Bass
Published on 05/21/2009
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Printmaking can be a temperamental process, to say the least. From etching or carving the image into a surface like wood, linoleum or metal, to working with various inks and acids, to often going back and carving away more before adding new colors, the process is long and uncertain. Everything etched on the block will appear reversed on paper, and the artist is never really sure what she is going to get. So it definitely takes a certain type of artistic drive to commit to the medium of printmaking.
“I tend to be a process-oriented person; I guess that’s the best way to put it,” says Hilary Copeland-Glenn as we sit in the Morning Glory Café admiring the work in her newest show.
“I didn’t really stop to analyze it at the time. You’re working on a whole different surface, and so there’s an element of magical surprise to it when you print it. And you get better at seeing what you’re actually doing on the surface with the blocks, and then what it will look like when it prints. But everything is mirrored too, so what you’re working on never looks exactly like the plate.”
Copeland-Glenn has been experimenting with printmaking for about six years now.
Sampling the various forms used within the medium, she has worked in relief—which involves carving away the parts on an image that you don’t want to print, like a stamp—as well as serigraphy, more commonly known as screen printing. “It’s fun to do the whole process,” says Copeland-Glenn, “like with silk screening you pull the squeegee across—there’s something really satisfying about that, like when you squeegee your windshield.”
But her favorite method so far is intaglio—etching, basically—because of the incredible amount of precision that can be achieved. “That’s what got me into printmaking. It was the first printmaking class I took in college,” says Copeland-Glenn. “The quality of line you can get with etching, you really can’t get with drawing. When I discovered printmaking, it was like, ‘Oh, that’s how they’ve been doing it!’ And you go back through all the art history you have learned and realize those are prints and not drawings.”
The images she creates are as unique and varied as the process itself. From dark, haunting depictions to storybook-like illustrations, celestial imagery to surreal representations of a play on words, there seem to be no parameters on her inspiration.
“Some of the darker images are things that I was working through in my own life. But I also came to a point where I felt that was kind of trite, and I was tired of making the whole ‘Oh woe is me!’ dark imagery. So I got into making art for the sake of making something beautiful and interesting and compelling to look at, and for just the joy of the process of it,” says Copeland-Glenn. “When I started doing that, I started making more illustrative art—not necessarily illustrating anything in particular. I would work with little plays on words, like ‘Going Stag’ and ‘Holy Underwear.’ My niece was having me draw pictures for her one day, and she had me draw a fox, and then she said, ‘OK, now draw a baby for a snack.’ And I just though that was so morbid and weird that I had to make a print out of that.”
But Copeland-Glenn says she has always felt the desire to create art in one form or another. Even her kindergarten teacher, whom she has kept in contact with, told her that he knew she was going to be an artist. In high school she attended the Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy. “I did whatever they had. I did photography, I did dance, I did mostly painting like acrylics and oils. But when I got into college I discovered etching and printmaking, and that’s when it hit for me.”
Her new show on display at Morning Glory Café is called “Medicine Cabinet” and represents a good cross-section of her artwork, each piece begging for closer inspection and further contemplation. “I hope people get out of my art the same thing I get out of making it, a sort of joy at looking at and experiencing something well-done and something compelling—something that makes them think, something that makes them laugh, something that makes their brain tick,” says Copeland-Glenn.
“I think all art is like that. It all has its own story, whether you could write a whole paragraph about it or it’s just a feeling,” she says. “That’s one of the things I really like about having shows; some of the stuff that people see in your art is really amazing. Sometimes they’ll see something in it that was going on with me psychologically that I had not even intended to put in there. I think that is the magic of art—everyone can see their own story.”
“Medicine Cabinet” will be on display through the month of May at Morning Glory Café, 115 S. San Francisco. For more information, call 774-3705 or visit www.printmakerhilary.com.
Additional photos for this story:
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