The wrappings evolved into nest images.

They were internal nests, looking

for and building safe, nurturing spaces within. Feathers, a symbol of prayer,
joined the nests and in 1999, after renovating a three-car garage into a new
studio space overlooking the Winooski River, the image of a bird
manifested. What About Our Nest, a one-woman show at the Mist Grill
in Waterbury, Vermont, examined issues of development and the
preservation of land. Most recently the images of nests are reappearing as
we confront terrorism and political divisiveness in our homeland.
Sarah Amos is an artist and master printer whose personal
iconography reflects an experience of place. Her innovative
approach to space, layering, and use of pattern and mark are
derived in part from her Australian background and cultural
heritage.
An interesting exhibition of Collagraphs (a type of collage printmaking)1
and etchings is presented by Sarah Amos at Gallery 101, Melbourne,
work that is full of delicate coloured layering, topographical mapping and
nodal, rhizomic and Spirogyra-type structures.
The flux of the work, its musical cadence if you like, is the fusion of
palimpsestic markings as viewed from the air the dotted contours, the
ploughed fields, the beautiful spatial layering that has an almost
Kandinsky-like effect with the aesthetics of Japanese paper, matt black
colour (that subtly glistens on close inspection) and the tactility of the
surface of the work. These intersections produce images that have some
outstanding resonances: vibrations of energy that ebb and flow around
the gallery space. These works are captivating!
For me the simpler images were the more successful especially the series
named Intersections with their muted tonalities, shifting colours and
topographical structure. They also reminded me of the black and white
aerial landscape photography of Emmet Gowin (see below).
While I am unsure of the validity of the landscape/urban lens urban
temperature references (which I found unnecessary and slightly
irrelevant) these works and their synaptic interfaces must be
experienced. For the viewer they hold a strange attraction as you stand
before them drawn, inexporably, into their penumbral spaces.
Recommended.

(Flux) where a total electric or magnetic field passes through a surface.

My work is a fusion of both land and cityscape. I am interested in

interpreting spatially dynamic, real and half forgotten landscapes through
an urban lens. New to this body of work is my interest in the visual
graphics of scientific diagrams in which dynamic and informative
landscapes are drafted into linear minimal lines. I have absorbed this
distilled language, translating it into an architectural and organic
landscape where the intersections of line, volume and space are
constantly in flux. This obscure knowledge is pared down, simplified and
ordered into a clean analysis ready for instant translation.
The Australian landscape is central to my work and influences my use of
color,

idiosyncratic

marks

and

open

space.

These

works

are

personalized maps of accumulated information, like printed histories,

that record the dueling intersections where the weathers of the
landscape and the urban temperature have begun to take on new and
vital immediacy.
Sarah Amos, 2009
Text from the Gallery 101 website
The depth of the layers of the images draws the viewer into the piece as your
mind tries to determine what lies beneath. Excellent work.

Interview with Sarah Amosthe

printers territories
By guest

writer | November 4, 2009

Post by Judith Stein

Sarah Amos is an artist with a consummate mastery of printmaking. In this
new body of work, her third show at Cynthia Reeves Gallery in Chelsea, she
pits macro against micro, playing bold, dramatic shapes against delicate
forms and textures. In her handsome, large-format prints, shapes that

resemble beaded curtains or louvered shutters both define the surface and
tantalize, giving us a peek but limiting our visual access to the space behind
and below. But once we navigate around these arresting, gatekeeper images,
a seeming infinity of nuanced space opens.

Sarah Amos, WIDE NUMBERS- 2009, ETCHING AND HAND DRAWING

198X203 CM
Amos is an artist with a formidable command of media. To create her
collographs, for example, her inner sculptor laminates layers of cardboard,
constructing the physical plates and then pocking, scoring and marking them
with a knowing eye. For any given work of art, she may ink up and print as
many as a dozen different surfaces. And before she runs anything through the
press, she first modifies and colors the paper itself.
After she completes the multiple printings, she goes back into the image and
draws and paints on the surface. It is the collective power of these actions that
impress me as a viewer when I look at her artI dont need to know the
details of its fabrication. Yet I find them fascinating.
Last spring, Amos and I sat on shanghaied office chairs in a quiet corner of
the Reeves Gallery, to look at her new etchings and collagraphs that were
spread out on the floor.
Maps and textiles
Judith Stein: Please talk to me about your process. I see that you are working
on a somewhat smaller scale now.
Sarah Amos: I still favor Shiramine paper, a very heavy weight Japanese
paper with a rag content, that I pre-stain with a tint. Also, Im using glue and
carborundum dust, which has a fantastic tooth, and a rawness that I like. It
picks up the ink very well. I like the glimmer from the mineral in it, and the
resulting diffused line, as if you were drawing in sand.
Previously, I regarded the printmaking as the set design, and the drawing as
the actors. The ratio of the two media has shifted in this new work, although in
some there is more drawing, and in others more printing.

Sarah Amos, KING TIDE 77X79,ETCHING 2009

JS: Doubleround is a very suggestive composition. One of your sources is an
aerial view of a medieval village, which you overlaid with circles. I read them
variously, as seeds, balls, or the letter o. Some look like earrings.
SA: Ive been thinking about African, Japanese, and aborigine textiles. I am
drawn to their very fine detail. My recent works are more painted then in the
past. I allow for happenstantial drips and stainsthese spontaneous effects
are more interesting to me now then in the past. I love two very distinct
surfaces, the linear clarity of one playing against the softer carborundum.
Film and repetition
JS: The vertical configurations in Main View evoke a film strip. Curiously, they
call to mind Joan Jonas seminal video Vertical Roll (1972), with its jumping
picture frame, and its repeating horizontal black bar between images. Looking
at this diptych, my eye wants to go up and down repeatedly, combing through
it.
SA: Repetition interests me a lot.
JS: Lines of dots have been a consistent design element for you, an influence
and an homage to the dreaming paintings by the aboriginal artists of your
native country, Australia. They are present here as well, in different
incarnations.
SA: In the layering of images in Main View, Ive printed on top of an earlier
print, bringing alongyet buryingsome of that old detail. Having the dots is
like dragging your old family members with you.
JS: In Earlier Territory, there are big black sections that resemble the cold and
warm fronts in the weather map.
SA: Flux is an underlining theme in all this workthe intersection of the
landscape and the forces of nature, such as out-of-control weather.
JS: Im thinking of film again. For me, some shapes in Earlier Territory encode

a cinematographic reference: they resemble the sprocket holes on the edge

of a film reel.
SA: I would love to animate these drawings. I could see these things moving
and rolling over great surfaces of differing scale and plane.
JS: Youve mentioned that some of your source materials are aerial maps that
diagram peoples walking patterns in various cities.
SA: They are beautiful drawings, paths seen from the air, these repetitive
marks that create a pattern on the landscape.
JS: In Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky points out that when you look at a
map and study the whimsical, nongeometric pattern of the secondary roads of
almost any place in North America, you see that the towns seem
interconnected haphazardly, without any scheme or design. But thats
because the roads began as widened footpaths and trails, which were
originally cut by animals looking for salt.

Sarah Amos, ROPE WEED 2009 147 X 152CM ETCHING

In other works, such as Striped Slip, King Tide, Close Range, Wide Numbers,
Rope Weed, and First Blush, you use ghost images. How do you call up
these specters?
SA: Every inked plate will deliver three printings. I use all three: from super
dark, to medium, to light. On any printmaking day, I spend six or seven hours
inking all the plates first. Then I go to the press, because everyone gets
printed once, twice or three times on each surface, as a way of building it up.
A little bit of each language is carried over to the next one and so on.
A library of 550 plates
JS: So any given piece of paper could receive, say, both the vivid first printing
of one image, and the third printingor faint ghostof another?
SA: Correct. In the past, I printed perhaps 30 or 40 different plates on the
same surface. Now there are 10 to 15 passes of very thin veils of oil paint,

printed on dry paper, which somewhat repels the ink. I can work on that
surface a lot longer than if it were wet.
I like the idea of recycling the images from old to new. I have amassed and
categorized nearly 550 plates, my own physical library of images. I store them
vertically in big racks in my studio.

Sarah Amos, CLOSE RANGE 79X77 ETCHING,2009

JS: Wow. If you think about any specific one, you know where to find it, like
pulling a book off the shelf!
There is a tiny, tiny perforated line underneath the more prominent image in
Knot Stopper.
Roulette and chance
SA: Most of my work has this surface, which I create with a roulette, a very
sharp tool for marking dress patterns.
JS: You have to be keen-eyed to see these minute lines; when they overlap,
they resemble rails or crossings. As the knotted lines tumble down the face of
paper, they give the impression of weeping willows, or some organic matter,
graciously falling.
SA: I create them with a roulette, one of my favorite toolsmy mother is a
fashion designer and I enjoy the fact that she uses it as well, but for different
ends.
If you saw an image of me at work, Id be standing in my socks, wielding a
five-foot-long pole with the roulette strapped to the end of it, making big,
sweeping movements on the plate as I wheel the stick. It is very physical. I am
walking back and forth all over the plate surface, gouging and raking. My dog
might be standing right beside me in the middle of the piece. Im just careful
not to run over his feet!
JS: What role does chance play in your work?

SA: For example, you can see where the ink hasnt taken in the wide middle
section of Seismic Chatter. This unplanned result adds to the richness of the
image, a dimension I couldnt have done myself. This is that element of
surprise that I still get, after all these years of making prints. Ninety five
percent you know what you are doing, and then the last five percent is
fantastic surprise.