1971–75 Manhattan School of Music, New York, NY, Bachelor of Music degree, flute/performance major
Occupation(s)
Printmaker, author, teacher
Yearsactive
1975–present
Awards
Louise Nevelson Award for Excellence in Printmaking, Concordia Career Advancement Award,
Carol Wax (born June 17, 1953) is an American artist, author and teacher whom the New York Times called "a virtuoso printmaker and art historian" for her work in mezzotint and her writings on the history and technique of that medium.[1]
After a year at the Manhattan School of Music, she participated in flute master classes with Jean-Pierre Rampal at the International Summer School, Nice, France.[citation needed] She earned a Bachelor of Music degree in 1975 from the Manhattan School of Music, where she majored in flute performance.[2] She continued to work as a professional musician until 1980.[citation needed]
In the summers of 1975 and 1976, she took printmaking courses at the Lake Placid School of Art[3] and then studied from 1976 to 1982 at the Pratt Graphics Center in New York City, where she made lithographs and was introduced to mezzotint engraving.[2] She had her first solo museum exhibition at the Wichita Art Museum in 1986–1987.[citation needed]
Mezzotint research
Beginning in the mid-1980s, Wax responded to the limitations of current technical knowledge of mezzotint engraving and printing by conducting her own research into historical techniques while continuing to work as a printmaker.[citation needed] Though mezzotint was developed mainly as a method for copying oil paintings, the research explained in her 1990 book, The Mezzotint: History and Technique, uncovered techniques long out of use that had promising applications for use in contemporary art.[2] She held a residency at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, in 1986[4] and received an Artist's Fellowship Grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 1987.[4] Wax conducted technical experiments based on her historical research and for a few years she devoted more of her time to research and writing than her own artistic production.
In 1990, Harry N. Abrams (in the U.S.) and Thames & Hudson (in the U.K.) published the results of her research as The Mezzotint: History and Technique, reissued by Abrams in a soft-cover edition in 1996.[2] Wax photographed all of the technical illustrations for that volume, as well as much of the flatwork, and produced the line drawings. In its two sections, Wax reviewed the history of mezzotint techniques and then detailed their use as a guide for contemporary artists in the craft. A lengthy review in Winterthur Portfolio noted it was the "first comprehensive study of mezzotint...and the most significant discussion of the subject" since a more narrowly focused 1884 study. It said that Wax brought "a technician's attention to detail, an artist's sensitivity to the nuances of process, and a historian's interest in cause and effect" to her work. It praised her exploitation of little-known German publications dating from 1771 and 1889 to expand on familiar historical accounts and her investigation of the impact of such technological developments as steel plates on the artist's technique, types of paper and ink, and the characteristics of the resulting images.[5] Writing in Print Quarterly, Ellen D'Oench said that: "the appearance of Carol Wax's book is an important event...not before now have we had access to an exhaustive treatment of mezzotint's history and process, enriched by copious and superb reproductions....Wax, a mezzotint artist herself, handles with skill a vast amount of information....She excels in her observations about individual prints...and in her selection of reproductions....Wax has a keen eye for the particulars and a broad knowledge of the subject....This is a triumph of word and image in the service of explication."[6]
Printmaking, exhibiting, and teaching
Wax found that her increased technical confidence expanded the scale and complexity of her imagery. Influenced in part by the work of Philip Pearlstein, she produced more refined and intricate treatments of light and shadow, more sophisticated explorations of the ways that light and shadow create the illusions of volume and depth, and more complex layering of pictorial elements.[citation needed] In the years that followed, she received over thirty-five prizes in national and international exhibitions. In 1994 she received the Louise Nevelson Award for Excellence in Printmaking from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[4]
Wax has executed several commissions for mezzotint editions from Cradle Oak Press at Bradley University, in Peoria, Illinois (1994), Stone and Press Gallery (1994), the Albany Print Club (2002), the Matrix Program at the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas (2003), Indiana University Southeast in New Albany, Indiana (2005), and the Print Club of Rochester, New York (2008).[citation needed] The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation's Space Program provided Wax with studio space in 1996–1997.[7] That allowed Wax to work with pastels and oil paints for the first time, which in turn affected her engravings even as she determined to work in several mediums. Impatient with the time-consuming requirements of mezzotint's grounding process, Wax developed ways to prepare mezzotint grounds more efficiently and in 1996 designed a system for attaching adjustable weights to the rocker, the mezzotint engraver's most important tool. This invention, the first improvement to rocker design in over three hundred years, is now manufactured by the toolmakers Edward C. Lyons.[8]
Wax curated exhibitions at Heuser Art Center Gallery, Bradley University, in 1994 with John Heintsman and the New Orleans Museum of Art in 1996 with Earl Retif.[9]
In 2002, Wax moved to Peekskill, New York, to take advantage of the city's downtown revitalization program that gave artists the chance to purchase live/work spaces, known as "The Art Lofts," with minimal down payments.[1][10]
An Artist's Fellowship Grant in 2003 from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a Concordia Career Advancement Award the following year enabled Wax to acquire and refurbish a secondhand etching press that was large enough and powerful enough to accommodate her bigger plates. This equipment allowed Wax to free herself of dependence on contract printers and to create large-scale color mezzotint engravings using multiple plates and incorporating a host of related techniques such as stipple, drypoint, and burin engraving.
Carol Wax, Catalogue Raisonné/Prints, 1975–2005 (Herakleidon Art Museum, 2006)
In 2006, the Herakleidon Art Museum in Athens, Greece, presented a solo show of her work. Titled "Shadowplay," it included every edition Wax had published, including her early lithographs along with many state proofs, color separation proofs, plates, preparatory sketches, and related drawings and pastels. The Herakleidon also published Carol Wax, Catalogue Raisonné/Prints, 1975–2005 in 2006 to document her first thirty years as a printmaker. One reviewer noted that "The reader will readily be captivated by Wax's onomatomania and obsession with man-powered mechanical objects that click, clatter or ring like her signature typewriters and sewing machines."[11] The Herakleidon mounted another exhibition of her work, "Dance of Shadows," in 2011.[12]
Since January 2007, Wax has taught printmaking as an adjunct professor at New Jersey's Montclair State University. She also presents mezzotint workshops and lectures on her own work and on the history of mezzotint at arts organizations, universities, and museums. She has held visiting artist positions on numerous occasions and has presented dozens of mezzotint demonstrations and workshops, as well as slide lectures at universities, colleges, arts organizations, and museums throughout the United States.
Her prints are available through the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Mezzanine Gallery. Other galleries that represent her prints are Davidson Galleries in Seattle and Conrad Graeber Fine Arts in Baltimore.[15]
My images of commonplace objects reflect my personal experience of the ordinary as extraordinary. Most people rarely think about the "stuff" in our lives but, to me, even the most ordinary items seem magical. I often depict old instruments, mechanical devices, and fabric because their repetitive patterns create rhythms of light, shadow, and forms that can be manipulated to convey my phantasmagorical perceptions. The ability to achieve dramatic lighting effects through the mezzotint engraving process makes it the ideal medium for rendering my imagery.
Although my style may be categorized as representational in the nature morte tradition, to me, still-life does not mean dead weight. By portraying my subjects transcending their status as lifeless objects I strive to depict the anima in the inanimate.
Wax on Mezzotint, Art of Darkness
Mezzotint was invented in the 17th century by Ludwig von Siegen, an amateur artist of German origin. To appreciate the significance of this event, picture a time before photography or the publication of sumptuously illustrated art books, when the only way to get an art education was as an apprentice. To learn about the techniques of great painters, you might try studying engravings or etchings, but these stylized linear replications could only depict form and design and impart nothing on the handling of paint, brush strokes, surface texture, and little on chiaroscuro and other lighting treatments.
Now imagine it is Amsterdam, 1642—the year Rembrandt painted The Night Watch—and a graphic technique is introduced which can reproduce every textural nuance and smooth tonal gradations ranging from blackest black to stark white. Finally portraits could be printed with supple skin tones instead of mask-like cross hatchings, with light that shimmered over satins and steely armor, melted over voluptuous velvets and dove into deep, dark shadows. At last one could study prints that conveyed information about the artist's handling of paint. It would be as exciting and revolutionary as the invention of photography or digitized imagery. To grasp the artistic and commercial implications of such an invention is to understand the magnitude of the impact of mezzotint.
Mezzotints are printed in much the same way as etchings and engravings; the image-making process differs in that one works from black to white, or deductively. In essence, it's similar to the manner of drawing by which one covers a sheet of white paper with charcoal until it appears black, then draws the image using an eraser that removes the charcoal. However, in mezzotint, one works on a thin sheet of metal, usually copper. First, a tool called a rocker is used to create a field of burrs over the surface of a copper plate. If inked, the roughened plate surface, called a ground, would print as a dense black tone. Scraping away or burnishing down the burrs reduces the depth of the ground. The shallower the ground, the less ink it holds; the thinner the ink film the more transparent the black and the lighter the shade of grey on the printed image. Where the burrs are removed entirely, the smoothed plate prints white. Variations in the process imbue the printed image with characteristics that are often unique to a given print or artist. The medium's unique capacity for rendering true shades of grey earned the name mezzotint from the Italian mezzo (for half) tinta (tone).
Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane University
In 2013 Earl Retif and Ann Salzer made a donation of artwork to benefit the students of Tulane University. Part of that gift included ten mezzotints by Carol Wax that were placed on special exhibition on the second floor of the Lavin-Bernick Center. That special exhibition has been continually on public view for the last ten tears. The works are now in the permanent collection of Tulane's Newcomb Art Gallery. The prints on view are: Cirque du Sew Lace, Falling Water, Machina, Missing Link, Refractions, Remington Return, Singer II, Telefon, The Hollywood, Time Lines,
Selected writing
"A Historical and Technical Perspective on the Mezzotints of Yozo Hamaguchi" for the exhibition catalog Yozo Hamaguchi: Master of Mezzotint (Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, The Tokyo Culture Foundation, and the Mainichi Newspapers, Japan)
"Singer II" in the exhibition catalog Mezzotints of Yesterday and Today (Stanford University Museum of Art, 1992)
Review of Ellen D'Oench, "Copper Into Gold: Prints by John Raphael Smith", in Journal of the Print World, Fall 1999
"From an Artist’s Point of View...", essay for the exhibition catalog titled New York Society of Etchers at the National Arts Club (2000)
"Breathing Life Into Dead Weight," Virtual Typewriter Journal, June 2005
"Carol Wax On The Black Manner," on the WorldPrintmakers website
"Ars Ex Machina," Artist's Magazine, November 2007
"A Conversation with Frederick Mershimer," in Frederick Mershimer: Mezzotints 1984–2006 (2007)
"Juror's Statement" for the exhibition catalogue. International Mezzotint Festival, Ekaterinburg, Russia,
"Erasing to Remember", essay for a catalogue of mezzotints by Eduardo Fausti, 2011
Mezzotint, Art of Darkness, an exhibition of classical and contemporary mezzotints organized by Carol Wax and Earl Retif for the New Orleans Museum of Art, April 27 – July 28, 1996
1 2 3 New York Foundation for the Arts: "Carol Wax", accessed January 18, 2012
↑ E. McSherry Fowble, review of Carol Wax, The Mezzotint:History and Technique in Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 26, no. 2/3 (Summer – Autumn, 1991), 184–6
↑ Ellen D'Oench, Print Quarterly, June, 1991, pp.??
↑ The modified rockers and weights are now manufactured by the toolmaker Edward C. Lyons, Bronx, New York. See Mezzotint Rockers, accessed January 18, 2012
Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types of material. As a method of printmaking, it is, along with engraving, the most important technique for old master prints, and remains in wide use today. In a number of modern variants such as microfabrication etching and photochemical milling, it is a crucial technique in modern technology, including circuit boards.
Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed technique, rather than a photographic reproduction of a visual artwork which would be printed using an electronic machine ; however, there is some cross-over between traditional and digital printmaking, including risograph.
Mezzotint is a monochrome printmaking process of the intaglio family. It was the first printing process that yielded half-tones without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple. Mezzotint achieves tonality by roughening a metal plate with thousands of little dots made by a metal tool with small teeth, called a "rocker". In printing, the tiny pits in the plate retain the ink when the face of the plate is wiped clean. This technique can achieve a high level of quality and richness in the print, and produce a furniture print which is large and bold enough to be framed and hung effectively in a room.
Drypoint is a printmaking technique of the intaglio family, in which an image is incised into a plate with a hard-pointed "needle" of sharp metal or diamond point. In principle, the method is practically identical to engraving. The difference is in the use of tools, and that the raised ridge along the furrow is not scraped or filed away as in engraving. Traditionally the plate was copper, but now acetate, zinc, or plexiglas are also commonly used. Like etching, drypoint is easier to master than engraving for an artist trained in drawing because the technique of using the needle is closer to using a pencil than the engraver's burin.
Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching that produces areas of tone rather than lines. For this reason it has mostly been used in conjunction with etching, to give both lines and shaded tone. It has also been used historically to print in colour, both by printing with multiple plates in different colours, and by making monochrome prints that were then hand-coloured with watercolour.
Sir Francis Job Short PPRE was a British printmaker and teacher of printmaking. He revived the practices of mezzotint and pure aquatint, while expanding the expressive power of line in drypoint, etching and engraving. Short also wrote about printmaking to educate a wider public and was President of the Royal Society of Painter Etcher & Engavers from 1910 to 1938. He was a member of the Art Workers' Guild and was elected Master in 1901.
Intaglio is the family of printing and printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface and the incised line or sunken area holds the ink. It is the direct opposite of a relief print where the parts of the matrix that make the image stand above the main surface.
Ludwig von Siegen was a German soldier and amateur engraver, who invented the printmaking technique of mezzotint, a printing-process reliant on mechanical pressure used to print more complex engravings than previously possible. He was a well-educated aristocrat, and a Lieutenant-Colonel who commanded the personal guard of William VI, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, and acted as a personal aide to the ruler, with the title kammerjunker or Chamberlain.
Stanley William Hayter was an English painter and master printmaker associated in the 1930s with surrealism and from 1940 onward with abstract expressionism. Regarded as one of the most significant printmakers of the 20th century, in 1927 Hayter founded the influential Atelier 17 studio in Paris. Since his death in 1988, it has been known as Atelier Contrepoint. Among the artists who frequented the atelier were Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Nemesio Antúnez, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Wassily Kandinsky, Mauricio Lasansky, K.R.H. Sonderborg, Flora Blanc, Carl Heywood, and Catherine Yarrow.
An old master print is a work of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition. The term remains current in the art trade, and there is no easy alternative in English to distinguish the works of "fine art" produced in printmaking from the vast range of decorative, utilitarian and popular prints that grew rapidly alongside the artistic print from the 15th century onwards. Fifteenth-century prints are sufficiently rare that they are classed as old master prints even if they are of crude or merely workmanlike artistic quality. A date of about 1830 is usually taken as marking the end of the period whose prints are covered by this term.
Vitreography is a fine art printmaking technique that uses a 3⁄8-inch-thick (9.5 mm) float glass matrix instead of the traditional matrices of metal, wood or stone. A print created using the technique is called a vitreograph. Unlike a monotype, in which ink is painted onto a smooth glass plate and transferred to paper to produce a unique work, the vitreograph technique involves fixing the imagery in, or on, the glass plate. This allows the production of an edition of prints.
Józef Hecht, also known as Joseph Hecht, was a printmaker and painter. Born and educated in Poland, he made Paris his base from 1920. Trained in classical engraving techniques, Hecht was a founder of "Atelier 17", and had a profound influence on 20th-century printmakers.
Caroline Wogan Durieux was an American printmaker, painter, and educator. She was a Professor Emeritus at both Louisiana State University, where she worked from 1943 to 1964 and at Newcomb College of Tulane University (1937–1942). Carl Zigrosser, Keeper of Prints at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, wrote:
"Durieux is master of her instrument. It is like an epigram delivered in a deadpan manner:the meaning sinks in casually; when all of a sudden the full impact dawns on one, it haunts one for days. Her work has that haunting quality because its roots are deep, its vision profound".
Stipple engraving is a technique used to create tone in an intaglio print by distributing a pattern of dots of various sizes and densities across the image. The pattern is created on the printing plate either in engraving by gouging out the dots with a burin, or through an etching process. Stippling was used as an adjunct to conventional line engraving and etching for over two centuries, before being developed as a distinct technique in the mid-18th century.
À la poupée is a largely historic intaglio printmaking technique for making colour prints by applying different ink colours to a single printing plate using ball-shaped wads of cloth, one for each colour. The paper has just one run through the press, but the inking needs to be carefully re-done after each impression is printed. Each impression usually varies at least slightly, sometimes very significantly.
Anne Julie Desmet is a British artist who specialises in wood engravings, linocuts and mixed media collages. She has had three major museum retrospectives, received over 30 international awards, and her work is in museum collections and publications worldwide.
Clare Romano (1922–2017) was an internationally known American printmaker and painter with works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and other major collections. As an advocate, innovator, and educator in the field of printmaking, Romano has co-authored in collaboration with her husband, John Ross, The Complete Printmaker (1972), The Complete Collagraph (1980), and several other printmaking manuals that have become standard texts for universities. They founded their High Tide Press for artists books in 1991.
Daphne Reynolds was an English printmaker in mezzotint and painter. She began painting full-time in 1950, with her earliest works produced from watercolours and later oil. One of her painting was selected by Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister, to be hung as a decoration in his study in 10 Downing Street. Reynolds became known for her studying of the arid landscapes of Arizona and New Mexico in 1968 but switched to mezzotint printmaking in middle-age. From 1964 to 1967, she was chair of the Women's International Art Club and was a fellow of the Printmakers Council. A memoir of Reynolds was written and published by her husband Graham Reynolds for close friends of the couple in 2007.
Sylvia Solochek Walters is an American artist and educator. She has produced drawings, paintings and collage works in her career, but is best known for complex woodcut prints created through the "reduction and stencil" process. Her work combines elements of realist, decorative and formalist art, flat and illusionistic space, and varied patterning and textures. She has largely focused on portraits, still lifes and domestic interiors, and collage-like combinations of personal symbolism—concerns that writers often align with early feminist art.
Yozo Hamaguchi was a Japanese copper printmaker who specialized in mezzotint and was responsible for its resurgence as a printmaking medium in the mid-20th century. Hamaguchi's prints are distinguished for their careful attention to detail of boldly hued animals and objects contrasted against a velvety black background. The corpus of Hamaguchi's prints are focused on the still life genre.
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