James Sullivan - Seeing in the Dark

James Sullivan, of Dallas, Texas, is well known for his remarkable cast sculptures. He is also a printmaker who uses printmaking media to explore spaces not usually seen and shapes that are often difficult to see. This makes for interesting printmaking since he pushes methods and processes to capture ideas about mass, space and light.

“Box” 1, Chine collé direct polymer gravure, 22 1/4 x 30 inches, edition of 10, 2023.

In 2023, Sullivan developed two images at Flatbed to become polymer gravure etchings. First was the image of “Box” 1, a hand-drawn skeletal probing of the space of a simple box. He had drawn this image with a certain hand-carved reed dipped a sepia-toned ink. The second was Popular Mechanics 8 + 3, a diptych intaglio image based on Sullivan's landscape drawings which are on sheets from a Popular Mechanics magazine printed with the raised-dot patterns of Braille. The images though starkly different from each other, share Sullivan’s search for the unseen.
The “Box” 1 drawing began with a drawing of the space and frame of Sullivan’s studio in Wyoming while at an art residency at Jentel. He sees the drawing as exploring the shallow structure, its space, and the light which joins the inside to the outside.  A new direct-to-plate process which transfered the drawing to a light-sensitive plate was used and the image was etched into the polymer plate. Ink was mixed to be transparent and even more luminous than the drawing then printed onto a near square of a fine laid Japan Sekishu paper which was later colléd to a support paper. It stands complete and as a post-minimalist form while its interior is active and full of lines that describe its inner boundaries and the spaces between.

Popular Mechanics 8 + 3, Direct polymer gravure, 22 x 30 inches, edition of 10, 2023.

Sullivan’s drawing practice has included drawing with charcoal directly onto Braille sheets from a Popular Mechanics magazine for the blind. The sheets he draws on have wonderful raised dots that catch the charcoal on one side of the mark and resist on the other. His drawings on these sheets can be made out to be landscapes, that feel like the kind of landscape you’d see at deep dusk. They are blind scapes, perhaps drawn at dusk when only the minimum amount of light reveals dense areas and open areas. Using the direct polymer gravure process, we scanned two of the drawings and made etching plates that faithfully recorded these drawings, and visually recorded the physical texture of the Braille dots. Sullivan made decisions as we proofed these plates to print them side by side. The plates were selectively inked and wiped, to emphasize the subtle contrast of tonality of the sky to tree, of the tree to land. The resulting print is a rich tour de force of the Braille texture but the images demand our searching and experiencing the landscape of the night.

Both etchings were printed in editions of ten. They are now available at Flatbed. Link through the images to learn more!