Karen Cornelius
Printmaker
Outside inside: the Parka Experience
Cornelius taught printmaking in Ulukhaktok formally Holman in the Arctic Circle in 2011. The only directive she received from the north was to bring a parka. This parka became the inspiration for a new body of work.
The parka confines and protects. It limits vision, constricts movement, muffles sound, yet it is mandatory survival gear. I experienced -59 Celsius temperatures, high winds, snow fog, fear of frostbite, and fear of wolves and polar bears.
Cornelius found her senses were both heightened and dulled; the dangers were real but her physical response was altered. As an outsider to this environment, Cornelius had a keen awareness of the parka experience.
While Cornelius was in the Arctic Circle, she made drawings, recorded video and sound, and made prints. Using this source material, Cornelius explored her outside inside parka experience of being small in a big space, being vulnerable in the face danger and seeing the world as white on white with no familiar reference points.
As a printmaker, Cornelius began to create varied editions from a single block. Working with varied edition prints allows her to capture the stages of the development of an idea. Documenting this flux has become an integral part of her art-making practise as she now conceives of technique and content as building upon one another.
In tandem with her experiments in varied edition alumigraph prints, Cornelius experimented with transferring actual parkas to the plate using soft ground and etching with a less toxic solution of copper sulphate and salt.
The resulting images simultaneously print both the front and the back of the parka, merging the outside and inside experience. Cornelius is inspired by the Canadian artist Betty Goodwin’s soft ground vest series.
She also works in video. Cornelius sees the two media as complementary; both involve the layering of ideas and both bear witness to the passage of time.
She seeks out experiences that place her in a cultural or geographical context with which she is unfamiliar. These encounters provide life-on-the-edge moments where one’s senses are sharpened and awareness of one’s mortality and physical vulnerability are accentuated.
Things that may seem commonplace and mundane in a particular culture and place are seen and explored with an outsider’s eye.
Soft Ground Etching
Etching is an original printmaking process using acid or a mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design.
In this work, I transferred actual parkas onto the aluminum plate using a soft ground of asphaltum, beeswax and rosin. The soft ground remains soft, pliable and sensitive to pressure allowing textured materials to be pressed into the surface. When the textured material which in this case was a parka is carefully removed from the plate an impression consistent with the clothing is exposed. The ground must be hardened on the metal plate before being etched. I used a less toxic mordant of copper sulfate and salt to etch the aluminum plates for this series.
Once the resist is removed, the plate is inked and wiped by hand pushing ink into every line and texture, then wiping the excess off the surface. The inked image is transferred onto paper by running the plate topped with a piece of rag paper between a steel roller and a steel bed of a hand-driven etching press.