HOW DO THE ETCHINGS COME ABOUT?
DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF A PRINTMAKER?

No, it's always a collaboration. Flatbed Press in Austin usually makes the plates and Fran Christina, my husband, pulls the prints. I start the process by drawing with a fine ink pen on vellum. When that's done, or at least to the first stage, we take it to Flatbed, where they transfer the drawing or drawings to a copper plate or plates using a quite complicated process involving direct gravure or photogravure, which I don't understand.

Once they produce a plate, we proof it and then go through a couple more stages, back and forth, adding more lines into a hard ground and then putting the plate back into the acid, or using an acid "spitbite" to add shading, or basically using whatever technique they suggest to get the effect I'm looking for.

When we have a keeper, the plates come home where Fran pulls the rest of the edition one by one on his etching press in the studio adjacent to mine. He then cleans up the prints and brings them to me to touch up or color where needed, and then we spread them all out and edit them into a finished edition. (This is an organized version of the facts, which are usually a little messier.)