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Artist's Statement
The prints reveal secrets to me. I make them because they illuminate darkened corners of my mind. I print because it demands hours of reflection. And, despite all the planning and careful manipulation, woodblock prints always change, always surprise me, and keep me searching. I print without machinery, using palm gouges to carve and a simple wooden spoon as my press. I only make one print - a unique print, a mono-print, a suri-monoprint - so many names for a singular thing. I only make one because only one is necessary. Each image remains sacred, reflecting one experience in time. The traditional role of the printmaker has become obsolete: we have technology to reproduce images for the masses, and we have the Internet to open the doors of art to all who wish to see. As an artist, I must define a new role to fill. I seek art to obfuscate, deconstruct, reassemble and transform my everyday relationship with the shapes and patterns of the world. This transformation reveals the way I see things, the ways others see things- the subtle nuances which define perceptions. Seers delineate the myths of their cultures through interpretations of form. After all, form is the backbone of the visual experience. Yet it is how we associate or cognate forms which defines our world view. I seek images which deliberately set on edge the associations we bring to forms, because the world is full of illusion, or "maya" from the Hindu term. I believe in neutrinos and the repetition of forms from the microcosm to the macrocosm (i.e. a capillary looks like a bronchial tree which looks like a real tree which looks like a solar flare, or a nucleus looks like a cell, star, globular galaxy-cluster etc.) I thread my thoughts on superstrings and oocytes throughout my art. I'm enthralled by forms which disturb or excite me for no apparent reason. Those forms have power. I am not a symbolist nor a pure abstractionist: I use forms which might mean many things, have several names, or be both whimsical and terribly dark at the same time. I obsess over pattern. In no other medium does it play such a vital role. Japanese woodblocks abound in pattern, some decorative, some symbolic. The repetition embedded in the process itself further emphasizes the strata of marks which build up an image. Within my work, pattern represents continuity amidst the flux, just as strange patterns appear in random equations. I don't believe in empty space. The Japanese know of a kind of space which is a positive, or filled, medium that connects, rather than separates, all things. My images reflect this idea by weaving the forms together in a charged, active tapestry. I don't want an atmospheric, abstract void - I want a tactile, vivacious art. Woodblock is a physical, demanding, organic medium. Instead of using this medium to simply open a window into another world, I hope to create art that challenges what we see in this one. -Amy
C. Guadagnoli
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©1997-2001 Amy C. Guadagnoli, All rights reserved.