The “starwheel press” is a 19th century cast-iron etching press. It has been passed between the hands of women artists as a tradition started by Mary Leto, who purchased it with a hundred dollar bill. When she moved her studio, Moon Tide Paper Studio, to South Carolina she sold it for the same price to artist Dawn Lee, who passed it on to me in 2016 with the promise to give it a good home and carry on the tradition.
This gift has become a physical anchor for a restless artist moving among disciplines and mediums, yet whose process-driven practice has revolved around the act of “imprinting” throughout. Traces of my body have imprinted endless surfaces – walls, paper, fabric, plaster, rubber, printing substrates, nature, and other bodies – a desire to both disappear and leave one’s mark in time and space.
I’ve always been drawn to the a performative act of printmaking. It creates a choreography demanding of an artist’s full presence. The Starwheel is a quirky and mystical old partner. With a radius longer than the span of my fingertips, and curvy body five times my weight, the elegant Starwheel invites all who lean into her give her a spin to be transformed.
Starwheel Press & Projects 