Printmaking
Kiki Smith
Filmed in 2002 at the printmaking workshop Harlan & Weaver, artist Kiki Smith discusses the challenges and pleasures of printmaking.
Shown working on a portrait titled Two (2002), Smith and the workshop’s master printers make numerous proofs and revisions until she is pleased with the image. Using ink on paper, Smith combines traditional and self-taught etching techniques in her attempts to represent the subtleties of human flesh.
Featured artists
About the artists
In the 1980s, Kiki Smith literally turned the figurative tradition in sculpture inside out, creating objects and drawings based on organs, cellular forms, and the human nervous system. This body of work evolved to incorporate animals, domestic objects, and narrative tropes from classical mythology and folk tales. Life, death, and resurrection are thematic signposts in many of Smith’s installations and sculptures. The recurrent subject matter in Smith’s work has been the body as a receptacle for knowledge, belief, and storytelling.
