Clay Monoprints: Dreams, Visions, and Alternate Realities

“I have been making clay monoprints since my first workshop with Mitch Lyons, its originator, in December 2016. Clay monoprinting is a unique combination of printmaking together with the tactility of clay, and results in two-dimensional work with greater depth, and feeling of three-dimensionality.

The printing ‘plate’ is a clay slab. Color is applied with clay slip to which pigments have been added. Layers of texture using all kinds of materials can be added. The ‘paper’ is a synthetic interfacing material called Reemay 2470. When placed over the design and hand rubbed with a pony roller, a print from the slab is transferred to the two-dimensional material. There is a spontaneity to the process, and random surprises as colors and textures from previous layers come through in the print. Hand finishing can be done with watercolor, pastels, or other media.

I have always been a found-object assemblage artist, and am a member of the Philadelphia Dumpster Divers. More recently I have started integrating clay with found objects, which opens up new possibilities. The interplay between a variety of modalities is an important part of my creative process. I’m grateful to be pursuing this satisfying and joyful path full-time.”

Art-making for me is a nonverbal, nonlinear, intuitive spiritual path. A form of visual memoir, art weaves the collage of my life into a whole, in dialogue with the viewer. —Susan Richards

Susan Richards has been a full-time artist with a home studio since 2010, when she retired from her day-job in San Diego and moved back to the Philly area. She had been a ‘kitchen table artist’ for most of her life prior to that, from childhood on. Susan was a psychotherapist in private practice for over thirty years, with a special interest in dreams, and the relationship of creativity and the unconscious. Prior to that she was an Art History major at Columbia University. Life in New York City was her best art education. All her previous experiences in life inform who she is as an artist today, whether her years as a psychotherapist or her year in a remote Eskimo village as a VISTA Volunteer.

Click to view the Winter-Spring 2018 Arts and Spirituality Programs brochure.

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