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. [Retun to the Emily Pott's Portfolio]         EMILY POTTS Emily Potts is a young, California-based artist whose work is influenced by her travels and middle class background. She studied book arts and painting at the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Raised in a conservative, but bicultural town in Northern California, Potts has produced work that reflects on the deterioration of the farming community. She has touched on issues of poverty, the inequalities in the treatment of agricultural workers and environmental degradation. While in college, Potts was active in many social concern groups and labor action campaigns. Compelled to react directly to the horrors in news media, she produced a series of monoprints from the cover stories of Time Magazine in 1996. Potts has traveled extensively in Mexico and lived for a year in Ghana, West Africa. She maintains close ties with Ghana and is interested in the contemporary and traditional arts of developing nations. Her work discusses the cultural effects of colonialism and the western media machine, a post-colonial view of slavery, intercultural relationships and religious practices. Currently, Potts has been working with more organically abstract forms and using a variety of media such as sewn paper and wax. Her most recent series utilizes this media and explores her experiences visiting the Colonial Slave Forts in Ghana. Below is a brief description of the technique I employed in creating the monoprints mentioned above: In the image "Oklahoma", a series of steps were taken to create the layered effect by combining a hybrid procedure of chemical etching and monoprinting. In this image, 3 etching plates were used: the scull in the top left corner, the hand in the top right corner and the yellow abstract plate covering 3/4 of the bottom of the image. A standard heavyweight Rives etching paper was chosen and a color combination was loosely devised. Next, the skull plate was inked up with a mixed color and ran through the press on this paper. Then the paper was set aside to dry, and the plate was washed. Then, the red hand plate was inked up and run through the press using the same paper as before. In order to make sure that the plates lined up, a registration system measuring the distance from the plate to where the edge of the paper should be is used. The paper was again allowed to dry. Lastly, the yellow plate was inked up by using a large brayer to distribute the ink on the surface of the etching plate. Before the yellow ink could dry, the image of the child was quickly painted in on top of the plate using etching inks, linseed oil and turpentine. The plate was placed on the bed of the press and the paper was carefully laid on top according to registration. The layered image is then complete and ready to dry. [Emily Pott's Portfolio | Top]