Carol Hoffnagle and Peter Keefer
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COLLAGRAPHS
by Carol Hoffnagle and Peter Keefer
A collagraph is a print of a collage. The usual method of achieving this is to use heavy cardboard and glue down various textures such as fabric, foil, salt, etc. to the surface. Drawing with white glue, gesso, modeling paste or various lacquers are other common ways to achieve texture or height differential. Any exposed white glue areas must be covered with an acrylic to prevent paper sticking during the printing process.
Ink is spread on the plate and carefully wiped off the top surface much like an etching is inked and wiped. The difference is that the etching has a surface that is bitten or cut into, and the collagraph has a surface that is built up. The cardboard, however, does not hold up well with multiple printings so Peter started experimenting with other materials and settled on untempered masonite for a plate, over which he applied gesso and then the collage.
Over the years Peter and Carol have gotten away from using just a single collagraph surface and have started jig-sawing the plate into separate pieces, combining the collage parts with flat roll-up pieces, using the resulting separations between the pieces as a raised, paper colored “drawing line.” In the flat roll-up technique they sometimes use multi-color blends for different effects. These blends are achieved by placing two or more connected colors out on a flat plexiglass surface and blending the colors by moving a roller left to right as well as back and forth until the desired look is achieved.
The ink, whether a single color or a blend, is next transferred to the individual pieces and then placed back together on the press bed, much like a jigsaw puzzle. The damp paper is placed on the combined pieces and run through the press.
A great deal of time is spent inking each separate piece, but the complete image is printed on the paper in one pass through the press. One has to do it all again, of course, for a second print of the same image.
