The piece below, I Woke Up Crying, started as a charcoal drawing before being committed to an etching plate, and finally finding new life with stitched-on elements — an evolutionary process that artist Pamela Day says is part of what she enjoys about etching. The sad, yet whimsical collage won the Anne Banks Collage Award as part of “(CON)text,” our June exhibit.
Pamela, who will also be teaching etching on Tuesday evenings this summer, told us about the bad day that inspired this piece and why she’s a printmaker. Read about it in our Q&A, below.
Since the show this month is about work with a message, what does this piece mean to you?
This piece is very cathartic to me. It is not based on a dream at all, but an actual really bad day. Sometimes you just wake up feeling sad, you know? My mom had died a couple of months before this day, and I guess I was missing her. That day it seemed like all efforts to cheer me ended in something else making me even sadder. I even left out the part about the car crash on my street that blocked it off when we were coming home with the ice cream! Sometimes a bad day can make for good inspiration. Continue reading Q&A with Award Winner Pamela Day
