The IEA was joined by Bob Erickson from Piseco, NY, for an artist residency over the week of June 12th. Bob, who received his MFA from Illinois State University in 1987 and has work in permanent collections of over twenty national and international galleries and museums, finds inspiration for his work from the world around him in the Northern Adirondack Mountains of New York State. In his North series, Bob captures the big and the small and removes the scale, creating images where the image could be a pile of sticks or the view of the sky through the tree line with no way to distinguish between the two. While the images look abstract at first, a closer inspection reveals tells of the source material through the earthly tones and mottled backgrounds that hint to the tree branches, mosses, and rocky outcroppings from which his images are derived.

During his residency, Bob spread his time across stone litho, photopolymer, acrylic plate, and digital printing with imagery from his North series. Besides the widespread use of nearly every press and technique available in the shop, Bob’s most ambitious project was his treatment of the digital prints. Bob prepared a bath with sediment, dyes, and washes and set the digital prints he produced into these baths to absorb impurities as well as have the sediment stick to the surface once the paper was retrieved from the bath. This technique resulted in prints that looked both digitally produced and hand made at the same time.

Below are some images from Bob’s residency: