Margot K. Rocklen, Printmaker (brief biography
and artist’s statement)
Margot Kurzrok Rocklen began making prints
in 1967, at Carnegie Mellon University, where she was a
graphic design major. She spent her junior year at Tyler
School of Art in Rome, Italy, studying printmaking. After
college she worked as a layout artist in advertising firms
and earned an MS in Art Education from Southern Connecticut
State University. Her Masters thesis was a history of monotype
and an analysis of its role in contemporary art. She teaches
graphics, illustration and printmaking in New Haven.
Margot prints on an intaglio press in her
home studio, and exhibits her work at City Gallery in New
Haven, and throughout the eastern states. She finds the
entire process of making prints, from conception to proof
or completed edition, challenging and rewarding.
“I view a print as the product of a
lot of mental and physical energy. The printmaking process
is for me a journey and a learning experience. Every print
presents a different set of design and technical problems
and all the emotions that accompany them: vexation, exhilaration,
disappointment, surprise, etc. Mostly there is plenty of
satisfaction on having solved whatever problems arise to
produce a successful work or group of works.
The concept or idea for the print must have
special meaning to me. Once I have decided what I want to
say the problem becomes visual and may involve photographing
for reference, preliminary sketching, and finally, more
complete black and white, and color studies. The plates
or blocks for the printmaking process are made according
to the color studies. In the development of a print, I may
use one or several printmaking techniques, each having a
significant effect on the image. Today there are so many
new high tech materials and processes available. I have
branched out from simple relief methods to traditional etching
to multi plate and process color printing, polymer plates,
computer generated lithographic plates, and then back to
two of the most direct and historical processes, Japanese
woodblock, and monotype. Some techniques create soft edges,
and are excellent for layering and subtlety, while others
produce strong line and shape. I make use of all these qualities
in different prints. In my experience, the monotype technique
is the most spontaneous and exciting method. It produces
a single print, and can incorporate drawing, painting, photographic
transfers, airbrush, pastel, collage, stencils, and many
other mediums. Most importantly, monotype allows for the
integration and transfer of every fingerprint, roll, brush
stroke, line, splatter and mark, planned or accidental,
onto the surface of the paper, fabric, or whatever the artist
chooses to use. When I work in Japanese woodblock or intaglio
it is with the intent of making an edition of the same image.
However, the animated textural and layered quality of the
monotypes has influenced the way I work in the traditional
methods of printmaking.
My prints reflect my interests and emotional
responses to specific objects, events, places and issues.
I try to connect the essence of an object, the history of
a place, the significance of a word to visually evocative
imagery. I like to think that my work is arresting a moment
of the viewer’s life, and will spark a passion in
her/him whenever it is seen or recalled.”
