Unclassified Reflections: D

Description

Unclassified Reflections, 1994, portfolio of seven photolithographs (computer-generated images printed in waterless lithography), ed. 15, comprised of six prints and title page, with transparency and photocopy of one computer-generated image, and printing plate for one print
Gordon Gilkey is Curator of Prints at the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR, where heads the Vivian and Gordon Gilkey Center for Graphic Arts. He is also a printmaker and teacher of printmaking.
He made this suite of photolithographs to commemorate the 200th anniversity of Senefelder’s invention of lithography by utilizing late 20th-century computer technology.
The portfolio of seven photolithographs (a title page and six prints, A-F) are computer-generated images. They are printed using an ingenious process developed by Jeff Ryan—waterless lithography. Since water is not used in the process, the paper is not dampened as in traditional lithography, thus avoiding problems with paper stretching that make perfect registration a challenge. The printing process is simple and fast. As well, the method avoids using chemicals that harm the environment.
In waterless lithography, the image can be either hand-drawn (on a transparent or translucent surface such as paper, glass, or plastic film) or developed photographically (from a photograph, drawing, painting, or collage to form a positive or negative film). The image is placed on a zinc or aluminum plate that has been coated with a light-sensitive silicone rubber coating. Where light strikes the plate, a chemical change allows the light-affected silicone to be removed with liquid developer. Ink will adhere to those areas, while the areas that were not exposed to the light and thus remain covered with silicone reject ink.
Gilkey’s gift also includes a transparency and photocopy of the computer-generated image for print C and the printing plate for print C.
Of the edition of 15, the portfolio owned by the University of Michigan Museum of Art is one of six suites each with one of the six printing plates; the others are at The Vivian and Gordon Gilkey Center for Graphic Arts at the Portland Art Museum, The Cincinnati Art Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Fogg Museum at Harvard, The Division of Graphic Arts of the Smithsonian. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, has a set of the prints only.
The suites were printed at Mahaffey Fine Arts, Portland, OR, by Mark Mahaffey, master printer, on Rives BFK white paper.