Fast Buck, Laura Sink

Laura Sink riffs on the frustrations of life as an artist, depicting a woman’s last-ditch effort to sell her work to the piteous, potential customer upon whom she sits. The composition resembles the cover of an action comic. However, in this case the hero’s, or antihero’s, concerns seem purely financial in nature. The juxtaposition of the practical struggles of an artist with the over-the-top style and activities of the comic’s realm contributes to a wry form of playful self-mockery. This lithograph was included in the X-Change Portfolio initiated by KU Professor of Visual Art Michael Krueger.

To create a lithograph, a printmaker creates an image on a printing plate, traditionally a stone, using a water-resistant substance such as a wax pencil or crayon. Next, the plate must be covered in a solution typically containing gum arabic and nitric acid that surrounds the original image and to which printing ink will not adhere. Ink can then be applied to the plate, or stone. Each desired color requires its own plate. Finally, the printer runs the plate and a sheet of paper or other substrate run through a printing press. The pressure from the press transfers the ink onto the paper. Today offset lithography, which most often uses metal or plastic plates instead of stone, has become the most popular way of printing books, magazines, posters and other mass-produced images. In order not to reverse the composition during printing, in offset lithography a photographic image transferred onto a plate is then offset onto a rubber sheet, called a blanket. The offset image can then be printed on paper while maintaining the same orientation as the original photograph.