40 Types of Fire, Greg Stone; Tate Foley

Tate Foley visited KU in 2014 and made 40 Types of Fire. From a meth lab and fire ants to a public pool filled with flames and a burning pile of books, this photolithograph asks the viewer to expand their ideas of what “fire” can be. Foley and Stone present viewers with 40 types of fire. Can you think of 40 more?

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. In photolithography, the artist uses a photoresist material that reacts with UV light to create hardened and unhardened areas on the plate. Next, a solvent dissolves the unhardened photoresist. 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.

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