Limitations and Possibilities

Adriane Herman, artist

born 1966

Limitations and Possibilities, 2013

Where object was made: Lawrence, Kansas, United States

Material/technique: color photolithograph

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): a 640 x 473 mm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 25 3/16 x 18 5/8 in
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): b 643 x 475 mm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 25 5/16 x 18 11/16 in
Mat Dimensions (Height x Width): 32 x 24 in
Mat Dimensions (Height x Width): 32 x 24 in

Credit line: Gift of the KU Department of Visual Art, Printmaking Area

Accession number: 2015.0036.a,b

Not on display

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Images

Label texts

Brosseau Center for Learning: Six Degrees of Separation: Prints from KU and Beyond

Adriane Herman’s image is a surface constructed from handwritten warnings, suggestions, reminders, and lists that come together as a kind of chorus in this photolithograph. According to her biography, Herman “studies accumulation and release in our physical and emotional landscapes.” By presenting these notes in a non-hierarchal way, the viewer must take them in all at once, with the colorful notes as a defining feature.

Brosseau Center for Learning: Six Degrees of Separation: Prints from KU and Beyond

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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