Lithographie 4 couleurs, 2019
This is a reindeer cup lichen, found and photographed by the artist during a walk in the forest. Julie tells me that she tried to draw it several times, without ever being able to mimic its original texture and depth.
During a CMYK exercise at the Tamarind Institute, Julie found a solution to her lichenous problem. Without going into technical details (lithography moves in wondrous ways), she explains that the process is almost the same as an industrial printing, but everything is done manually by the artist. The photo is first passed into the computer to be divided into yellow, magenta, cyan and black. The artist has to make sure the alignment is perfect to successively apply four layers of color on the paper without shifting them. Adding to the complexity, the amount of color dispensed for each coat should be controlled so that it is neither too light nor too dark. A painstaking task.
Far from Julie's usual creative practice (she usually draw everything by hand), Cladonia rangiferina shows another part of her work: the artist's desire to own a subject while offering it the ideal representation’s conditions.
- Sevia Pellissier