11 x 11" square; 72 pages. Full color plates. Hardbound with an illustrated jacket. Inky Press: "A visual autobiography containing over sixty five bichromate images created in multi layered color, predating digitally manipulated photographs by years. All images were produced from 1976 - 1979 using a Kwik Print on vinyl. This process involves coating light sensitive color onto a vinyl base, contact printing large negatives with a bright light source and washing away the unexposed color with water. The images were built up with multiple negatives and many exposures.” Bea Nettles, from the Introduction: “This book is my visual autobiography, starting with my girlhood in Florida and starting over again with my daughter Rachel’s first year. The work is loosely sequenced and includes portraits of myself and family and landscapes pieced together from memories.” Shelley Rice, Art in America (June 1978): “These images float freely across the picture, defying gravity and ignoring normal space and scale with Surrealist-influenced irrationality. Figures loom large over landscapes and turn into angels; the moon beams at the earth with a smiling face and then becomes a dish or a clock. Folds of patterned cloth sprawl into mountains capes while translucent fish swim through rainbows in the night sky. The artist’s visions come alive against backdrops of purples, greens, blues, mauve pinks, amber, browns....Emotionally charged and deeply subjective, Nettles’ colors are equivalents for a reality perceivable only by the inner eye.” |
