Susan Oehme

Sue Oehme's recent body of work focuses on the use of color and shape to create structure and push visual space. She utilizes everyday recycled objects and etching plates that are prepared and inked with the print staff at Oehme Graphics to make complex, multiple-layered images that are strangely and vaguely reminiscent of hints of life in our super-charged, consumer-based, politicized culture. After years of collecting various recycled materials from past artist projects in the print studio, Ms. Oehme realized the plan to utilize these elements in her new works. These consist of cut-offs from other artist’s stencils, miscellaneous flattened packaging materials, mesh produce bags, 6-pack plastic rings, textural wall papers, bits of acetate, coffee stir sticks, and various test plates with dry point, aquatint, hard ground and etching. Cast off strips of Solar plates which have been intentionally shattered to create random fractured patterns are a key structural element. Another main component, and sometimes the only one, is watercolor painted on vellum, which is then cut into various oddly shaped and not-quite-square pieces. All of the “plates” are inked with wiped or rolled oil color, and then the composition of the print takes place on the spot on the press bed. Almost every print is put through the press at least two times, to build up the density of color and trompe-l’oeil overlays. Once the printing is completed, the print is stapled to the flat wall in the studio, and then Sue spends up to 15 hours hand embellishing the final piece.