My Horse Was Frozen
Etching, 1989
I have 15 drawers where I keep my prints—twenty-five years worth of trials and tribulations on paper, and the occasional greatest hit. This week I’ve been reorganizing the contents of these drawers that used to store architectural blueprints, before I bought them from a secondhand office supply store in the East end of Montreal. I didn’t think this would be such an emotional undertaking. I was expecting a breezy, mechanical task that would not tax the right cerebral cortex of my brain. Little did I know that this act would have the impact of viewing the autobiographical film that one supposedly sees right before dying or fainting.
Canicule
Etching, 1992
Each of my images brings back an episode or a sensation related to the time and place where I made it. They are little, and sometimes not so little, markers of time, embedded with messages only I can decode. The sheer volume of creative energy trapped on these sheets of Arches paper provoke an uneasy feeling in me. I wonder what to do with all the work, what my family will do with it when I leave this material existence, what it means to have been an artist for a quarter of a decade, what will happen if all this goes up in smoke or drenched in a flood, what order to put the prints in, what contribution I am making to humanity, where I’ll put the next twenty-five years worth of prints, how I can be such a perfect candidate for an anti-anxiety drug yet be so substance free….and then my husband will come down to the basement and see the ping pong table full of the disarray of artwork and marvel in awe at all the “beautiful work,” and then sensing my self-doubt, adds, “Bravo, Talleen,” before running up to work on the sketches for his latest book project.
Untitled
Dry point, 1992
A colleague of mine one day suggested that I have a retrospective exhibition. At the time I did not think much about this idea but now I can imagine it. The show could be entitled, “Les tiroirs.” Somehow, “The Drawers,” just doesn’t cut it, although this title does stir ideas involving soft ground imprints of Calvin Klein and Fruit of the Loom briefs. Betty Goodwin made prints of vests, and Deborah Wood at my studio made a litho of lace panties disguised as a salad bowl full of leafy greens! Hmm, food for thought.
I am too young to have a retrospective. Let me be too young for something other than a discount for metro tickets. In the meantime there is a bank of prints that will go unseen for several more years, unless a brilliant curator reads this blog and decides to organize a show with these treasures from the past. Paris, Beijing, New York, would work for me. I’ve heard that these semi-subtle pleas pitched into the World Wide Web actually materialize sometimes, even if each reader does not forward the link to this blog to thirteen extremely special friends within five minutes of reading it.
This is day three of my cleanup mission and I am on drawer number four. This one contains prints made by my son, Pablo. There are even prints made by his yummy six-month-old feet. Wistfulness, the passing of time, wondering how almost thirteen years passed so quickly, anxiety, worrying about curfews worries yet to come. This drawer also contains prints and printed greeting cards by other artists. I wonder about friends I lost track of, regret not having kept up correspondence, the old way with paper and pen, and realize that some of my email correspondence has been reduced to receiving forwarded or pseudo-cute or funny messages that I delete before opening.
Walk
Dry point, 1993
I love this messy business of reorganizing my drawers. Like making art, this act pulls at my emotions and makes me feel alive. It makes me ask questions. Maybe by drawer number 15 I’ll have a few answers. For now I’ll put on my Katak CD by Florent Vollant, and dive into the tiroirs and cleanse my spirit. As Vollant has written inside the CD cover, The Spirit is Good.
Talleen Hacikyan
Prints by Talleen Hacikyan, to prove that once upon a time I etched copper plates!
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