Cherie Hunter Day – black & white collages

Artist statement for her black & white collages

Cherie Hunter Day writes:

The source for the black and white etchings is The Complete Encyclopedia of Illustration by J. G. Heck (Park Lane division of Crown Publishers, Inc., 1979.) It is based on the 1851 edition of The Iconographic Encyclopedia of Science Literature and Art. 

These images have traversed four separate methods of reproduction—two wet processes and two dry processes. The intaglio etching (1851) and commercial lithography (1979) are printed in ink on paper. I used a photocopier to copy the images (2004). Xerography is a dry process using static electricity to deposit charged particles (toner) on paper. I cut out the image copies to create new arrangements and paste them on paper—another wet step, which is part of the creation but not the reproduction. The final iteration is to scan them using a flatbed scanner (camera with lenses and mirrors) to create a digital file of pixels (Joint Photographic Experts Group or JPEG) (2021).