Three new whale etchings by Kim HyunJu have arrived at Odd One Out: a humpback called Sea and Sky, a gray whale called Travelling Seas, and Blue Whale. Each whale is a landscape. Shells, starfish, ferns, mushrooms and insects fill two of them, and stars and moons fill the third. All are printed in deep blue ink on soft white paper and ringed by stars pressed into the page.
Together they make a small pod. Kim describes a Blue Whale, a Gray Whale and a Humpback Whale "coming together with stars", and she made them during her residency in Guanlan Printmaking Village, China, ahead of a major exhibition in Shenzhen.
Kim with a finished impression of the blue whale. On the press bed below are the etched plate and the copper stars.
Meet the whales
Sea and Sky is the humpback (34 x 25 cm), tilted upward as if surfacing. Look closely at its body: clusters of barnacles and shells run along the flank, a starfish sits near the tail, and fine lines of seaweed trail across the back. The whale carries a whole reef with it.
Travelling Seas is the long, low gray whale (50 x 25 cm), and it holds a surprise. Instead of sea life, its body is filled with a forest floor: ferns uncurling, mushrooms, a spider in its web, a snail and beetles. Only the barnacle-like patches on the head tell you it belongs to the ocean.
Blue Whale completes the trio. At 112 x 45 cm it is the largest of the three, and its body is the night sky. Dense bubbles, small stars and pale moons crowd the back and fade into deep blue below. Placed side by side, the humpback carries the sea, the gray whale carries the land and the blue whale carries the sky, all ringed by the same pressed stars.
Water or sky?
Kim says the stars began as reflections on the water at night. Look at a whale under a sky full of stars and you can suddenly lose track of whether you are in the water or up in the sky. That feeling is where her whales with stars began.
Made in a two-month residency
Kim and fellow Odd One Out artist Damon Kowarsky took part in a two-month residency at the Guanlan Original Printmaking Base in Guanlan Printmaking Village, China. They prepared works for an exhibition that forms part of the APEC Conference in Shenzhen this November.
The theme is "Vast Oceans and Lofty Skies", a fitting one, Kim notes, for all the countries that border the Pacific. Whales cross those waters without needing a passport, which makes them a natural subject.
How the whales are made
Every impression is made by hand, in several steps. This is what happens between the drawing and the finished print.
- Drawing the plate. The image is drawn into a metal plate, usually copper or zinc, which is first covered with an acid-resistant coating. The artist scratches through the coating with a fine needle, exposing the metal wherever there is a line. The dense detail in the whales' bodies is built from very many of these lines. The blue whale's plate is cut to the shape of the whale itself.
- Biting. The plate goes into acid, which eats into the exposed lines and leaves grooves in the metal. The longer an area is bitten, the deeper the groove and the darker the line prints.
- Inking. Deep blue ink is worked into the grooves, and the surface of the plate is wiped clean so ink stays only in the lines.
- Printing. A sheet of dampened paper is laid over the plate and both pass through the etching press under heavy pressure. The pressure pushes the paper into the grooves, where it lifts the ink. Each impression has to be inked, wiped and printed again, so no two are exactly alike.
- The stars. The stars are cut from copper and arranged on the press bed around the whale plate. They are printed at the same time as the whale, in the same pass through the press and by the same process, just without ink. The pressure embosses their shape into the paper. They show only as soft relief and shadow, and change as the light moves across them.
Kim wipes the inked plate clean, so the ink stays only in the lines.
A close look at the embossed stars on the finished blue whale print.
What to look for when you see one in person
- The lines. Fine, dense, slightly raised lines of ink, rather than the flat dots of a digital reproduction.
- The stars. Tilt the print towards a light and they appear as relief in the paper.
- The pencil. The title and signature are written by hand, usually below the image.
- The edges. The soft, uneven paper edge is a deckle edge, a sign of a good paper made to be handled and framed with care.
If you would like to know how to care for a print like this, see our guide How to look after your prints and all works on paper, and for more on the process, What is Printmaking?
See the whales
The three whales are now at Odd One Out: Sea and Sky, Travelling Seas and Blue Whale. See all of Kim HyunJu's work.
There is also Star Whales (118 x 82 cm), a large print that brings all three whales and the stars together on one sheet. To ask about it, email info@oddoneout.hk.
Follow us for more from Kim's residency in Guanlan.
Photos and videos: Kim HyunJu.