April 15 - July 8, 2001

The Noyes Museum of Art
Oceanville, New Jersey

Roslyn Rose, Hoboken, N.J.

Roslyn Rose is a master printmaker who is well versed in the technique and history of printmaking. She recently turned to photo transfer as her primary artistic medium. This relatively novel technique allows her to create a manipulated impression by altering and/or juxtaposing contrasting images into a single framework. Therefore, like photomontage, the new composition often emanates a sense of surrealism with a great variety of spatio-temporal attributes.
Close Up is comprised of an array of head shots from ancient Egyptian, pre-Columbian, modern European and contemporary Indian cultures. In this work, Rose unites and examines varied physiognomies that otherwise would be separated by geography, ethnicity, and time. She states, “When I worked on Close Up, I was intrigued by the shape of the faces and the the most prominent parts.......I like the combination of the depiction of living people with facsimiles of earlier interpretations of the human face.”
Rose’s repertoire of images is well stocked with numerous slides she took on her extensive travels throughout the western United States, Europe, and Asia. Technically, the photo transfer is done by projecting an image from a slide onto an emulsion-coated, light-sensitive piece of polaroid paper. The photographic emulsion is then lifted onto watercolor paper. Watercolor or acrylic is applied during the last step for a cosmetic touch-up or to smooth the transition from the photographic medium.

Hsiao-Ning Tu, Curator