A Bird and a Girl

Pennerton West

Pennerton West had already been an art student in New York throughout the 1930s before she began working at the experimental workshop Atelier 17 in 1946, under the direction of Stanley William Hayter. Though little is known of her studies at the Art Students League and the Cooper Union, she appears to have been a self-determined artist in an uncertain time, seeking out unusual techniques on the plate and carving out a name for herself as a female Abstract artist in a predominantly male arena. This self-determination was also apparent in her everyday life: in the 1930s, to support herself through her schooling, she worked as a Manhattan cabbie, working nightshifts in which she had to “wrangle drunken passengers.” (Christina Weyl, atelier17.christinaweyl.com, artist biography of Pennerton West, footnotes.)

In “A Bird and a Girl” the deep bite process is evident in the bold white shape that zips through the center of the relatively small matrix. Aquatint in black and rose red inks keep the composition simple yet vibrant, a small window onto a seminal decade of experimental American printmaking.