Wall of Green - from the "Voices and Visions" Fort Mason Printmakers portfolio by Eleanore Bender

Wall of Green - from the Voices and Visions Fort Mason Printmakers portfolio by Eleanore Bender

Wall of Green - from the "Voices and Visions" Fort Mason Printmakers portfolio

Eleanore Bender

Title

Wall of Green - from the "Voices and Visions" Fort Mason Printmakers portfolio

 
Artist

Eleanore Bender

  1921 - PRESENT (biography)
Year
1983  
Technique
color etching and aquatint 
Image Size
9 5/8 x 14" image size 
Signature
pencil, lower right 
Edition Size
III/XXV 
Annotations
pencil titled and editioned 
Reference
 
Paper
cream Arches Cover wove 
State
published 
Publisher
The Fort Mason Printmakers under the direction of Eleanor Rappe 
Inventory ID
23103 
Price
SOLD
Description

From the portfolio of 22 etchings by 22 artists, titled "Voice and Visions: A Book of Poems and Etchings." Printed by the Fort Mason Printmakers in San Francisco under the direction of Eleanor Rappe, each work was inspired by a poem of the artist's choice, corresponding to their assigned category: Part I, Of Love and Loss; Part II, Upon the Earth; Part III, Under the Heavens; Part IV, Journeys of the Mind; and Part V, Metamorphoses.

This print is from the fifth category: Metamorphoses. Its corresponding poem was "The Hunter in the Forest" by Pablo Neruda.

Into this forest of mine I go with my roots, / with my fruitfulness. "Where / do you come from?" asks / a green leaf broad as a map. / I don't reply. There / the earth is damp, / and my boots stick, seek, / knock for it to open, / but the earth is mute. / It will be mute until I begin to be / dead and living matter, climbing the plant, / brute trunk of a spiny tree / or quivering cup. / The earth is mute so as not to reveal / its different names or its vast language. / It is mute because it works away, / taking in, giving birth. / Whatever dies, it gathers in / like ancient, hungry creature. / Everything rots away in it - / even the shadow, / the lightning flash, / bony skeletons, / water, ash; / everything come together in the dew, / in the black drip / of the jungle. / The sun itself rots / and the broken gold / it sheds / falls into the sack of the jungle and soon / has fused to an amalgam, has turned to flour, / and its shining addition / has rusted away like abandoned armor. / I come to look for my roots, / the ones that discovered / the mineral food of the forest, / that fierce substance, / gloomy zinc, / poisonous copper. / That root has to nourish my blood. / Curling underneath / is the other weighty part / of the silence, / deep, like the print of a reptile. / It creeps on, devouring. / It comes to water and drinks it, / and up through the tree / goes the secret command. / Dark is the work / that makes the stars green.