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Worden Day

This rare, large abstract color relief print by Worden Day measures almost 6' wide. Day had worked with S.W. Hayter at Atelier 17 in New York in the early 1950's where she met experimental printmakers Anne Ryan and Sue Fuller. Day taught a course in woodcut there in the 1950s.

In the late 1930's in Paris the printmakers at Atelier 17 had been experimenting with casting inked intaglio plates with plaster, creating a sculptural, three dimensional impression that could also be carved to create a kind of "hybrid" print/sculpture relief.

In the 1950's Worden Day, Louis Schanker and other Atelier 17 artists began experimenting again with plaster, this time as a matrix to print from. Creating a box and pouring plaster into it and then sculpting the surface as it dried, the surface of the matrix could then be inked and printed by hand, using the artist's hand, small barins, spoons, etc. to print the large image.

Each print would be inked individually and colors would vary from impression to impression. This impression has numerous pinholes in the upper corners of the margins. This was probably printed like a white-line woodcut where the plate is inked and the paper, which is attached to the frame by the pins, is lowered onto the surface and printed. The paper is then raised from the bottom, the plate re-inked and the process repeated.

Day went on to work primarily in sculpture in the 60's. For more information on the artist, please see our biography, above.