How He Writes

This is an intaglio of a good friend of mine, the poet Nick Nash. This is the first time I've used someone else's poetry in a piece and I really enjoyed it. Anyways, how it happened is that I was in the printmaking studio wondering what my next print would be and feeling like I didn't have anything like an idea left in me when I opened my sketch book. There was Nick, and since it was a decent sketch and since I had developed a full fledged crush on the man I thought it would be a nice project to incorporate a sketch of him with one of his poems into a print. I would have to ask his permission and I calculated that he might be a bit enamored with being made into art. He was, of course, very agreeable. I chose a poem and asked him if he could write it onto a piece of tracing paper. He did. I was a bit dismayed at how small and almost illegible it was. I traced it, backwards, onto the plate with softground anyways. I often had no idea what letters I was tracing I just tried to imitate the shapes and hoped for the best. He liked the print.