Always Wear a Clean Fig Leaf

Nancy Palmeri, artist

Always Wear a Clean Fig Leaf, 2003

Where object was made: United States

Material/technique: color woodcut

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 564 x 390 mm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 22 3/16 x 15 3/8 in
Mat Dimensions (Height x Width): 32 x 24 in

Credit line: Gift of the KU Art Department, Intaglio Area

Accession number: 2003.0112

Not on display

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Brosseau Center for Learning: Six Degrees of Separation: Prints from KU and Beyond

This color woodcut by Nancy Palmeri exemplifies her interest in representing traditional religious and cultural icons with vibrant colors and patterns. In this artwork, Palmeri incorporates Judeo-Christian imagery of Adam and Eve along with a skeleton as a memento mori, or reminder of death. The woodcut medium shows traces of the artist’s hand that are a signature of Palmeri’s work. As the daughter of Sicilian immigrants, Palmeri considers familial influences on her artistic identity as well as issues of identity, emotion, and gender.

Brosseau Center for Learning: Six Degrees of Separation: Prints from KU and Beyond

Woodcut printmaking is a relief process where the artist removes portions of a wooden block to leave behind raised surfaces that hold ink and create areas of black in the finished print. After the woodblock is covered in ink, the artist works manually or with a press to press a piece of paper against the block to form the impression of the woodcut. To create a color woodcut, the artist carves multiple blocks, one for each color, and presses them to the paper one at a time, often moving from light to dark to layer the colors.

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