Bicycling for Ladies

With a tireless passion for expressing my personal feminist views through the subject of erotic cycling, I continued to work in the same feverish vein for my next print, Bicycling for Ladies. More research into the fashions of ladies’ cycling apparel led me to compile a variety of historical images illustrating so-called unladylike women, portrayed happily straddling their bicycles in their ballooning costumes.

I found myself falling in love with a magical medium of process and alchemy.

Using my preferred image-making process, I compiled these snippets of yesterday with a few glances in the mirror for self-portraiture and some lines of computer generated text to manually collage and draw a unifying composition. Desiring more of a tonal range within my prints, I chose to explore the historic medium of stone lithography, which was used to produce popular images well into the twentieth century. Still a novice, I ended my first lithograph run with only one or two good prints. These early, hard-learned lessons taught me the requirements for a delicate touch and an acute mind during the entire lithographic process.

Despite the demanding process of learning the skills of lithography, I found myself falling in love with a magical medium of process and alchemy. The smooth, wet slickness of the stone seduced me. The first step of the lithographic process involves manually grinding the limestone with a stone levigator and a series of varying grits. Alternately pedaling both arms in circles, my body falls into a mesmerizing rhythm, grinding closer to the heart of the stone. It feels as if an important bond is forming between the stone and me. Becoming one with the stone, I know that any negligence from this stage on will most likely yield ill effects in the outcome of my print.

To draw on the stone, I primarily use a number five lithography pencil to achieve subtle tonality. Dark areas are built up by a series of crisscrossed layers with this light, less waxy crayon. The etching stage is often easier and more predictable when using the number five crayons only. It usually takes me at least two weeks to complete a drawing on a large stone, not including the preliminary layout plans. Drawing, too, leaves me in a meditative, uplifting state of pure happiness, which is one of the reasons why I have continued practicing it all of these years. Stone lithography is the printmaking process that brings me closest to my love of traditional drawing. Lastly, the printing of a lithographic stone puts me into a mechanical trance, much like when I ride a bicycle. My body is a machine. Together with gears of the lithographic press, I have the ability to produce gems from rocks.