Some years ago I was talking to a sculptor friend of mine. I was telling her that I often feel like a sculptor while making prints: it is a physical activity, I am actually manipulating materials that have a slight relief to them, and it is also a process that is indirect, a collaboration between artist and material, artist and process. My sculptor friend thought about this for a moment and finally replied, "No, Jeff, you just think in such a flat way that paper seems thick."

I have had a long-standing desire to make a print or an image into a three-dimensional object. This is, of course, already true, but I've wanted to make that thouroughly more apparent. What would it mean if a drawn mark had a weight and mass of its own? What would it mean if the work of art were subject to the same vissicitudes of aging as our own bodies are? Part of my challenge with these new works has been to try to evoke some of this while still making an object that will remain, if fact, both relativly flat and also just as it looks today.

The link, as I feel it, that this new work has with the large mezzotints of Venice that I am known for, is process. What was not evident to many people about the Running Amok series, is how their appearance was determined as much by the process of mezzotint as by my desires. They were limited in pallette and, more importantly, by how they could be constructed. From the initial darkening/roughening of the copper plate's surface, the image was "sculpted" into the plate. It was a negative and reductive process. The new work, while patently additive in the successive layering of ink, is just as restrictive: an open screenprinting screen (no "image") with surface manipulation limited to folds in the paper, holes created by push pins, and fingerprints left in the wet ink (three taboos of printmaking, in fact). Subseqent layers of flat or "open" ink are modified by these superficial manipulations: furrows, canyons, or recesses will not accept the ink; raised or peaked areas will allow the ink to accumulate and build, distorting the form underneath. This results in a surface that could be compared to a geologic process of forming a landscape; of the accumulation of dust and soot on a surface, and the way that accumulation distorts and simplifies the original (now hidden) surface beneath; and of the changes in skin and flesh as age transforms our faces and bodies.

There are, also, explicit references to the body, both visually in the work and explicitly in the titles. These pieces are meant to be sensuous, even erotic, without actually depicting the body. They are a celebration of intimacy, of being able to examine and caress another's body that is physically very near; of being welcomed into the small but powerful details of another's sphere of privateness.

My initial understanding, which has not yet been disproved, of the Big Dermis series, is that there are three reasons for making this work. One, because while teaching screenprinting for the last six years, these ideas have been slowly percolating. Two, because as I recently built a house in San Marcos, I found myself thinking about color, surface, and how things age in a replenished and new way. And three (possibly the most important), because of the renewed place love and physical intimacy has begun to play in my life. This only begins to hint at my debt to Julia Hlozek, who suggested the title, "Big Dermis."

The sensual aspect has meant that the framing of this work, of putting it under glass, has been more painful for me than usual. These pieces should be felt under the hand and between the fingers, at a very close range. For this, I have left one or two pieces unframed to have in the back of the gallery. The front surface is completely sealed and waterproof, and I would like people to be allowed to touch it, if possible.