REFLECTIONS ON SOUND, MONOTYPES
In 2015 I relocated my art studio from Brooklyn, NY, along with a very heavy Charles Brand etching press to Orcas Island, Washington.  From the very beginning I was overtaken by the beauty of the San Juan Islands.  That feeling hasn’t diminished and likely never will.  When I began working in my new studio, I wanted to do something related to my experiences of being in and around these magical Islands and immediately began exploring this environment through the monotype medium.

After many years working with a rather controlled and technically challenging process of intaglio, in particular mezzotint printing, I was moved to add a more painterly and colorful way of working through ideas given a new and direct relationship with the pristine environment that now surrounded me.  I found in monotype printing the perfect medium to portray these feelings in a spontaneous manner and began a series entitled “Reflections on Sound.” 

Monotypes are unique singular prints where the image is created by the application of inks and transferred to paper from the matrix (I use plexiglass) using the etching press.  Working in this medium is an exhilarating experience since I can’t anticipate the detailed outcome until the print is pulled.  This forces me to “let go” of the control maintained in the mezzotint medium, and instead appreciate how the original intention is transformed, sometimes adding new unexpected elements.  The outcome blurs the boundary between original intent and result.

Many days I’d take a trail walk and afterwards go back to the studio to pour my experiences into a one-of-a-kind monotype. I’d work spontaneously using a minimum amount of tools.  These walks in nature along with my observations of many natural wonders as well as the night sky on Orcas Island, and being surrounded as we are by the Salish Sea, have been my inspiration for this series of monotypes, as well as having greatly added to my appreciation for the natural world.

Eduardo Fausti, 2020

AGELESS
On afternoon walking on a narrow street in Shanghai, I passed two elderly women. they were walking arm-in-arm. One of them called my attention. As we grew closer she fixed her sharp gaze on me. The look was warm yet serious. There was a motherly presence in her expression. Perhaps I was prone to notice this look as my mother had passed away only a few months earlier.

Before I turned the corner, I walked back towards the slow walking couple. I pointed my camera at them carefully and in plain sight to gauge their reaction at being photographed. to my surprised, the women stopped walking and with a kind of pride posed to allow me to take the shot.

For a while one of the women’s faces kept haunting me. Back in my studio in New York, I was compelled to recreate that face. I never knew her name one anything about her life. Lú Qing (Clair) as I named her was the first mezzotint of what later became a series of elderly women portraits.

I asked friends for photos of their mothers and grandmothers. I met and sketched some of the elderly women in person. Others, who have long since passed away, I learned about through photos and stories written by family members. Their journeys are testaments to their simple yet extraordinary lives.

I tried to capture in their faces a long life of personal achievements with dignified and almost unemotional expressions. I saw in them a common denominator of other women’s faces from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. My intention, as well, was to represent these so-called ordinary and unknown women as ageless figures and reflect in them a sense of pride and importance to which only their peers and family would otherwise be privy.

Eduardo Fausti, Ageless Exhibition Catalog, 2010

JOHN MORRELL ESSAY ON AGELESS EXHIBITION

I first saw Eduardo Fausti’s prints while coordinating “The Artists’ Choice,” at New York’s Atlantice Gallery 2007. When Eduardo asked me to comment on his work for the current exhibition, I was honored. Eduardo’sportraitsare extraordinary; both for their close observation and for his skillful handling of the mezzotint chosen to express and honor the human presence he evokes.

The portraits are done on richly tinted 10-1/2” x 12-1/2” paper. Mezzotint’s ‘golden age” in 18th century England saw the prints promoting, and providing a lower-cost alternative to, grander painted portraits. Group of prints were sold bode as keepsakes We see these portraits not bound, but in an art space. We know them not as famous, but as mothers and grandmothers of the artis’s friends, as the women who raised us all. the rich lined surface of their faces invites witness to their lives. Each subject’s name is written in the language of the culture in which they are know to the artist.

A biographical remembrance accompanies each portrait but two: Lú Qing (Clair); and Fajr (Dawn), a veiled Afghan woman. these provide a capstone of quiet dignity and, quite literally, a carefully recorded veiled presence that still retains the power to move us.

The mezzotint medium provides wide tonality with rich blacks, giving Fausti’s portraits great presence and depth. Each depicts a range of visual characteristics unique to each subject as a person, and as a carrier of cultural tradition. The labor intensive mezzotint process is analogous to the long, often difficult lives of these women.

But the process alone does not explain their strength. Fausti’s drawing, sensitivity to edge, attention to surface patterns on each face and subtle details on clothing and jewelry, involve us in reading their lives, as we read each print’s surface. Fausti engages us while going beyond a physical likeness or stereotype of beauty, much as we go through life itself: reading others’ faces for meaning, evaluating character.

I recommend living with the images before reading the text. Create your own narrative about these women. Your time will be rewarded over and over. I was mesmerized.

Extract from essay by John Morrell, Ageless Exhibition Catalog, 2010
Chair and Associate Professor of Painting, Department of Art and Art History, Georgetown University

IMPERMANENCE MEZZOTINTS/PHOTOGRAVURES
These mezzotints focus on portraits of buddhists novices and monks encountered during my travels throughtout Southeast Asia. From Bagan (Burma) to Luang Prabang (Laos) and further south to the views of the Mekong River Valley, the region is full of warmhearted and friendly locals. Golden-tipped pagodas and humble monasteries dot the lands of this diverse region.

Several patches of this beautiful geography are hunted by the many conflicts of its past, some ancient and others more recent such as the killing fields and still-present land mines. They are authentic and powerful reminders of the lingering impact and cost of war.

Whatever you look in this part of the world there is ample evidence of the inevitable changing nature of things. One finds sophisticated art resulting from overlapping of different ancient cultures. The passage of time and the advance of nature were not the only factors shaping centuries of cultural and architectural history in this region.

There is no more clear evidence of the past than that which is found in their ancient architecture. Morning mist moves over and blankets the land; temples and pagodas slowly come into view as dawn breaks and the mist clears. Which their presence revealed, their architectural fragility and their almost melancholic yearning for that which once was. With the splendor of their past magnificence now long gone, it’s a telling reminder of the impermanence of things in general.

Traveling from village to village some of my most touching experiences were the frequent encounters with the locals. One example was how common it was to see and sometimes speak to novices and monks dressed in their yellow and saffron robes walking barefoot. At times they were but a handful walking down nowrrow streets; at other times it was a virtual pilgrimage in the hundreds. As they approach, their presence would often create a sense of calm. Without contradiction they engender a preserving reverence in their communities that, like our own, are nonetheless subject to the impermanent nature of (our)existence. Their devotion and dedication to a non-atheistic way of life is an inspiration to many. Their humble lives represent not only these principles, but have served, too, as voices for social change and political freedom.

While these mezzotints focus on portraits of Buddhist móviles and monks, the photogravures provide the physical context and environment in which they live.

I represent these figures as I saw them in their daily lives: both young and old, some with distinct features while others appear luminescent and soft as if dissolving into thin air. Over time it’s not hard to identify yourself with the values inherent in the daily practices of these ascetics monks: that reality as perceived is in a constant state of flux, both changing and changeless. Beyond their practices, I hope to convey with their portraits not just their innate sense of calmness but also their humanity. We all share this life and are all likewise subject to its fleeting moments.

Eduardo Fausti
Impermanence Exhibition Catalog, 2011

ERASING TO REMEMBER by Carol Wax
The prints of Eduardo Fausti are a sublime marriage of process and concept in which the mezzotint technique inspires as well as supports his imagery.

Mezzotint is a reductive form of engraving, similar to the method of drawing in which a white sheet of paper is blackened with charcoal and the image is “drawn” with an eraser. In mezzotint, a curved serrated tool, called a rocker, systematically plows up a textured field of burrs on a copper plate that holds ink to print a solid tone. Shaving down or compressing the burrs erases the ground in increments to create an image with infinitely subtle gradations from solid black to pure white where the ground is removed completely. In this way, what one sees as the image is what has been rubbed out or taken away.

The portraits in Eduardo Fausti’s prints are of people from cultures that are slowly being rubbed out of existence in the wake of societal changes. Their soft, almost out-of-focus faces are rendered as ghostly remnants looming in the mist, their eroded textures visible but just barely. In some images, faceless silhouettes remind us that something is missing and must be missed.

While many mezzotint engravers use the medium’s ability to render dramatic lighting effects to make bold statements, Fausti’s prints of Buddhist monks use delicate mark making, nuance, and suggestion to evoke a spiritual atmosphere. There is a Zen-like quality in his approach to subject as well as to technique, in that both mezzotint and a monk’s life require strength and submission to process.

In his photogravures, a photo-based etching technique, Fausti’s images capture a sense of place, and document a time that is passing or has passed. On the other hand, his hand-engraved mezzotints reflect on place and time and don’t just record but interpret: they are both timely and timeless.

In choosing to immortalize dying cultures through an engraving technique that was considered dead for generations, Fausti makes the medium the message. In much the same way mezzotint has been experiencing a rebirth, perhaps Fausti offers hope for his subjects that what is lost is not forgotten. Eduardo Fausti’s mezzotints are like a Buddhist’s enigmatic koan in that what he has removed from the plate is what he beckons us to remember.

Carol Wax
Impermanence Exhibition Catalog, 2011