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James Rosenquist has embraced printmaking as a vital creative form, developing an important body of work that explores and explodes traditional boundaries of aesthetic and technique. Since 1971, Graphicstudio has published over thirty etchings, lithographs, silkscreens, mixed-media prints, and multiples in collaboration with Rosenquist.
For the large-scale aquatint Welcome to the Water Planet, Rosenquist made two copper plates, etching and reworking them repeatedly to achieve multiple tonalities and textures. The paper was folded in half during the printing process and each plate printed separately. When unfolded, a greater scale is achieved, overcoming the size limitations of the intaglio press bed. “In Welcome to the Water Planet Rosenquist merged a dynamic natural world, abundant in aquatic and plant life, with interstellar space. The work suggests a personal cosmology characterized by the merging of time and space, past and present, beginning and end, macrocosm and microcosm.” (Fine and Corlett, Graphicstudio/Contemporary Art from the Collaborative Workshop at the University of South Florida, Washington, 1992, 226).
