Steven Dixon
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MINE SITE #9
Steven Dixon was born in Woodstock, N.B. in 1960. In 1983 he graduated from Mount Allison University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. That same year he was the recipient of a Greenshield Foundation grant, and award given to young artists to assist in establishing their careers. He received his masters degree in printmaking from Arizona State University in 1995. He has exhibited his paintings and prints throughout Canada and internationally including such countries as Bulgaria, India, Norway, Korea, Poland and China. Dixon's work is represented in numerous collections including; The New Brunswick Art Bank, The Owens Art Gallery, Alberta Art Foundation, Aliant, The University of Alberta and The Museum of Contemporary Graphic Art, Frederickstad, Norway. He was also the recipient of the E rnst & Young's "Great Canadian Printmaking Competition". Steven Dixon is based in Edmonton, working as a technician in the Printmaking Department at the University of Alberta. He is known for his digital photographs of the orphaned factories, mines and mills that litter Alberta's landscape. WHAT IS A PHOTOGRAVURE? A photogravure is a photographic image produced from an engraving plate. The process is rarely used today due to the costs involved, but it produces prints which have the subtlety of a photograph and the art quality of a lithograph. In essence, the production of a photogravure consists of three steps: taking the picture; producing a printing plate of the image; and printing the image on paper. The basic process, also called photogravure, was developed in the 1850s. After taking a picture, a glass transparency is made from the negative. Next, a copper engraving plate is dusted with grains of bitumen and heated so that the bitumen becomes attached to the plate. A carbon print which has been exposed beneath the transparency is then transferred to the plate. The plate is then bathed in warm water which causes the unexposed gelatin of the carbon print to be washed away, leaving the image in relief. Ferric chloride is then applied to the plate and eats into the copper in proportion to the highlights and shadows of the gelatin relief. The result is an etched copper plate of the original photographic image. The final step, printing, involves spreading ink evenly across the plate and then pressing the plate onto the paper. The combination of the chemical and mechanical process produces an image both warm and precise. A photogravure looks like a photograph but is a series of connected lines, rather than unconnected dots as in a photograph. |
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