Fascinators is a series of portraits in which the sitters are wearing Möbius strips and other mathematical or paradoxical figures as hats. These forms could only be worn and held convincingly in the two-dimensional world of the print, though the surrealism is not immediately apparent. Combinations of woodcut, drypoint on copper, and hand painting, the flatness of the figures contrasts with the dimensionality of their headpieces and a narrative begins to open up between the adorned female figures and the Möbius – a physical manifestation of abstract or invisible concerns. Themes that arise include recurrent and paradoxical thinking, the age of reason, communication, femininity, and the choices we make that define identity and our own realities.
Selections from the Fascinators portfolio have been shown at the 11e Biennale de Gravure in Liege, Belgium accompanied by educational programming which uses the prints to discuss conceptual links between printmaking as a medium and the human experience.
