Colonial Impressions, woodblock plate and silkscreen prints mounted on panels, dimensions variable, 2023.
The story begins with an old press and a tiny book written by my great grandfather. Sydney Arthur Kimber’s The Story of an Old Press described in great detail the first printing press brought to North America, but neglected to mention the Indigenous folks who worked on/at that press, setting the type and translating the King James bible into Wampanoag.
I used images and diagrams in the book to address colonial legacies that haunt us today, eventually carving the press from a maple plywood plate and surrounding it with images of the parts of the press printed over paper prepared with oak gall ink made from galls found in the woods near my home. Two years in the making, this is the artist’s version of a Land Use Acknowledgement that I set out to make when I began graduate school.
Deborah Santoro 