This series of silkscreen prints, Miswired, are done as a tribute to my father Herbert Shatzman, who died on January 26, 2014.  My dad was my closest friend and the biggest supporter of my artwork.  These prints describe his mental and physical deterioration over the past three years, as he suffered from dementia and a number of illnesses. These prints have given me the opportunity to mourn him in my own way, realizing the impact that he has made on me, my creativity and my abstract translation of our experiences together.  My father was a wise, extremely funny, charasmatic person, and it is my hope that you can get to know him, the strength of our relationship  and the blessings and struggles of my being part of the “sandwich generation” through this blog.

Each Miswired print is based on either a specific event or my impressions of his failing mind, with  the topics that I have chosen inspiring me to research how memory is conveyed visually, how the use of memory changes through age and illness and how to combine informational graphics into my imagery, thus adding to the context of my prints. Applying technology used in my Word Map and Alphabetic Excursion prints and discretionary use of the number of layers included in each image, I have been able to create “versions” of each image, which have also been affected by the color of the paper on which the image is printed.  Thus, images printed on Black Stonehenge paper will look totally different than those printed on Rives Tan or Kraft Stonehenge.  Miswired: Lost includes the widest use of different versions of an image, as twenty different versions were created.  The series continues to test my technical abilities as I combine transparent and opaque colored layers together and print way too many colors to complete my images, all with exacting registration.