The Oasis Gallery

Monoprints & Solarplates
by Sophia C Mone

Teaching art has been Sophia Mone's profession for 33 years. It was actually a fluke that her career in teaching art even began. Sophia has a BA from Marymount College in Tarrytown, N.Y. and a M.Ed. from St. Louis, Mo. Her first teaching position was at the Forsythe School in St. Louis. It involved teaching an innovative reading program to pre-schoolers as well as art to older students. Teaching art had never been in Sophia's career plan, but with this opportunity presenting itself, she took the challenge. And so she began her love affair with teaching art. Sophia returned to Rhode Island where she grew up and began teaching art in the Barrington Public Schools. She taught there for three years and then moved to Boston and taught art in the Winchester Public Schools until her retirement in 2004. Presently, Sophia has a studio at Waltham Mills Artists Association (WMAA) with River Street Artists.

Monoprinting is Sophia's favorite art form. She has studied with Michael Vigil, a master printmaker from Taos, New Mexico. Sophia loves working with vibrant southwestern colors. She uses brayers and brushes to apply oil-based inks to a plexiglass plate, which then goes through a press to begin a print. Mono (meaning one) refers to the fact that once a plate is put through the press with paper on it, work can continue on that one piece of paper. The paper can be worked on with other plates, or by drawing or painting directly on it, but in the end the one paper becomes the monoprint. Sophia loves the process of printmaking. She believes it involves continuous risk taking. It celebrates the creative process. Placing colors on the plate give direction to an idea. Choosing the paper, placing it on the plate, controlling the pressure of the press on the plate, going back to work on the paper, adding colors to the original plate, perhaps using a stencil... all contribute to the final monoprint. Deciding when to stop is always in question. One step leads to another, always making the process exciting!

Another printmaking medium Sophia likes to use in her art is the solarplate. She has been fortunate to study with Dan Welden who is one of the inventors of this process. In 2003, the Winchester Foundation for Excellence awarded Sophia a travel grant to study with Dan Welden and Ron Pokrasso, another well-known printmaker. She studied with them for three weeks at the Santa Reparata Art Institute in Florence, Italy. The Solarplate is a metal plate with a photosensitive surface. Images can be drawn directly on the plate or onto a transparency that is placed on the plate. The solarplate is then exposed to a light source, either the sun or a light box. An etched plate is the result after rinsing away the emulsion. This plate enables the artist to print the same image repeatedly. Sophia likes to combine the use of solarplates along with the monoprinting process in creating her art. She also likes to paint directly onto the paper.

The figure and the colors of the southwest are starting points for Sophia in her creative process. Her figure is an abstract shape, at times completed with holes or threads, or a repetition of lines; swirling, spinning, smoking, blooming from within. Some of her work shows imagery within and around its shape. Her recent work evokes a subtlety of emotions that relate to a variety of life experiences.

She exhibits at the Oasis Gallery from
July 13, 2008 until September 7, 2008.

Contact information:
sophiacmone@yahoo.com
www.sophiacmoneartworks.com

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