SUITE: SWEET

Heads, torsos, and limbs emerge from a ragged and vanishing landscape. Arms and hands swoop down from a crumbling sky. Blistering bodies are latched and locked; spun together, as if the human body could only exist within the touch of another — reminding us that love is possibly the only thing that is real. These images appear in Fran Bull’s latest body of work, a series of etchings entitled, “Suite: Sweet”. In this work, love becomes itself.  — Carolyn Corbett: filmmaker, poet.

In this group of etchings, I explore the language of human gesture, the unspoken sentences woven in and through movement occurring between human beings. I speculate on the implications of arms touching, embracing, reaching, enfolding. I delve into the meanings implicit in figures juxtaposed, in the manner of a choreographer.

The work evolved through numerous phases. Each piece was subjected to many acid-bath sessions as additions were made. The acid used in etching, (the Witch’s Brew as I call the bubbling, seething fluid), has its own agenda, one that is capricious in that (like ourselves) it varies from day to day, and is utterly unpredictable. This powerful soup eats into the plate—you try to tell it where and for how long—and it comes up with an improvisation of its own, a sort of counterpoint or obbligato soon integrated into the whole plan.

The surface of the plate becomes pitted, mottled, striated—etched. The acid’s way has been a gift to the image, to its overall feeling. I welcome this give and take between my intention and the will inherent in materials, in the “cooking” of the piece. My own meanings are surprisingly enhanced and deepened.