The following etchings were drawn from life, on location, directly onto zinc plates.

Many of the following pictures were drawn in bars during readings or musical performances, venues which provided a reasonably stationary cast of characters, something to drink, and occasionally some very good bluegrass.

There is a pleasing lack of control to working on an etching in a bar, even leaving aside the question of what one has or has not had to drink. Most bars aren’t known for the quality of their lighting, so as often as not it is hard to see exactly what one is drawing. And even when mistakes can be seen, etching doesn’t make it easy to correct them. As a result the drawings and bits of dialogue that I wrote down on these plates piled on top of each other and formed a sort of mishmash of line. Later, in the print studio, I would use aquatint to add shades of black and gray and to try to pull some sort of composition out of the mess.

(What is an etching, anyway, you ask? Click here, and read on.)