After the traumatizing 8 years of the Bush administration, many of us let ourselves raise our hopes a bit higher than the lobbyist-dominated state of American politics might have warranted. When Obama spoke on the campaign trail about real health care reform and what that would look like, we dared to believe him, or at least envision a juster world in which more / the poor had access to the kind of “socialized” medicine that members of our Congress and military enjoy. Silly us. We thought he might burst into the White House and actually enact the kinds of reforms that he purportedly felt were non-negotiables. Too bad that of the pool of candidates, only Dennis Kucinich would actually have held fast to stated beliefs in the face of lobbying from the insurance industry and surreal slanderings from the media disinformation machine.

So rather than pulling the trigger on real reform, Obama has started triggering memories of so many other broken promises, disappointments, and unfulfilled potentials in a country of so much, but where so much of it goes to waste. In the spirit of Printention, I offer Carpe Mandate, an ink-jet dirge to how cautiously optimistic I felt back in November, which feels even more relevant now. Piled on top of the earlier hurt represented by Obama’s brief in support of the so called “Defense of Marriage Act,” the travesty surrounding the health care reform die-alogue feels like rather tainted icing on an already toxic cake: Take two servings of high fructose corn syrup and don’t call me in the morning because you don’t have insurance.

Though never receiving a formal diagnosis myself, individuals who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder often experience re-occurring images of a tragic event that they survived or witnessed. Additionally, people who have suffered trauma or abuse often have a memory block of the experience. This combination of reliving or blocking can send a person into a tailspin, rendering daily life a challenge. I recently stumbled across a list of symptoms of the disorder and found that my life experience aligned with many of the symptoms on that list. That realization did not come as a surprise. Regardless, I am posting this because as an artist, the physical act of printing seems to serve as a catalyst to a restless psyche. While personal healing has never been a primary goal of my pursuits as an artist, I have been contemplating if my connection to printmaking isn’t related to my need for repetition. Could the matrices’ inherent ability to be printed again and again, like reliving a memory, serve to affirm or eventually free one of the experience?

Repetition provides a crucial personal draw to print media. The physical act of printing an image or matrix repeatedly can fulfill many purposes. Continual over-printing might be conducted to build and resolve an image.  For me, at times, repetition has become akin to a moving mantra or prayer, imbuing the work with intention while quieting the mind.  Repetition reinforces and clarifies the questions inherent in the work. Along with the mental, the act of repeated printing may also provide a necessary psychological purging. 

As mentioned in the beginning, the door is open, and you are invited to contribute your perspectives, insights or information on the subject. This post has been in draft stage for two months now, so I am putting it out there a bit raw. I’m concluding with a brief segment from the New York Times. Who could say if Edvard Munch suffered from PTSD. However, he did experience profound emotions, which he wrote about in his journals and eventually were realized in his art. The following excerpt is from a New York Times article which was quoted on National Public Radio several years ago. (Although I could not locate the broadcast in the NPR archives) If I recall correctly, the radio piece quoted this article but also spoke of artistic process and the delay between a traumatic event and the length of time that the experience is expressed in a work of art. Often, the period of time spans decades.

Edvard Munch

Quote:“‘The Scream, East of Krakatoa’

Published: February 8, 2004

Three researchers report in the February issue of Sky & Telescope that it would have been the color Munch saw as he took a sunset stroll along the Ljabrochausseen road (now Mosseveien) in the port city of Christiania (now Oslo) in late 1883 or early 1884. At that time the detritus from the eruption of the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa, on Aug. 27, 1883, had just reached Norway. Consider Munch. He wasn’t alone in seeing that sky. Contemporary newspaper and scientific accounts make clear, as the Sky & Telescope article says, that due to the fallout from Krakatoa the “end of 1883 and the first months of 1884 had the most spectacular twilights of the last 150 years.”

…Munch’s hometown paper carried this account: “A strong light was seen yesterday and today around 5 o’clock to the west of the city. People believed it was a fire: but it was actually a red refraction in the hazy atmosphere after sunset.”

Munch wasn’t even alone on his twilight perambulation around Christiania. He wrote in his journal: “I was walking along the road with two friends — then the Sun set — all at once the sky became blood red — and I felt overcome with melancholy. I stood still and leaned against the railing, dead tired — clouds like blood and tongues of fire hung above the blue-black fjord and the city.”

Where Munch was alone, though, was in his response. “My friends went on,” the journal entry continues, “and I stood alone, trembling with anxiety. I felt a great, unending scream piercing through nature.”

Richard Panek is the author of “The Invisible Century: Einstein, Freud and the Search for Hidden Universes,” to be published this summer by Viking.”