Artist of September Sue Buck: Second installment

Last week Sue introduced us to a lot of her thought processes and early early work. This week we get to know her work from the 80s and 90s. She explains the process of monoprinting which became staple in her work of this era.
"I would roll up a clear and smooth plexiglas plate with ink and then use sticks, cloths, Q-tips and my fingers to pull ink away and then print on a piece of white paper on a press. They are called monoprints because you only get one print when using this process.

She also wanted to be sure it was evident that the more political commentary imagery, though they are oddly familiar to current times, were in fact from the Reagan and George H.W. Bush eras.

For smaller images please click on them to enlarge and see more detail.

In 1981 I moved to Florida to teach at Pensacola Junior College. The first week I was there I found a dried fish and bought a plastic pink flamingo and they became my new characters as in the series Fish Out of Water.

As always, I had questions on my mind. What happens when a fish is out of water? How did the fish get out of water? What does it mean to feel like a fish out of water?

I also found a big red ball on the beach and began using it as a symbol for danger. In this print we see that the dog perhaps senses danger, but he is unaware of what it is.

I was taking photos of my youngest sister’s dog and he became a character as well. Here are two drawings of dogs turning away from the viewer. What does that mean when a dog turns away from you? What does it say about me?   ​

​​What does that say about you?

Also in these years I did a series entitled People to People and in this image you see people are trying to help this injured man. Gradually I was becoming more willing to use people as people instead of using symbols representing people.

​I also did a series about experiments being done on animals, rabbits for cosmetics and rats for other experiments. So many questions and concerns about human behavior. Why do we do what we do to others? For power? For greed? For our own good but not for the good of others? Here is linocut entitled Status. Why do we fight for it? Where does it get us? Oh, my, more and more questions. ​

These questions and concerns led me from 1984-1991 into a seven-year study of greed and power using business men and politicians as subject matter. The photos and quotes I used came from magazines, newspapers and television. I made hundreds of monoprints in many series entitled Red Tie$, Good Ol’ Boys, Two Faced, Regulation$ and many others. ​

What these people were saying was shocking to me. "Justice and law are distant cousins." Really? Should that be the case? "There will always be victims." Do there have to be victims? "It is totally safe." Should we question that? "Why sure we love everyone." That baby is skeptical of that one. "Don’t worry about it…everybody’s happy." hmmmm…are they really? And so it goes with more statements and more questions. 
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My research and works on this theme ended with this etching entitled It’s All About Survival. As with any good research, you get some answers, but you also get more questions. Are greed and power really about survival? Are they necessary for survival?  Who gets power and who does not? Can we survive without those behaviors?

Next we'll look at Sue's work in New Mexico and the beginning of her work with the Great Apes as she gets closer to moving to Pennsylvania.

If you missed Sue's first installment please visit it by clicking here, but not until you look at the last image of this series below.