Annalise Gratovich creates works on paper that reflect the iconography of borderlands: from the prints and murals of the US-Mexico borderland, to the traditional arts of Ukraine, a country whose name is derived from the old Slavic term for “borderland.” Gratovich blends Indigenous Ukrainian motifs with South Texas flora and landscapes, weaving together narratives of longing and belonging with the mystery and mythology of home in the natural world. Her life-size figurative woodcuts, multilayered copper plate etchings and print collages crafted from hand-dyed papers are informed by her identity as the second-generation daughter of a Ukrainian war refugee living in the American South, as well as her experience with chronic illness and disability.  Her process itself is steeped in tradition and heritage. She prints using hand-dyed and intricately-cut chine collé. Some have 60 pieces of paper, and in editioning, require her to prepare more than 1000 pieces. She describes the process as honoring the tradition of Ukrainian paper cutting for blessings. The process of dyeing, patterning and assembling the paper evoke similar rituals in traditional textiles, reinforcing her connection to the motifs she references in Indigenous Ukrainian textiles and embroidery. 

“My specialization as a works on paper artist is informed by my interest in the preciousness of paper heirlooms, so easily lost during the displacement of people,” Gratovich states. “My family left Ukraine during WWII, in the night, saving only what they could carry. What was lost or left behind has become a source of mystery and mythology, and through printmaking, I investigate how this absence influences my sense of self and community, and how I value materiality. The material processes of printmaking are intrinsic to my conceptual studio investigation and to my ways of making works on paper.”  Her upcoming show at Hecho a Mano continues to explore these themes, hinging on two large multi-plate etchings of a body of collage work, and of a suite of surrealistic botanical woodcuts synthesizing flora and fauna.  One of these pieces, titled “Ultra Horizon,” references her collage work, centering on images of grasping hands, and celestial and botanical imagery. The piece has an impetus from bottom to top, borne on the creative forces of volcanoes and cicadas, which symbolize both creation and emergence. Gratovich weaves in other imagery as the eye moves upwards: cycad botanical imagery in a diamond-shaped border, dice and snakes symbolizing luck and rebirth, green June bugs that emerge in the month the artist was born, and at the top, comets and planets. 

“When paired with the cycads at the bottom, they allude to time and space, being earth-based and space-based, rooted and traveling,” Gratovich says, adding that “The hand in the center of the diamond is holding botanical imagery, again for beauty, hope, and alluding to the medicinal nature of plants and roots.”

Both key images in the show are printed in highly pigmented oil-based inks onto thin mulberry paper created in small batches at the Morgan Paper Conservatory in Cleveland, OH. The collage imagery in the show will stem from these two pieces, reusing elements from the process of creating them, as well as from other works on hand-dyed paper.  Gratovich describes her collage practice as contrasting with her editioned images, while still supporting and enriching them. “I often collage printed scraps of hand dyed paper in an improvisatory ritual,” she says. “I compose incantations of longing and belonging, depicted by traveling comets and rooted plants, and hands formed in gestures of offering or grasping.” Ultra Horizon will open at Hecho a Mano on Friday, October 4 and will be on view until October 28.