“Once Around the Sun” series of Collagraphs at Butterfield Garage Gallery

The series “Once Around the Sun” celebrates and spotlights the native flora and fauna of our Northeast Florida region. With each image representing a month in the calendar year, the series presents an artist’s interpretation of places and living creatures we can actually encounter in our area. Debra began the series earlier this year after winning an “Arts for All” grant from the St. Johns Cultural Council.

Collagraph etching, Debra’s chosen medium for the series, is a non-traditional printmaking technique that uses low-tech, low-toxicity materials, such as matboard, to create etching plates. (Traditional etching uses metal plates and a number of chemicals that can be avoided with collagraphs.) In her home studio, Debra uses an artist’s press to create one-of-a-kind, hand-pulled etchings from the collagraph plates, which she then enhances with watercolor. Winning the Arts for All grant set her on a challenging path to create a large body of collagraph etchings in a much larger format than she had ever made in the past.

In her current work, Debra seeks to integrate her experience as an artist and printmaker with a naturalist’s eye for flora and fauna. Sharing with viewers her passion for our native environment, she hopes to open pathways for viewers to connect to the wildness, however small, that we still have around us. Falling in love with the collagraph etching technique, Debra feels this low-tech approach is a very appropriate way to convey the stories and the specialness of the creatures and the environments they rely on, as well as our relationships to them.

Debra is a life-long resident of Florida, having grown up along the central Gulf coast of the state. As a child, she had free rein to wander her grandparents’ farm and ranch there. Those wanderings began a foundation of watching and observing the flora and fauna of the Southeast that now influence her art. She holds a BA in visual arts from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida and a BA in English from the University of South Florida.