One winter morning, I was walking my dog Shiloh and glanced up at the sky through a nearly bare sweetgum tree. The last remaining sweetgum balls hanging on to the branch like silhouetted ornaments against the swirling storm clouds in the winter sky. The idea for Trinity, at that moment, was born.
Trinity is a 30×53 inch sheet of handmade paper, hand painted with the clouds as I remembered them that morning. The paper is center-mounted to a quarter-inch thick sheet of 36×60 frosted acrylic. Suspended over the top is a clear sheet of acrylic of the same size with the branch, screen printed in 3-colors on the reverse, full bleed using a reverse-reduction method. The branch is literally floating, casting subtle shadows which accentuate the silhouette and subtle shading and highlights of the branch and the graphic representation of the sweetgum balls.
Worth mentioning: Everything in Trinity is dividable by three. There’s 3 sweetgum balls, 9 notes on the limbs, it’s printed in 3 colors, 3 base colors were used to paint the image of the swirling clouds, and even the physical size is dividable by three.
I also produced a separate limited edition run on 24×36 inch archival Coventry paper, being true to the original. The image of the handmade paper was center-printed as a giclée and the branch was screen printed over the top to match the original. After printing, each edition was cold embossed by hand, adding depth and adds a subtle protruding edge which frames the piece. 12 editions on paper were produced.
