A Light In The Wasteland is a series of stone lithographs which I created in 2019 for my BFA thesis project at PNCA. These prints tell the story of a man living alone at the center of a glowing city in the middle of a wasteland. The city is like a cocoon, protecting him from the outside world and keeping him isolated. It grows outwards, with buildings from the past pushed to the edges and covered with cloth like furniture in the attic. One night, the city is attacked by a fiery monster from the wastes, sending everything into turmoil. Simultaneously, a group of wanderers sneak into the city. After a betrayal in their ranks, their mission ends in disaster, leaving only one survivor.

When the battle with the fire beast ends, many spirits are released from its body, giving a suggestion of its true nature- an amalgamation of twisted and lonely souls held within the shell of a monster in search of a home. The lonely man returns to his city, and begins to explore the outer rings of buildings, which he has not seen in many years. While exploring, he discovers the body of the lone surviving wanderer. Overcome by a new sense of purpose, he begins dismantling the buildings around him. He creates a glowing throne for the wanderer out of houses, and places her there. As the sun rises on the wasteland, he leaves the city a changed man. The wanderer awakens upon her throne, a reject of the wastelands no more.

The story is intentionally weird and obtuse. It is intended to be viewed like a dream seen in glimpses, with many things vague and unformed. The stones I printed these images from are themselves part of the story, functioning as windows into this world I created. I printed these on a Mailander offset press, which allowed me to print the entire stone “edge to edge.” The series is in two parts, the first part being printed from broken and discarded stones (hence the weird shapes). These stones are unusable on a normal lithography press, but are rarely thrown away. The second part of the story was all printed from a single stone. As I grained the stone down between images, the chips in the edge gradually disappeared, creating a “perfect” edge. The motif of destruction/rebuilding that is central to the story is also reflected in the process I used to create the images. Each layer of each print was created by reworking the previous layer through a process of counter-etching, scratching, and redrawing parts of the image (with some sharpie litho for spot coloring).

To me these images represent the process of building self love- of using your past to create a positive future, rather than hiding behind it to protect yourself from harm. It’s about learning to accept all parts of yourself- even the uncomfortable and damaged parts. It’s about giving those parts of you homes within yourself, rather than shutting them out (which can turn them into monsters that prey upon your psyche.) This was the culmination of my work on this topic as an undergraduate, and is a reflection of the inner work I was doing at the time.