Fractal-ssi-5b

Seiko Tachibana is a San Francisco-based, Japanese-American contemporary painter. “The ways in which many small pieces come together to make up a larger whole” is a recurrent theme throughout her work. In a minimalist style, Tachibana portrays the essence of expansive and living systems, such as the cosmos and other biological structures, through a distillation of form -- circles, linear and non-linear line, and geometric shapes. Using acrylic and ink on paper, canvas and wood, her pieces of interconnected nodes and forms coalesce into detailed, connected systems and structures. Her body of work - like her inspiration of a single droplet of water - are simple in appearance yet profound in composition. 

With the intaglio etching process, the copper or zinc plate is pre-covered in a thin, acid-resistant resin or wax ground. Using etching needles, the artist drawn or engraves their image on the surface of the plate. The etching plate is then dipped into an acid bath. The acid bites into the surface of the plate where it was exposed. Biting is a printmaking term to describe the acid's etching, or incising, of the image; its duration depends on the acid strength, metal's reactivity, temperature, air pressure and the depth desired. After the plate is sufficiently bitten it is removed from the acid bath, the ground is removed gently, and the plate is usually dried or cleaned.

To print an intaglio plate, inks are painted, wiped and/or dabbed into the recessed lines (such as with brushes/rubber gloves/rollers). The plate is then rubbed with a tarlatan cloth to remove most the surface ink. When pressed by rolling mechanism on the printing press, the paper is squeezed into the plate's ink-filled grooves with uniform very high pressure. The print is then revealed with the printed image. The inking and printing stages are repeated for each single fine art print.

Tachibana, born in Japan, completed her Masters of Art Education at Kobe University and received her MFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 1995. Her work has been collected by international and national museums including The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco - The Legion of Honor and Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts - The Portland Museum of Art, Stanford University, and The New York Public Library, and major private collections throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. She has earned several awards, including The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Award.