Robbie Steinbach’s twenty-year career in photography is studded with honors and awards. Even when her subject is a seemingly recently unearthed classical Italian sculpture, her work has a contemporary feel. She has a keen eye for composition, and an ability to capture movement and vibrancy, whether it is in a modern street scene or a shot of a static figurative sculpture. Her subjects and focus have included politics, food, feminism, and the figure.
Monoprints:
These monoprints are created through a hybrid of traditional printmaking processes and new technology. Some background images consist of my original photographs printed with archival inkjet inks, then combined with solar etchings, Italian papers, inks, etc.
Solar etching is a printmaking process. A digital photographic image is made, either shot originally with a digital camera or scanned from film. Then a positive transparency of the image is printed on the computer. The transparency is sandwiched with a light-sensitive plate called a solarplate, and exposed to light. It is then developed with water, which washes out the unexposed areas. The plate is inked and run through a conventional printmaking press.
Although the terms monotype and monoprint are used interchangeably, there is a difference. The process of monoprinting and monotype printing is the same: the artist applies color directly onto a surface and then prints it running it under a press. The monoprint, though each is one of a kind, can have a pattern or part of an image which could be repeated in another print. Artists may use etched plates or some kind of pattern such as lace, leaves, or fabric to add texture. In monotype prints, a clean and unetched plate is used and images are created with nothing that can be reproduced.
Steinbach was a 2007 and 2003 Nominee for the Eliot Porter Photography Grant (Harwood Museum, Taos). She won an Iowa Arts Council Artist Grant, for the women artists book project; a Juror's Choice Award for "Viva Elvis," Davenport Museum of Art; a Best of Black and White award, Annual Members Juried Exhibition 1990, Images Gallery, Cincinnati, OH, among many other honors. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Ficke Museum of Art, Davenport, IA; University of Northern Iowa Museum of Art, Cedar Falls, IA; University of Iowa, School of Art and Art History, Iowa City, IA; Augustana College Library, Rock Island, IL; and Augustana College Women's Studies Center, Rock Island, IL.
Hoop Snake
For Michael, summer, 1994
the second time we met
he told me about the hoop snake
seductive, exquisite,
a godless man
so I listened
we weren’t sure though
if it could be true –
a snake that takes its tail in its mouth,
then rolls through the world
but there are reasons to believe
in god and this seems a good one
we brought wine to the porch, spoke
of piety, marriage; commitments assumed
for reasons that could not sustain them
while lightning took apart the sky
the fields leapt up the stream’s dark
body slipped off through the grass
and the iris screamed
their flawless mouths
luminous arms the landscape
sexual and torn suddenly desire
and sadness
beautiful
so I don’t remember
what he said his eyes flowering
in the dark
after he left I walked through
the grass the rain asked
how do things work?
we are after something miraculous
we open our mouths we
believe we turn
at times
we gather speed - Rebecca Wee
