This article about Elaine Rothwell appeared in the Auburn Journal on March 18, 2007

Auburn Artist Creates More Than Meets the Eye
By: Michelle Miller, Auburn Journal Features Editor
Sunday, March 18, 2007

Elaine B. Rothwell demonstrates how she presses paper into her etched plate with an etching from her "Seasons of Romance" series that hides an image of lovers kissing. Akim Aginsky/Auburn Journal

Whether it's a game of chess with her son or hiding an image in one of her etchings, Rothwell enjoys the playful side of art and life. Rothwell, 80, didn't start creating art until after she was finished raising her family of four. She earned an art degree from San Jose State University and starting doing oil paintings. But when she started sketching her young son playing chess, she stumbled upon a game she could play with her art. "My son said, 'Mom, it looks like there's a rook between my legs,'" she recalled. "I had unwittingly put it there." From then on, she started intentionally hiding things in her etchings.

Rothwell completed a whole series of chess-themed works, one of which graced the cover of Chess Life Magazine, that brought requests for prints from all over the world. After her mother passed away in 1980, a search into her family's ancestry of fur trading along the Great Lakes turned up another interesting idea. "I was looking at a map of Michigan, where my mother's family descended from, and I saw her profile in the map," Rothwell said. "Her large nose, her curly hair, it was spooky."

She researched and created a whole series of these etchings called "Spiritus Loci," a Latin phrase for the belief that a person's spirit is imprinted on the place they inhabit. In the shoreline of Hudson Bay, she found an image of discoverer Henry Hudson and the eastern seaboard of the U.S. reveals a personification of the Nor'easter winds. "We tend to see ourselves in the land, I think it's people's conceit," she said.

"Nor'easter" is a map of the Atlantic coast and an image of the namesake winds. Elaine B. Rothwell likes to play games.

Dorene Kidd, special events director at the Old Town Auburn Gallery, has sold thousands of dollars' worth of Rothwell's work. "Spiritus Loci" is now on display in the gallery. "As far as I'm concerned, she's the most incredible living artist we have," Kidd said. "I wish I could crawl into her brain and see how she sees the world. I really admire her."

Rothwell has a unique way of looking at the world. She see's the negative space - the background could become a hidden image. "That's how children see the world, but we grow out of that," Rothwell said. "We're told, that's the background, it's not important." Her trademark "visual puns" set her apart in the etching world. A tree can be part of a scenic landscape, or a place where two lovers secretly embrace and kiss. The antlers of a caribou can also be the way Rothwell's husband Bill's eyes droop when he sleeps.

Kidd said visitors to the Old Town gallery often miss her hidden images. "I tell them to look a little harder," Kidd said. "And to see their faces and their reaction when they first realize, 'Oh!' it's amazing."

Rothwell's intricate images can be made even more difficult to render in the complicated medium of etching. "The etching process is a devout labor," Rothwell said. "There are all these possible things that could go wrong." It starts with an idea and a sketch that Rothwell does on transparent paper. She then transfers the outline onto a zinc plate. Using asphaltum, she blocks out portions of the pattern that she does not want to be etched. Then it's into a nitric acid bath, where the chemical eats away at exposed parts of the plate, creating her image. Ink is then scraped onto the plate where it settles in the grooves.

"It makes a noise, like it's singing," she said, demonstrating how she wipes the ink off the blank parts of the plate. She then lines it up with a sheet of damp rag paper and rolls it through a press. She also uses free-hand rollers that are getting harder for her to lift in her old age. "I still keep (the rollers)," she said. "In case I get young again."

The process gets more complicated than that. But more than mastering an intricate process, Rothwell hopes her work inspires people to see the world in a different way. "It's a game," Rothwell said. "I hope to open people's eyes to some kind of surprise."

See more of Rothwell's work at www.artbyrothwell.com. The Journal's Michelle Miller can be reached at michellem@goldcountrymedia.com.