In 2021 the Brood X hatch of 17 year periodical cicadas (Magicicada sp.) emerged from their long dark life underground and swarmed in unimaginable numbers across 15 eastern states. The males congregated together to produce intense, throbbing choruses of sound to attract mates, and by two months later, after the females laid their fertilized eggs, they were all gone underground again to wait for another 17 years.
I started to make this image in February of 2020, thinking about the coming Brood X hatch, but as the pandemic exploded and the national uprising gathered force I started to find it hard to focus on the project, and the big sheets of rubylith that I was cutting for the stencils got rolled up and stashed in a corner of the studio, victims of the chaos and distortion of 2020.
In late March of 2021 I was cleaning my studio and found them- and when I unrolled them I knew exactly how to finish the print. This is a second, smaller edition of 85 prints with 3 split fountain layers, printed at Flight 64 studio in Portland.
This is an image to celebrate us all emerging from our holes to find whatever future we can. Hopefully we will be fighting together, and we will refuse to go back underground.
