Animalia Print Exchange

Car Number 29
Reductive Linocut
©2012, Elana Goren

The above print was submitted for a print exchange organized by Printmaking Sisters in Australia. The Animalia International Print Exchange will be exhibited in Australia in August, then Italy and the U.S. in 2014.

I decided to do a linocut because I hadn't done one in a while and I wanted to create the print as quickly as possible with the deadline approaching and the need for extra time to ship the prints to Australia from New York.

I have been working for a while with the subject of cattle trucks that I see on the highway. They contain animals who are not fed or given water for the duration of the trip which might last days. I am pretty obsessed with the subject since I saw a calf one hot summer day in one of these death mobiles.

I was behind such a truck on an extremely hot day while driving on Interstate 84 that runs through New York. I saw a calf try to stick it's nose through one of the container's holes and stick his tongue out, desperately trying to get relief from thirst by "licking" the air rushing by the truck. It made me sick to think of those poor desperate animals, cruelly neglected as they were sped off to their deaths.