Comanche Dance, Tesuque Pueblo 1938

This is Chester Leich’s etching, "Comanche Dance, Tesuque Pueblo," and it's like stepping into a memory, isn’t it? Imagine Leich bent over the plate, the acid biting, line by line, a whole world emerging. You can feel the scratch of the needle, the burnish of the plate, the careful wipe of the ink. What was he thinking as he made this? Was he trying to capture something fleeting, a disappearing world? The texture is so delicate, so ephemeral, it’s like he’s trying to hold onto a dream. That cross-hatching on the dancer’s chest? It gives him form, yes, but it also suggests movement, a subtle tremor of energy. It reminds me that artists are always in conversation, riffing off each other, taking cues from the past to build something new. It’s all one big, messy, beautiful dialogue.