Imagine an Anchor Plate 9 2004

Curator: I see a murky, dreamlike quality to it—almost a battle between giants in a world half-formed. Editor: Here we have Nathaniel Hester's "Imagine an Anchor Plate 9", a small etching, part of a series held here at the Harvard Art Museums. Curator: The dinosaurs feel so…present. Like relics unearthed, but alive, struggling perhaps. Editor: The printmaking process itself, the biting of the metal, the layering of ink, mirrors that sense of unearthing. There's a physicality to it. Curator: I love the contrast, that something so seemingly monumental, dinosaurs, is rendered in such an intimate scale. It becomes a world we can hold. Editor: Scale and material unite the prehistoric with the act of creation, suggesting both are tangible and, ultimately, made. Curator: Indeed, something truly special in this imagined scene. Editor: A reminder that even the grandest narratives are built, plate by painstaking plate.