Equitable Building c. early 20th century

Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt made this print, Equitable Building, using etching to capture an industrial cityscape. The artist coaxes so much texture out of the medium. Look how the scratches build layer upon layer. It’s like he’s conjuring up an atmosphere as much as describing a place. You can imagine him working over the metal plate, coaxing out the image with each pass, each line building on the last. I'm especially drawn to that smokestack belching out smoke near the water, it's rendered with such energy. There’s an immediacy to the gesture. The smoke seems to be still rising and dissipating. It’s the kind of mark-making you see echoed in Whistler’s prints. It reminds me that artists are always in conversation, riffing off one another’s ideas and techniques across time and space. And that it’s through the act of making, the embodied expression, that we find new ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling.