Meticulous Fairfield artist attracted to details of mezzotint printmaking

AUGUSTA – Nicholas DeRose of Fairfield bends his slight frame over his workbench, his nose nearly touching his hands as he carefully scores a small square of copper. Back and forth, over and over, hour after hour, he uses a tool with a crescent-shaped blade – it looks almost like a food chopper – to rough up the metal with thousands of tiny lines.

DeRose’s forearms begin to ache. Back and forth. Back and forth. In a monotonous rhythm, the 30-year-old artist rocks the tool over the copper, changing it from a shiny, smooth surface into a plate full of burrs that eventually will catch and hold printers’ ink. It takes him more than 13 hours to finish a 2-by-3-inch plate. And then he still has to burnish the image.

DeRose is resurrecting a nearly lost art, the art of “maniere noire,” mezzotint printmaking. Mezzotint was the method employed before photography to copy famous paintings. The finished product, a black-and-white image, is breathtaking, appearing like a slightly out-of-focus photograph.

In quality mezzotints such as DeRose’s, the whites are crisp and bright and the blacks are soft and muted.

DeRose recently had two of his prints purchased by the University of Maine at Augusta for its permanent collection and won Best of Show at a Hallowell gallery.

But it all begins with the back-and-forth, over-and-over cutting of the plate.

“It’s called rocking the plate,” he explains. “In the 17th century, artists employed young boys to do the rocking and it drove them crazy. That’s where the expression ‘off your rockers’ comes from.”

For DeRose, rocking the plate is a necessary evil on the way to a completed mezzotint. “By the time you rock the plate, your reward is in seeing the image,” he said.

Once DeRose rocks the plate completely, he then uses several intaglio tools, such as burnishers, jeweler’s tools and three-side blades, to create the picture. These finishing tools scrape away the burrs creating by the rocking, and every burnished area will appear white on the print. All the rocked areas appear black.

By varying the depth of his burnishing, DeRose can create subtle shades of gray.

“Some tools scrape the burrs away,” he said, “while others smooth them out.”

“This is really considered a lost art,” DeRose said recently, demonstrating his craft at UMA, where he is finishing up a two-year independent study.

The young man has one class left before he attains his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, but he is already teaching mathematics at Good Will Hinckley School in Fairfield.

“He is wonderful,” said UMA art instructor Karen Adrienne. “Nick really has taken to mezzotint with a passion. He’s very sensitive to all the steps, sensitive to the rendering and volume. This is definitely where his artistic voice could be heard.”

DeRose says it’s the detail and monotony involved in mezzotint that actually attract him to the art. “I love the details,” he said. “I definitely get lost in my own little mezzotint world. Art is all therapy. It makes you feel better.”

The meticulous work died out with the advent of photography, DeRose said, but “for me, it is very rewarding. Many people don’t have the patience for it.”

And even with all that work, the mezzotint plate is only temporary. When creating an image, such as the aloe plant and cow’s skull purchased by the university, DeRose said the plate is so soft that only about 12 perfect prints can be made before the burrs are pressed too flat by the printing press.

Despite the fastidiousness of mezzotinting, DeRose admits with a laugh that he is a slob at home. “I guess this art sucks all the neatness out of me.”

Sharon Kiley Mack can be reached at 487-3187 and bdnpittsfield@verizon.net.