Robbie Steinbach’s twenty-year career in photography is studded with honors and awards. Even when her subject is a seemingly recently unearthed classical Italian sculpture, her work has a contemporary feel. She has a keen eye for composition, and an ability to capture movement and vibrancy, whether it is in a modern street scene or a shot of a static figurative sculpture. Her subjects and focus have included politics, food, feminism, and the figure.
Monoprints:
These monoprints are created through a hybrid of traditional printmaking processes and new technology. Some background images consist of my original photographs printed with archival inkjet inks, then combined with solar etchings, Italian papers, inks, etc.
Solar etching is a printmaking process. A digital photographic image is made, either shot originally with a digital camera or scanned from film. Then a positive transparency of the image is printed on the computer. The transparency is sandwiched with a light-sensitive plate called a solarplate, and exposed to light. It is then developed with water, which washes out the unexposed areas. The plate is inked and run through a conventional printmaking press.
Although the terms monotype and monoprint are used interchangeably, there is a difference. The process of monoprinting and monotype printing is the same: the artist applies color directly onto a surface and then prints it running it under a press. The monoprint, though each is one of a kind, can have a pattern or part of an image which could be repeated in another print. Artists may use etched plates or some kind of pattern such as lace, leaves, or fabric to add texture. In monotype prints, a clean and unetched plate is used and images are created with nothing that can be reproduced.
Steinbach was a 2007 and 2003 Nominee for the Eliot Porter Photography Grant (Harwood Museum, Taos). She won an Iowa Arts Council Artist Grant, for the women artists book project; a Juror's Choice Award for "Viva Elvis," Davenport Museum of Art; a Best of Black and White award, Annual Members Juried Exhibition 1990, Images Gallery, Cincinnati, OH, among many other honors. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Ficke Museum of Art, Davenport, IA; University of Northern Iowa Museum of Art, Cedar Falls, IA; University of Iowa, School of Art and Art History, Iowa City, IA; Augustana College Library, Rock Island, IL; and Augustana College Women's Studies Center, Rock Island, IL.
