Rita DeWitt
Peter Pettengill, printer
1991
Workshop date: March 7, 1991
Rita DeWitt earned her BFA and MFA from the University of Alabama. She uses digital technology and photography to create works that explore memory, self, and history.
DeWitt was a Harnish Visiting Artist at Smith when she was asked to participate in the print workshop. As she works frequently with digital and photographic imagery, she decided to translate these interests into creating a photo-etching with Master Printer Peter Pettengill. Computer technology was still very new in the art department. In 1988 the department introduced the course “Design with Computers,” but the first digital imaging lab at Smith was not built until the 1992 renovation of Seelye Hall. DeWitt used her own equipment to scan images of flowers and slips of paper from fortune cookies and manipulated the pixels on her computer. She photographed the result, and Dwight Pogue then exposed the image onto halftone film for transfer to a copper etching plate. Although there are multiple colors in this print, it was printed from a single plate.
Rita De Witt. American, 1948 –
Photogravure printed in color on paper
Sheet: 30 x 22 3/4 in.; image: 23 7/8 x 15 3/8 in.