MAKING MAGIC WITH CHIAROGRAPHS

Transferring images onto paper has always fascinated Tim Dickson. He still remembers rubbing the backs of magazine photos with turpentine in a sixth grade art class and transferring the images to paper, forming collages. Later on, in college, he took several black-and-white photography classes and loved watching the photos slowly come to life in the darkroom.

Today, Tim continues to feed his love for the printing process as owner and co-founder of Eclipse Workshop, Collectors Editions' in-house printing division. And in his personal life, his passion for printing led him to invent a new art form: the Chiarograph.

His proprietary technique of Chiarography fuses traditional printmaking and the latest digital technology and involves printing photographs on specially prepared substrates. Although each Chiarograph has a pattern or part of an image that is repeated, the individual hand-painting preparation results in a one-of-a-kind print. No two prints are identical.

"The Chiarograph was a culmination of ideas and technology that came together in an epiphany at 2 or 3 in the morning back in 2004," he explains. "I lay awake thinking, 'What would happen if I did this and this?' I got up and tried it, and it worked."

Although today's digital technology gives people immediate access to images, Tim still enjoys the excitement of making images come to life in the printing process. He especially enjoys the intensive hand preparation and attention involved in creating Chiarographs.

"I enjoy the interaction in the printing process, in actually getting your hands dirty and working on a print," he adds. "With Chiarographs, you're digging in and putting yourself in between the print and the paper. You're not a spectator; you're driving the process. And that's what I love to do."