Digital of Proof -"The Lucky Dragon"

"The Lucky Dragon"
2/15/2015
19.50" x 15.50"
(this is a digital proof of what is to come)


The Lucky Dragon Suite 
was a series of prints Hugh Merrill 
created 1985 about 
a Japanese fishing vessel 
and her crew caught in a radioactive 
shower, the result of an 
American hydrogen bomb that had been 
detonated 80 miles from where the 
Lucky Dragon had anchored.

I have this memory of 
Hugh working with ferocity 
and fervor, as if he were attempting 
to exorcise the knowledge 
of something so horrific, that 
like the bomb it sears 
images of shadows into one’s memory. 

Scraping, erasing, printing, etching, 
 adding and deleting and repeating until 
the images had morphed into monolithic
obelisks forever expressing their 
condemnation.

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