Lithic Scrying

In Erikson’s practice, printmaking shifts away from the image toward the question of material contact. What matters is not what is represented, but what happens to the surface when the image recedes and only the trace remains. In her works, gum arabic behaves as a bodily substance – ephemeral and cyclical, hydrating and drying, binding and cracking. On stone, it forms a protective layer that simultaneously covers, preserves, and remembers. Erikson works with viscosity and solidification, creating new bodies and printing surfaces from gum arabic and stone, where resin fills voids and allows the wound to scar.

Erikson’s motif of petrification is both political and corporeal. Traditional place names such as Virgin Stone, Slide Stone, and Birth Stone frame stone as a technology of memory: the body does not vanish, but becomes a surface that preserves the trace of contact. Here, the petrification of the woman does not signify punishment, but protection and the preservation of power. Stone is neither rigid nor sealed, but porous and absorptive – a surface that receives the body’s warmth, moisture, and pressure, and remembers them long after contact has ended.

In this way, fertility in Erikson’s practice is expressed through preservation, care, and slow resistance. The scar is not the endpoint of healing, but a technique of continuation – a means of remaining receptive and enduring even when form does not fully close.