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Nicola López’s work exists at the intersection of human-built environments and “Nature,” exploring how these two realms collide, echo, and intertwine. Her landscapes reconfigure, distort, and merge familiar worlds—urban, technological, botanical, and geological—to create spaces that are at once mysterious, disorienting, beautiful, and unsettling.

In Skycatcher, López reflects on her place within a complex and overwhelming, yet deeply cherished world, examining the nature and consequences of human “progress,” and imagining what resilience might look like amid profound change. The print points to the fragility of the world we inhabit and have helped build, while also highlighting its mystery and tenacious beauty.

The composition of the piece emulates a perspective one might encounter when looking upward through a tree’s canopy, where intertwining branches merge with skeletal architectural forms. The relationship between tree and structure remains intentionally ambiguous: it is unclear whether one grew around the other, whether the form emerged as a hybrid, or whether each began independently before becoming inextricably entangled.

The conceptual tension in López’s work mirrors her approach to process. From the outset of her collaboration with Highpoint Editions, López was intent on immersing herself fully in intaglio techniques—drawing on extensive prior experience while pushing the medium through rigorous technical exploration. She experimented broadly, combining methods and utilizing different processes to achieve deep, expressive marks alongside curving, natural figures. The image’s dark, industrial framework was created using aquatint to produce a dense, velvety black. Engraved lines were added to raise the paper’s surface, deepening the tonal presence and enhancing the texture, and areas within the tree branches were selectively burnished to introduce organic nuance.

The black silhouette divides the sky into discrete shapes, forming a net in which fragments of sky are framed, caught, or cradled. The sky feels alive—pulsing with varied, intense shades of blue—yet also appears as if it could be shattered, its shards suspended midfall. To achieve these lozenges of color, López used watercolor on an early proof to help decide which tones of blue to accentuate. After initial attempts using lithography and pochoir proved challenging, the final solution emerged in intaglio and five separate blue ink colors. The blue of the sky is expansive: the image’s foundation lies in a collé sheet adhered with tinted wheat paste, producing a subtle, atmospheric hue that could not be achieved through dye or pigment alone.

Every stage of Skycatcher’s development demanded meticulous attention, from the exacting marks made by López on the plate, to the complex inking and wiping process. The print’s substrate—Revere Polar White Suede— is now irreplaceable, as the Magnani mill was destroyed in an earthquake in 2016. The paper plays a crucial role in the print’s success, holding the engraved marks with exceptional clarity and depth. Through both concept and process, the print embodies López’s ongoing exploration of the power of confrontation between nature and human-made systems: revealing beauty, vulnerability, and endurance in equal measure.