In 2020 Judy Ledgerwood produced a significant body of unique works with Manneken Press. The plan for Ledgerwood to spend a week in residency at the press was upended by the imperative for social isolation during the early days of the COVID Pandemic. Rather than shelving the project, they decided to experiment with working on the prints remotely. Ledgerwood used watercolor paints on sanded acrylic plates in her own studio. When they were dry she shipped the plates to Manneken Press to be printed. This back-and-forth exchange of plates and prints continued over a period of months and resulted in more than thirty unique monotypes.
Using watercolor, the aqueous media flowed evenly on the sanded surface, allowing the colors to pool, run together, settle and dry in unique patterns and textures, emphasizing its physical materiality as a substance and producing results distinctly different from working with watercolor in an unmediated, direct manner on paper. Ledgerwood’s signature quatrefoil shapes, loose, diagonal grids, floral and yonic symbols, references to quilts and the “feminine arts” and intense, penetrating colors are found throughout the monotype series.