Grass (2025) is an experimental intaglio drypoint print by Christina Rupp that turns sustained attention toward one of the most ordinary and overlooked elements of the everyday landscape. Created using a thin, transparent plastic sheet as a printing plate, the work examines grass in motion and its quiet, symbiotic relationship with wind.
Rupp’s interest in grass stems from its cultural invisibility. Unlike flowers, which are often coded as decorative, or plants valued for their utility, grass exists almost everywhere without demanding attention. It grows on city sidewalks, mountaintops, and in flower pots, appearing familiar across places while remaining largely unnoticed. Through travel, grass became a constant presence for Rupp, feeling both local and universal, and gradually emerging as a metaphor for the everyday and the routines that persist even as locations change.
A central conceptual focus of Grass is the relationship between grass and wind. Grass depends on wind for pollination and seed dispersal, while wind becomes visible only through the movement of grass. In this poetically symbiotic exchange, an invisible force is given form through motion. The print reflects this relationship not through representation, but through process. Individual strokes were scratched directly into the plastic plate with an etching needle, each mark acting as a single blade of grass. The repetitive, meditative nature of the technique mirrors growth itself, allowing the image to emerge gradually over time.
Rather than working from reference images, Rupp drew on memory and sensation. The image developed as an internal landscape shaped by observation and embodied experience, resulting in an abstract, intuitive stream of marks rather than a descriptive scene. The process prioritised attentiveness and repetition, creating space for sustained focus on something usually passed over.
Grass stands as an homage to the everyday, the repetitive, and the commonplace. Its quietness is deliberate, positioning the work against spectacle and speed in favour of slowness and noticing. As Rupp explains, “In its ubiquity and commonplaceness, grass is, to me, a metaphor for the everyday and the unspectacular. When paid attention to, however, it reveals variety and contrast and offers a quiet sense of companionship.”
Living between Germany and Colombia, Rupp works across printmaking, illustration, and poetry, with a practice grounded in the relationship between inner and outer landscapes. Grass reflects her ongoing interest in the human and non-human inhabitants of daily life, and in how attention can transform the ordinary into something quietly resonant.
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