Factory VII, 2020
Lithograph
Edition of 36
22 1/2 x 27 1/2 in
Collaborative Printer: Galen Gibson-Cornell
Bouton grew up in Paris, spending time in her grandparents' Le Corbusier apartment and absorbing the playful modernism of Jacques Tati's films. That early education in how built space shapes human experience never left her. She has since lived and worked across multiple continents, and wherever she has landed, the architecture around her has become her primary material, not just as subject matter but as a kind of language.
Factory VII extends her ongoing Habitat & Urban Matters series, which turns its attention to North American urban landscapes as sites of reflection, both literal and interior. Bouton is drawn to buildings at every stage of their life: new construction, abandoned warehouses, half-demolished homes. What interests her is not the building itself so much as the accumulated weight of the lives it has held and the particular beauty that emerges from design and degradation in combination. Grand facades, patchworks of broken windows, mirrored skies, and the quiet geometry of decay all find their way into her work.
Her process is singular. Working through a modern approach to engraving, Bouton produces monotypes and prints that are monochromatic at their foundation, then builds color through halftones, shades, and densities that register almost like light changing across a surface. Factory VII pushed that practice further. The printmaking process demanded she move beyond her characteristic restraint, giving way to vibrant tonal progressions that feel both unexpected and inevitable.
