Toward the end of the 1980s, Pfaff began to use medical and scientific texts as visual resources, expanding her imagery to become as encyclopedic as her use of materials and her techniques. Among her sources of inspiration were astronomical and terrestrial maps as well as images of cells, membranes, chromosomes, bones, and viscera. These influences are apparent in Half a Dozen of the Other, the companion series to Six of One and Pfaff’s third and final collaboration with Crown Point Press.
This series of etchings was created five years after her collection of woodblock collages, and Pfaff described the change in her work as “[…] very, very linear, kind of slinky, atmospheric, wiry, bedsprings, atomic sort of stuff” (Richards, Oral history interview with Judy Pfaff, 2010). The majority of the figures in Ogni Cosa are organic rather than geometric, and the few geometric shapes present are ellipses or circles;there are no harsh, straight lines, only soft curves. The majority of the shapes are translucent with the exception of the multicolored ellipses, which have a gradient quality and are overlaid with whorls and spirals that give them a sense of lightness and permeability. The print feels organic, like a microscope slide or an underwater image of jellyfish and plankton. The ellipses suggest amoebas, and the pink and red ribbon-like structures at the center and right resemble sea snakes or double helixes.
