I worked as an IT manager while I was in grad school, and one of the things I learned to despise was the printers. I was always being asked to fix the printers. My response was always, “can’t we do these things electronically?” Now, my reaction to the expansive integration of technology into society is to go back to print making.
I started my printmaking journey during pandemic times. I stumbled into it by way of carving. The process was satisfying, and time-intensive; the perfect hobby during a lock down.
My last pandemic lockdown woodcut was 1 Day, the successor to 294 Days. Of the 294 days I spent downrange, there was that one day an IED went off. To be honest there was more than one day, but all it takes is one day.
I was downrange in Iraq for 294 Days. This was the first woodcut that I did not copy from some other source, and the first piece of art - if I can be so bold to call it that - that sprung from my own feelings. I didn’t follow the reduction woodcut process for this piece, perhaps because I wasn’t done with this topic.
My most ambitious pandemic print was a three color 8x10 reproduction of a depression era poster. The original, commissioned by the government, is in the public domain. I’m not sure what the etiquette is for copying other people’s art - it’s probably not to do it - but, I carried over the original artists name because that seemed like the right thing.
The scan shows some of the wrinkles that exist in the print. I created these with a baren, not a press. To get the color density I wanted over the entire area of this print I had to really work the oil into the paper. That caused to print to have some furrows.
I manually copied the art from a playing card, enlarging it to 8x10. The colors on the original were inverted, but it would have been much more difficult to carve away the areas in black, so I just inverted it. It sounds smart of me, but it was purely trial-and-error; I failed at carving it the other way and this was the re-do.
After whittling a few small wooden figures, I decided to carve a relief, and that became a woodcut. The print came out backwards, obviously, so I had to carve it again. To keep it interesting, I decided to also make it a reduction woodcut. The area around the entire print area was carved away and the orange was printed. Then, the area in orange was carved away and the brown was printed.
