Setting type for the 24” long accordion book design.
Story adapted from the original work by french author Jean Giono, 1953. Printed on mulberry paper, with pressure printing on the back and lead type on the front.
monotype with burnt umber ink on somerset
Woodblock print on mulberry. 17.5x7.75” First state, experimenting with layered landscapes. There are old abandoned military bunkers outside of Wasilla, Alaska. While living in Alaska I used to drive out on this road to get to various awesome places, and this spot had cool old ruins covered in tags. I was there in the snow and there was a long slit in the ground where no snow had stuck—it appeared to be a very long (40 feet at least?) skinny opening to a dark space below. Impossible to light with a small flashlight. It seemed to be the mouth of some door in the ground, a bat cave of kinds…The landscape above was beautiful, the tree silhouettes in the early winter twilight. What was below? Later I tried to look up the antipode of this spot (there is a website with a cool little dude who will stick his head in the ground on one side of the globe and it pops out the other, with his little pixelated tush in the air where he started). It’s somewhere in the ocean south of South Africa. It is very hard to find specific information about the middle of the ocean. Everyone loves to think about the sea life right on the coast, unless you’re by an extremophile site like a vent. In future iterations of this print I’d like to evoke some of the beautiful creatures deep in the ocean (the vampire squid!) though I can’t verify if they are currently at the precise antipode to the vent on KGB road… vents often lead to much larger spaces.
Reduction block print in side-by-side stages (all three images printed from the same tiny 2.5x2” woodblock, with more carved away for the second block, and the most carved away for the print farthest to the right (“March!”), in which the ice fisherman falls through the ice and the fish leaps into the air.
4x6 shina plywood woodblock carving and print of a sly traditional Swedish Christmas gift-bearer. 2020
Commissioned linoleum block for the organic CSA farm where I worked this summer in Litchfield, MN. This block will be a stamp the farm can use for thank you notes to share members and other fcorreabeling. Linoleum, unlike wood, squishes a bit into paper, making it work as a stamp without the need for rubbing the back of the paper or using a press (as you would do in traditional block printing).
Seen here are three different carving tips for carving linoleum and/or wood. Very finest gouge is for linoleum, the slightly larger one is a 3mm u-gouge for wood or linoleum, and the largest is a 6mm U gouge for clearing large spaces.
Hand printed 4x6 linoleum reduction print, phase 1 . Ongoing series of prints involving the lyrics of “Green Grass” by Tom Waits.
Woodblock print, 8x10”
4x6 shina woodblock print, 2020. Hand printed on mulberry in black water soluble relief ink.