about my art
The art that I make falls under the umbrella of printmaking, and specifically relief printing (also known as block printing). I carve my designs out of linoleum (linocut) or wood (woodcut), and then roll nontoxic oil-based ink onto the surface of the blocks. The inky blocks are then pressed onto archival, hand-torn papers with the help of a marvelous piece of equipment called an etching press. If you’re having a hard time picturing all that, I highly recommend hopping over to my Instagram or Tiktok (links are up there in the top right corner) to see the process in action.
I love printmaking because it is an incredibly meditative and cathartic process; carving is slow and meticulous, and it requires a lot of patience and intentionality. It also requires a lot of trust in oneself and in the process, because one can never truly know how a piece is going to turn out until the first print is pulled off the block. The beauty of printmaking also lies in its inherent ability to produce multiples. Once a block is carved, hundreds and hundreds of prints can be pulled from it. This is why the invention of the printing press was so revolutionary! Those early machines allowed for the easy dispersal of information among the masses, which helped give voice to the common people and hold power to account. Now, I am not so delusional as to believe that my pretty landscape art is giving voice to the proletariat, but I do think it is special that printmaking makes original artwork more accessible to the masses. Rather than working on a piece for weeks and weeks only to have one product that then must be sold for thousands of dollars, I can offer original artwork for a fraction of that because my carved blocks yield an edition of many prints.
