About
Each day I need to prove to myself that art happens in the quiet making of things, not by the invitation of a muse or a patron. Instead of starting with a thought, I find only in the making do I learn what I am thinking. Sometimes I experience a mild confirmation (”Of course that’s what I’m thinking.”) and sometimes I experience a violent surprise (”Uh-oh, I didn’t realize I was carrying that around in my head.”), but I am drawn to this process of discovery and deeply trust the result.
My work is in printmaking and bookmaking. In printmaking, I move slowly through the work. I chisel and gouge woodblocks or foamcore plates. I select papers that serve as a worthy mate to the plate’s image. I mix ink colors that intensify the mood of my image.
When I sit down to make a book, I fold stacks of paper, measure thread, sew the book together, and—often enough—cut the book apart and sew it again. I use my own handpainted papers. Often I gather scraps from my workbench and make something so quickly that it feels “already there” and that the making of the book is a circling backward in time to the point of its beginning. I am fascinated by the contemporary artist’s book structures contributed by Hedi Kyle and Claire Van Vliet. They reinforce the simple elegance of a page turning, of a fixed order, of materials used properly.
As I work on the next stage of carving a woodblock or planning a printing session, answers to questions I normally wouldn’t ask emerge. When I sit down with paper and bone folder, answers form under my fingertips. My studio desk is awash in notebooks filled with ideas and sketches, admonitions and promises to do better. This blog is one more of those notebooks, but this one I hope you, my fellow artists and friends, will add to and share with me the answers you get when you sit down to do your work.