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Posted by Jason Urban on November 27th, 2009 | Faux-printeresting strikes again (and it isn’t even Tuesday)! Lisa Brawn makes relief sculpture/paintings that build on the woodcut tradition. Brawn carves a mean block but where most would turn to a press and crank out an edition, Brawn paints the block and, voilà, a one-of-a-kind object.
We’ve got a few more after the jump. And when you’re done with those, you can see tons more at Brawn’s website and her Flickr page. Continue reading Lisa Brawn
Posted by Jason Urban on August 18th, 2009 | In conjunction with the UK’s Northern Print Biennale, artist Julian Meredith is in residency at the Great Hall, Discovery Museum in Newcastle upon Tyne. Over the course of his residency, Meredith is creating an image of a Blue Whale across 25 woodblocks made from 5 × 1 Metre Elm planks. The elm used in the project is all native to rural Northumberland.
Have any of our readers made it to the Northern Print Biennale?
The Laing Art Gallery, Hatton Gallery and Northern Print are also set to play host to the biggest exhibition dedicated to printmaking [the UK] has seen for over 20 years – bringing 170 pieces of work from 90 artists all hailing from the four corners of the globe.
And visitors to the exhibition should expect the unexpected with work that both challenges and inspires. “We’ll have pieces that are big, small, three-dimensional, outside, inside, coming off the walls, some you can sit on, some that is text-based, photographic, beautifully detailed, colour, black and white, old and new,” said Anna Wilkinson director of Northern Print. “It promises to be a really exciting exhibition not least because it brings big estabilished artists together with those just setting out on their careers.”
It looks like a pretty exciting event. We’d love a report from someone who’s been able to check it out in person.
And speaking of whale-related artwork, the Fabric Workshop & Museum in Philadelphia currently has an AMAZING piece up by Tristan Lowe.
Posted by Jason Urban on June 16th, 2009 | It’s summer: time to gas up the car, grab your bear, and hit the road. Check out the reductive woodcuts of Roman Klonek (and more here).
 Roman Klonek, On a Dark Desert Highway, Woodcut, 490 x 690mm, 2007.
 Roman Klonek, Kuma, Woodcut, 45 x 69,3 cm, 2009.
 Roman Klonek, I Miss the Gang, Woodcut, 68,8 x 49,4 cm, 2009.
(via the link masters at EMU Graphic Design)
Posted by Jason Urban on April 10th, 2009 | Did anyone else see this post on Notcot about Bryan Nash Gill? He uses relief printing methods with the natural grain of tree cross-sections to generate prints.
 Bryan Nash Gill, Hemlock 82, Relief Print, 52″x38.5″.
A few months ago, Printeresting did a post about Mark Iwinski, an artist who makes similar use of wood grain. Who would think printmakers would have so much in common with lumberjacks?
Posted by RL Tillman on February 10th, 2009 | Comments are closedI’m not a nature boy, myself, but in this photo Mark Iwinski seems to be having a good ol’ time:
Throw in a monoprint, and it’s almost enough to make me want to go camping:
These images are from the artist’s fall 2008 show at Wells College.
Posted by Jason Urban on November 11th, 2008 | Printmaking meets watersports. It seems like such a natural pairing, why hasn’t someone thought of it sooner? I can’t speak to the “surfability” of the boards but I’m giving Albert Garr points for finding a new way to integrate print processes into a previously untapped market. Gar Surfboards are available through Matunuck Surf Shop in Wakefield, Rhode Island and you can contact Garr directly for custom boards. Oh, and prints from the boards are also available on their website.
 Example of carved board and corresponding print
 Example of a finished board
(Via Behance)
Posted by amze on November 7th, 2008 |
 Terry Winters, Furrows IV, 1989 This show looks great. Unfortunately the Printeresting Jet (just purchased on the cheap) is still getting the “Straight Talk Express” scraped off the side, so I won’t be able to review it. If anyone goes to the show and takes pictures please send them along for posting.
November 9, 2008 – February 8, 2009
Gouge: The Modern Woodcut 1870 to Now examines the woodcut in terms of its diverse forms and uses in the modern era. A thematic survey, it invites parallels between the medium in countries as diverse and geographically distant Mexico, France and Korea. Woodblock printing is, in fact, one of the most common artistic practices throughout the world. Although the motivations of each artist and the circumstances in which the woodcuts were made may differ greatly, the visual character of the gouge cuts is a defining thread among the selected works in this exhibition.
The exhibition is divided into four thematic sections. The first section traces the woodcut’s emergence as a modern medium with works by Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, and the German Expressionists. It also features woodcuts by skilled yet little known Indian artists working in Calcutta in the 1870’s. The second section focuses on artists who incorporate the grain of the wood within their compositions, thus making the medium integral to the subjects depicted. Here, Munch’s iconic The Kiss (1897-1902) is displayed among works by Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Susan Rothenburg, Terry Winters, and anonymous Mexican and Tibetan artists. The third section examines the use of the woodcut as vehicle for public expression. It includes monumental Cuban revolutionary banners, bold cuts by members of the Mexican graphics collective El Taller de Gráfica Popular such as Elizabeth Catlett and Leopoldo Méndez, Georg Baselitz’s haunting The Eagle (1981), and the powerful yet eerie Stowage by Willie Cole (1997). The final section looks at sacred and devotional imagery in woodcuts. Among the highlights here is the sculptural installation The Ways of Wisdom (2000) by Korean artist Shin Young-ok. Drawing on a tradition of printed prayer books and literary texts that stretches back over centuries, she has woven streams of paper cut from a woodblock-printed book into five separate three-dimensional scrolls. Her reinterpretation of the woodcut medium and the historical inspirations behind it encapsulate the core motivations of the artists in this exhibition.
Curated by Allegra Pesenti, UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Hammer Museum.
 Anslem Kiefer, Grane, 1993
Posted by Jason Urban on October 11th, 2008 |  Sandow Birk, Invasion, Woodcut, 48″x96″, 2007.
In 2006, HuiPress of Hawaii worked with Los Angeles-based artist Sandow Birk to create his Depravities of War series. The project consists of 15 large-scale woodcuts (48″x96″) based on 17th century French artist Jacques Callot’s etching series, “The Miseries and Misfortunes of War.” The contextualization of current events through the lens of of art history is one of Birk’s common themes.
From a 2007 LA Times article by Sharon Mizota:
The images in “Depravities” often quote Callot directly, cloaking his compositions in the trappings of present-day Iraq and the U.S. “If he had a picture of a street with a tree on the right, then I would do a street with a tree on the right,” Birk says. For reference, he amassed a thick folder of war images from newspapers and websites. “If I needed a house, I would find a photo of an actual house in Baghdad and try to use that.”
 Sandow Birk, Destruction, Woodcut, 48″x96″, 2007.
And a low-res version of the corresponding Callot…
 Jacques Callot, The Destruction of a Monastery, Etching, 3″x6″?, 1633.
The original Callot etchings are actually quite small- interestingly, Birk’s original drawings for the monumental woodcuts were drawn at a similar scale as the Callots and then photo-mechanically enlarged, transferred to the blocks and carved.
Posted by Jason Urban on May 22nd, 2008 | 
Starbucks has revived an older version of it’s mermaid/siren logo much to the dismay of one Christian watchdog group.
The Telegraph reported the story on May 15th…
The logo comes from an old sixteenth-century Norse woodcut and features a bare-chested woman with a mermaid-style fish tail that is split in half.
Once again, the seeds of trouble are planted by printmaking.
The Resistance, a Christian activist group based in San Diego, says the woman looks like a prostitute and suggests the firm should be calling itself “Slutbucks” instead.
Its founder Mark Dice is calling on the group’s 3,000 members across the US to boycott the firm.
“The Starbucks logo has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute,” said Mr Dice.
Wow. I’m not sure what crosses the line in terms of posting someone else’s article so I’ll end my quoting there but I recommend following the link. Any story that can generate these kinds of headlines has to be a good one: Venti-Sized Controversy Over New Starbucks Logo, Some steamed over Starbucks new logo, and Starbucks: Drink of the Devil.
Brand Autopsy has a great breakdown of the Starbucks’ logo evolution.
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Posted by Jason Urban on May 13th, 2008 |  
Has anyone else noticed the similarities between the large-scale figurative woodcuts of Leonard Baskin and many of today’s most popular street artists? Swoon, Gaia, and Elbow-Toe are just a few of the artists using antiquated print media to disseminate their imagery across the metropolitan landscape. And that imagery is strongly reminiscent of Baskin’s monumental prints (pictured above Baskin’s Hanged Man & one of Swoon’s paste-ups).
Continue reading Leonard Baskin: Foreshadowing a Street Aesthetic
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