When we first moved to Wenatchee, I lived under the delusion that I would set up a studio in our garage. My partner, Eric, repeatedly told me that this was a terrible idea, because there’s no way to regulate the temperature of the space. Stubbornly, I pushed forward and set up a work desk in the corner. To prove him wrong, I sat down, drew a goofy dog on a woodblock, and began carving until I was about halfway done.
The block sat in the garage for over a year, virtually untouched.
It took a global pandemic (and warmer weather) for me to finally commit to finishing the block. Afterward, the palm of my hand hurt in a familiar way. It was a vaguely uncomfortable reminder of how much I love carving woodblocks. I sat on my couch moving for the next few hours moving my hand around to make sure it wasn’t permanently numb, thinking back fondly at the calluses that formed on my hand when I was completing my undergraduate thesis exhibition.
A small bit of dread set in when I realized I would have to print this block. It is perhaps counterintuitive that my least favorite aspect of printmaking is the, uh, printing part. I just never latched on to the technical side of the process. It’s also been over a decade since I set foot in an actual printshop, so my confidence was lacking in that department.
Two weeks passed before I returned to the garage with my roller, a tube of black ink, and an inking plate. I did a test print on a piece of scrap paper and quickly realized that I had not carved this character’s left ear. After correcting this, I did three more test prints, made some tiny corrections, and began to print an edition of nine on pre-cut paper. As the rows of prints were laid out on my desk, I was overcome with both pride and relief. It was a reminder that I don’t hate printing as much as I thought I did.
Once the prints were dry, I penciled in the edition numbers and matted eight of the nine prints.
Is this piece available?
Yes! Eight of the nine prints are available for $25 each in my online shop.