Dark Cloud (2011 - present)
Multi-block relief prints in found or thrift shop frames. Dimensions variable.
My current process involves hundreds of relatively small, carved wood and linoleum blocks, all printed by hand. By employing stencils, masking shapes (cut from newsprint) and an unconventional registration system I produce complex, composite images like those comprising Dark Cloud.
These prints were devised as individual vignettes in order to suggest our tendency to view their contents - the clear-cutting of rainforests, our dependency on fossil fuels, the exploitation of other animals in industrialized human agriculture - as isolated issues. But despite the separation of one cell from another by thin wooden frames, their physical proximity is intended to encourage formal and conceptual analogies. These concerns are, after all, interconnected.