Proposal Abstract

I propose to exhibit a series of prints and artist books, utilising the techniques and traditions of woodblock printing and letterpress. My woodblock printed imagery, rooted in the narrative landscape, considers the way in which mechanisation shapes land. I have explored the techniques of water-based woodblock printing since 2004, when I travelled to Japan to learn the traditional Japanese method, mokuhanga, at the Nagasawa Art Part Residency. Since that time, I have integrated the specific tools, materials, and techniques of carving and printing into my studio practice. I learned letterpress printing in 1994 and expanded my skills in 2011 to 2013 as the Victor Hammer Fellow, when I learned monotype casting at the Bixler Press and Letterfoundry. I choose to make imagery with the analogue technology of woodblock printing and letterpress, while analysing ideas around changing technologies. I research old and new agricultural and irrigation systems, exploring the traces, modifications, distortions, destructions, transformations, and reconstructions of the landscape of American Southeast. Imagery is developed by investigating old and new technologies used for urban, rural, and experimental farming. Examples include Sand Mountain Seedbank in Rainfall, Alabama and micro-irrigation systems used for peach growing in the Tennessee Valley. Recognisable subjects of rivers, mountains and gardens are deconstructed utilising colour, pattern, shape and form. The work is inspired by fact, fiction, and first impressions of the world around me. In series, the images complete each other, depicting a familiar, yet imagined world. Mountains, rivers, greenhouses, and farms become the manufactured stages on which complex narratives play out. The artwork will tell a poetic story about the human capacity to shape the world around us.