Block Printing for Surface Design
A few years back I listened to a seminar by Pennylane Shen, who talked about the concept of a Visual Vocabulary. The way I understood it, it was as an exercise of formally identifying the marks that recur in my work and the themes that accompany them.
A good example of this is collected in the exhibition catalog of Heatwaves in a Swamp, with a selection of art by Charles Burchfield including pages on which he identified shapes that repeat in his work and the emotion or mood that he associated them with.
I decided I would work with this concept of simplified symbols, and that I would carve stamps to create the shapes, as that would force me to strip back details.
After a few pages, I had a good selection of shapes that resonated with me. I traced a few of these onto soft rubber and carved them.
Here are the initial results.
Once I had a selection of stamped images I scanned them all. I really like the uneven nature of the ink, and wanted to preserve that in the patterns being created.
The stamps came together easily into a small selection of patterns. Then I created a rainbow of variations on the colors.
I have been informally calling it, Visions. I see it living on wallpaper, pillows, and bedding of homes with a vintage eclectic vibe. (The terracotta reds remind me of my grandmother’s formal living room from when I was little.)
