One Day Builds: Ginkgo Prints for the Holidays

 

    These prints were a fun distraction from my normal technical pursuits. A career as a mechanical engineer and a lot of hobbies and projects involving engineering means I spend a lot of time with numbers and dimensions. Tweaking millimeters on a design so it looks just right, fits perfectly, and has the correct balance of weight and strength. Its fun, don't get me wrong; I'm lucky to make a living doing something I enjoy and that comes easily to me. It can be exhausting though when even your artistic expression involves chasing dimensions and tolerances (see my posts about the necklace build or spoon build).

    I've been having some technical burnout in my life recently. It just adds up. So, spur of the moment I decided to do a wood block print as part of the holiday gifts I'm making this year. A future post will cover the rest of the gift, but I wanted to write a bit about these prints.

    Nothing about these prints were really planned or ideal. The wood block is a scrap of plywood from furniture making. I don't have any chisels so I carved it with an X-Acto knife. The shape of the stem was determined by the need to fit it on the wooden block I had. No ink or ink pad, so I just used a Sharpie to ink the block. I thought I might get some nicer paper to print on, but instead I decided to reuse some paint samples I had from painting my apartment, trimming them square. 

    In some ways it reminds me of the engineering adage 'a good solution comes from a well defined problem.' Often it can be the easiest to work under strong limitations; it really narrows down what you can do and you don't waste time with all the 'what ifs' or 'we coulds'

    My home office is my dining room table which I share with my Ginkgo tree, Ola. As the seasons progress she has been dropping her leaves and it reminds me of walking in Oberlin, Ohio; a town a grew up near. I have fond memories of walking the Ginkgo lined downtown streets in fall, the air filled with the smell of rain and wet leaves, stepping into Ginkgo Gallery to look at the works of local artists.

    Tracing a fallen, golden leaf, a loose sketch guided my carving. Having a leaf to study was immensely beneficial to get the vein structure looking right; they curve differently than I really expected. Though I suppose this is part of the exercise; to learn about the little details you thought you knew and therefore overlooked. Carving random veins with no particular patterns is not trivial. I look at these prints and see the order I carved the veins in, and the subtle patterns those create. Thinking you're being clever by alternating the sides you branch new veins from and trying to be random and unplanned, only to see the distinct areas you worked in order. It reminds of the shading and crosshatching of artist Mary Azarian, or of the detailed hair of traditional Japanese wood cuts. It is doubtful any of my family and friends receiving these prints as gifts will notice, but it tells a story.

    A lot of the time I can get stuck in the analysis paralysis. A simple idea can turn into a complex project and before you know, you are never going to finish and its never going to be perfect. I liked this project because I really gave myself permission to not be perfect. To not over analyze and to not have a plan. I feel it really adds to the artistic expression; you're driven by instinct and intuition, rather than logic or experience or facts.

    Of course this approach isn't always appropriate, but here it was very relaxing.