Roses (and pansies) in the salad

Sunday, May 31, 2020

I took out a few stamp pads and the leftover ends of some chopped peppers from our dinner salad the other night and made these pepper prints for fun. (One of the peppers when printed looked remarkably like a pansy!)

The Italian designer Bruno Munari published a little book called Roses in the Salad dedicated to this technique of turning chopped vegetables into stamps:

Here are some pages:

The whole Munari “Workshop” series is wonderful — check out also Drawing a Tree, Drawing The Sun, and The Tactile Workshops. (There are two others in the series, but the English editions are out-of-print: A Flower with Love and Original Xerographies.) Anything of Munari’s you can get your hands on is worth it…

More block printing

Sunday, September 29, 2019

The boys and I sat around the kitchen table this weekend and made some more block prints.

The four-year-old is still too little to do his own carving, so I had him draw on the block and I carved it for him. (His is the skeleton on the right, the others are by the six-year-old.)

Printmaking with the six-year-old

Monday, July 15, 2019

Here are some linocut prints carved by my six-year-old, printed by me on a photo and an advertisement from the New York Times. (The one on the left reminds me of Corita Kent. “Save up” vs. “Power up.”)

I like how the prints (made with cheap Speedball blocks and ink) look like laser print-outs low on toner. Raw and spooky. The one on the left had little bits dirt or food stuck to it, so it ended up looking like stars around the tower. (I was thinking while we were making these that there’s no reason to ever participate in an art-making process unless there’s some chance for happy accidents and moments of serendipity.)

Here’s what the kitchen table looked like by 9AM.

I love cutting up the discarded prints and collaging them into something else…

…and extending abstract shapes into new forms.

Another thing I love about block printing is the ability to merge different blocks into a single print. Here I’ve printed out the six-year-old’s tower and added a big bad wolf head copied from a drawing by the four-year-old. (The Big Wolf Energy has not subsided.)

NEWSPAPER BLACKOUT PRINT GIVEAWAY!

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

titanic

Four years ago today I made my first newspaper blackout poem, and to celebrate the anniversary, I’m giving away a signed, limited-edition print of “Overheard On The Titanic,” hand silkscreened by my friend, painter and printmaker Curtis Miller:

YouTube: Silkscreening Newspaper Blackout Prints

There were only 18 of these babies made: one is hanging on the wall in my library, sixteen are in a flat file waiting to be sold in the distant future, and one could belong to you.

All you have to do is leave a nice comment below, or tweet with the hashtag #newspaperblackout some time in the next week before next Monday, Oct. 26th, Midnight CT. I’ll pick the winner at random.

The giveaway is now closed. Congrats to the winner, Matt Wilson, and thanks to everyone who entered! More contests to come.

After that, you can browse the new Newspaper Blackout Archives or read my favorite poems from 2006-2008.

Thanks so much to everyone for reading! Y’all rock.

Buy my book and more prints in the store

20×200 NEWSPAPER BLACKOUT POEM PRINTS!

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

After a summer of promising y’all prints, I’m really happy to announce that Jen Bekman and the folks at 20×200 are releasing two editions of newspaper blackout poem prints next week on Tuesday, September 29th!

[ On sale now! ]

If you’re not familiar with 20×200, here’s the formula:

(limited editions x low prices) + the internet = art for everyone

Blackout poems for everyone! Prints as cheap as $20. Recession friendly. I hope y’all will buy one or two.

I’ll post images of the poems on Tuesday, but until then, you can subscribe to their really great mailing list to get advance notice of when they become available.