Every Friend's a Stranger

Back to woodcuts in a second. I wanted to share this clip from today's Buffalo News.

Prosopagnosia is having a moment in the collective consciousness, and I want to do my part to share information about it.
 

The One That Got Away

It was about this time last year when I discovered, to my horror, that I had mistakenly thrown out all copies of this print, "DeSoto Motel II," a new attempt of a print made years earlier. It was to be in last year's Erie County Fair, and was the very best work I'd done in 19 years of printmaking.

This year, I am working on a print that I hope will rival this one. Stay tuned!

Napping Cat Press: A Fresh Start For 2022

 This was my first woodcut, made in January or February of 2022, twenty years ago. I recently took about 4 years away from focusing on printmaking to work on learning cartooning. I am hoping that all that I have learned through my cartoon study will enrich my printmaking.

The print seen here is my first woodcut (though I had done a few early attempts at relief printing using a potato). Amy hates it. I can see why. But I love it because it was the door through which I entered an amazing, fulfilling world of reduction woodcut printmaking. I had a pine board from a bizarre attempt to become a carpenter 6 months earlier, and Amy had a few bottles of fabric paint. The only tool I had to cut with was Amy’s dad’s old rust X-acto craft set. I manipulated a picture of Amy to high-contrast and printed it out on our printer, and traced. It would several months before I began doing prints from my own drawings. But at this moment, when I pulled the paper off of the block, it was like I was struck by lightning.

This print represents the moment that I found my path.

Now I am back in the studio, ready to get back on that path, and I invite you to join me in a very special journey.