Hot off the Press

Here is a small selection of prints from 2022–2023. For the most current visual information about my prints, including process images, please follow @abrazos.press on Instagram.

Print 1: Summoning the Winds of Change
In 2022 I participated for the second time in PRINT DAY IN MAY, an international printmaking extravaganza where people all over the world are in their studios printing on the first Saturday in May, and posting work to blogs and on Instagram. There are sponsors for this event, and I was the proud winner of a prize from the Japanese Paper Place’s sponsorship. One had to make a print on Japanese paper on that special day in May and post it to both the JPP’s Instagram site and Print Day in May’s site. I won $300 worth of Heritage Japanese paper, and this was the winning print. 

Print 2: Garden of the Animal Flowers
Many years ago, at a class at Mass College of Art, I misheard a phrase, which has stayed with me. Professor Lowery Burgess was talking about Joseph Campbell, and the Mythology of the Animal Powers, and I misheard, "The garden of the animal flowers”.  Print 2 is an exploration of this idea. It is printed on Nishinushi paper. Some of the print is hand printed since the blocks proved too large for my press.

Prints 3, 4, and 5 are explorations of pods bursting open and revealing surprising elements. The block used to create the pods was carved for the animal flowers print and has had multiple uses.

In the Canopy recently appeared in issue 39 of THE HAND MAGAZINE.  

Print 6: Wisely all Seeing is a polyester plate lithographic print with elements collaged together. The initial plates for the garment with eyes were created for the MAGIC MAN EXQUISITE CORPSE piece shown at the International Printing Museum in Carson, California in the summer of 2021. The idea came from an Indian print in a book about Francisco Clemente’s time in India CLEMENTE IN INDIA: 1973–2010

Print 7: Botanical is derived from an image in a book of Indian gouache and pencil botanical illustrations from the CLEGHORN Collection at the Botanical Library in Edinburgh, Scotland, which were made by Indian artists in the mid 1800’s. These images will be included in a large wall piece concerning the Garden of the Animal Flowers, which is currently in process.

Prints 2018–2019