While the digital collage was only an input for the image, with the final woodblock print as the output, the very processes of analog and digital, hand drawn, and graphic embodied my ideas in visual form. In this respect, the notion of drawing as a perceptual device, both in hand-executed form on paper and digitally merged in electronic format, was a means to establish visual narrative and to form persuasive graphic imagery. In the initial stage, each image started as a collection and analysis of dissimilar images with preparatory hand-drawings, photographic collage, and digital montage being integrated and altered through Photoshop and Illustrator software.
Once I realized I could make prints without a press, I decided to make them as big as the largest Okawara washi 39-inch by 72-inch sheets would allow.ĭuring the residency at Kala, I worked on three new block prints, each 33-inches high by 48-inches wide, and proofed them on trimmed 39-inch by 56-inch sheets of Okawara machine-made washi. In many ways, my Kala experience was the catalyst for a series of large, panoramic prints, all produced without a press, an epiphany of unlimited possibilities as to where the medium of block printing, frequently dismissed as archaic and irrelevant in the contemporary context, could be taken. The idea that large prints could be done without a press, or even a studio, was invigorating and the knowledge that block printing could be as "cutting edge" as any new, technology-supported print media was enormously stimulating. Kala's excellent studios, with readily available state-of-the-art print equipment, were impressive, yet it was there that I realized I no longer needed print equipment to produce my work. This allowed me to set up a small but efficient printing area. In order to avoid the morning traffic crossing the Bay Bridge, I left San Francisco early and made it to Kala before most artists arrived.
As a communal workshop, Kala's studios assigned no designated workspaces each area was secured on a first-come, first-served basis. During that summer, I lived in San Francisco's Noe Valley and commuted to Berkeley every day. It was not until 2002, on an artist-in-residence grant from the Kala Art Institute, that I was able to embark on my first venture into the complex process of cutting and printing large color prints from multiple plates. Subsequently, I produced many more medium-size color woodcuts, generally vertical images 24 inches wide by 37 inches high, all hand-printed from multiple plates on kozo washi ( wa meaning Japanese and shi meaning paper).Įndi Poskovic, Red Table, color woodblock print from 3 blocks on Mulberry-washi. My second woodcut was a somewhat larger, nine-inches by nine-inches, an image of a table placed against a field of green arrows, pulled in two separate editions in red and blue respectively. My two-inch by two-inch print of a three-legged chair, overprinted with red dots from a pencil-end eraser, was an awkward beginning at relief. For someone who produced large, photo-based intaglio etchings for in-situ presentations and wall-size plate-lithography combines, this was a radical shift. By the time I moved to Los Angeles in 1997, I was completely immersed in reinventing this populist print medium in the context of my graphic work. On the recommendation of an artist friend who suggested traditional hand-cut and hand-printed relief, I began to make woodblock prints. In all honesty, after eleven academic years of formal training in print media, I didn't know how to make prints without proper equipment. While in Indiana, I had no access to a printmaking studio and found myself frustrated by my inability to step outside of established norms of printmaking and its reliance on printmaking shops and equipment. Then, in 1995, I moved to Muncie, Indiana, and taught at Ball State University for two years.
I rarely explored traditional relief and block printing and had only printed by hand in my early art school days. For many years, it was my primary method of making prints. Produced at the Kala Institute, Berkeley, CA.Īs many print artists do, I too produce my prints on etching and lithographic presses utilizing a variety of established and new printmaking processes. Color woodblock print from 4 blocks on Kozo Okawara washi. Endi Poskovic, Sunny Day Over the Bay in Orange, Red and Deep Blue 2002.
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