On The Occasion Of My First Commission

July 2nd, 2024

I’ve just delivered my first printmaking commission and must now deal with the consequences. The plan was to pursue printmaking in a way that was independent of the market. But now that someone has given me money, I wanted to revisit my heretofore nebulous principles on art practice and solidify them to the extent possible right now.

Why Printmaking?

I arrived at linocut somewhat serendipitously, having been introduced by a friend one afternoon at work. As a medium, it sat in the back of my mind while I pursued other interests: photography, paper cutting, drawing. A few factors brought me back to it.

I’m disillusioned with images at the moment. Objects seem so much more promising. We live in a world where prompt-based art generators flood the internet with dubious copies of real humans’ work and allow anyone to contribute nonsense to the torrent. Launching one’s own images into that sea is discouraging, and so I lost all momentum I’d built around photography. Instead, I wanted to work with physical, tangible objects that carried markers of having been made by my hands.

Printmaking is forgiving. Like drawing, an errant mark is acceptable. I still have a workable matrix afterward. It doesn’t jeopardize the whole piece. With papercutting, a bad cut could mean collapse. I have neither the patience, nor precision, to work in a form that flirts so much with failure.

Printmaking, compared to papercutting and drawing, is powerful in that it’s a process explicitly for the making of duplicates. Given that a goal of mine is to share my work, and get it into the hands of many people I know, then being able to produce many copies is fitting.

For these reasons, linocut felt right.

Off Of The Computer

I don’t want to spend any more time on my computer than I already do. Many artists I follow draft their work digitally before transferring it onto the block, and I understand the impulse. The ability to tweak and refine near endlessly is tempting. But any time spent on my computer as part of my work is a counter-productive compromise. I’m willingly making things harder and worse for myself, but I’m much happier sitting on my stoop drawing poor approximations of my vision than designing a better version on my laptop.

An additional concern with creating designs on my computer is the risk that the digital template becomes the canonical version of the piece, of which the block and print are merely derivative. This is already an impulse I have to fight: of growing too attached to a drawing before replicating it on the block. Capping myself to a coarse level of detail, and letting it emerge only on the block, helps ensure that any given piece’s identity lives only on the block(s), or prints in the case of reductions.

Socially Situated Art

I don’t sign my prints. I also don’t number my prints, unless it’s a reduction print, and is thus definitionally a limited edition. Signing and numbering prints are useful in a market context, but don’t enrich the piece itself.

I don’t want my signature to be necessary. I give away prints as gifts, and I like to imagine all of those gifts being socially situated in a manner where the recipient will never not know that it was from me. If exchanged with a third party, then that signature becomes useful to indicate who made it and its authenticity. But there’s no market for my work, and I don’t know that I want there to be. I want my work to be socially, rather than financially, useful.

I think often about a sign at an exhibit in the Dallas Museum of Art displaying dance regalia from all across Africa. The museum emphasized that the pieces on display, though having artistic value, were not created “for art’s sake” but rather “for life’s sake” and should be understood in that manner. I was moved by that concept. Though my work is obviously different, making a print for a friend’s daughter’s first birthday, or for my sister’s wedding, is a kindred motivation.

Socially useful art can also be politically useful art. Printmaking carries with it a long history of political utility. I was first introduced to printmaking through classes with Calixto Robles at the Mission Cultural Center, where the walls were covered by years of protest art and organizing material. A political group I’m a member of used linocut to make flyers for a recurring event. There, not only was the reproducibility valuable, but the communal act of art making built bonds as well.

Home-made Art

I have access to a Vandercook press at a nearby print studio, but I’ve yet to use it beyond training/shop orientation. Using a press would relieve some of the stress of hand printing, and I’m enamored with the idea of the print shop as a social space with an in-built community of practice. That said, I’m similarly committed to home-made art. A practice where the tools are relatively inexpensive and easy to use. I make art in the same space where I make and eat my food. I incorporate household items as tools, such as my makeshift baren and an old frame for rolling ink. If the world I imagine, and want to live in, is one where all people are engaged in cultural production, then it makes sense to place the sites of production in accessible locations, namely the home.

Perhaps a more utopian vision of the world breaks people out of the atomization of the home, and into more communal spaces. Spaces like a print shop. I recognize this contradiction and don’t yet know what to do with it.

A Counter-argument

In the essay Go Away Closer, the author, Kajri Jain draws a distinction between the formal colonial economy of India under British rule, and the “informal” ethos of the bazaar. Where the colonial economy is depersonalized and extractive, the bazaar operates in a space of reputational and relational credit. In the bazaar, gifting, haggling, price setting, and purchasing are all socially enriching activities. Jain points to Dayanita Singh as an artist whose practice involves imbuing the ethos of the bazaar into her work, and reintroducing it into social exchanges.

This lens makes sense, even if it feels like sleight of hand. There was a shallow relationship between me and the commission-seeker that’s now stronger for having delivered the commission. I was paid, not just in cash, but also a hug. The commission-seeker isn’t a stranger, but a friend-of-a-friend who had to come to my home to receive the commission. There’s a spectrum of social situation that clearly differentiates this from the de-personalized e-commerce of Amazon or Etsy. That said, I don’t feel compelled to indulge in it too much.

The Specifics Of The Commission

What was asked of me was not a single print, but rather a block itself, to be gifted to a teacher. This is interesting, as my work takes on more of the shape of sculpture than printmaking. I’m selling means of production. The ultimate recipient will be able to produce many copies, and this is exciting. Additionally, the block remains in a socially situated place, as a second-degree gift.