St. Pickles: Guardian of Boxes

My house has always been filled with art. I remember nights where my dad would stay in the attic until the sun rose making stamp collages or cutting a new stencil for a spray paint project. His father introduced him to art with traditional still life and anatomy. My dad combined his classic knowledge with street art of the 80’s and 90’s which has been passed down to me in the form of anti capitalist mixed media. The common thread of artistry between us all has been printmaking. I have my grandfathers carving tools along with a number of other tools from him.

Strangely, I wasn’t introduced to printmaking by my father or grandfather. Instead I found it on my own in my high school printmaking class jr. year. I had been struggling for a long time to produce any visual art at the time. Drawing and painting are basics you need for printmaking, but when you use photo references and a light table, the whole process becomes much easier than drawing an idea with a photo reference could be. Prepping for a drawing and prepping for printing are similar processes, you find references, cut and paste them together how you need, and use it to achieve your final product. But with drawing and painting, I always felt like I was simply tracing designs I hadn’t really made. I felt disconnected from my own artistry. Printmaking brought me back into feeling like what I made was actually mine. The carving is the step I needed, it’s like drawing but instead of adding value, you’re stripping it away to find the product within the material. Like sculpture but with a more tangible guide.

Finding a medium I feel confident in took me years and I’m nowhere near perfecting or even being good at printing, but I enjoy it. Art you make for yourself can end up being something you want to share or something that was just practice. I still don’t draw or paint, I've put that energy into writing and printing. It’s made me find joy in art for the first time in a while.

St. Pickles is the first print I’ve done in a few months. I made it for my dad’s birthday card in November last semester. It’s just a cut out on rubber from a picture of my cat Pickles off my dad’s instagram account. But adding the stickers and extra drawings on top[ of the original print, even the difference in what I print on, it makes the idea come alive in a way I haven't seen a different form of media. For St. Pickles, I don’t know what really inspired the “Lost Cat” type imagery. I think it’s the memes about “Have you seen him? Now you have :)” combined with wanting to make public art. I plan to make more prints once I have more cardboard (i’m using snack boxes to print on because it’s hearty and I like how it holds ink) and I know how many I want to make.