I recently came back from a one-week visiting artist stay at Florida State University, more specifically at tbe Small Craft Advisory Press. SCAP publishes artist books in low editions, usually by working with visiting artists. I had the pleasure of being invited by Denise Bookwalter and Meg Mitchell, excellent hosts both.

The goal of my stay was to start work on an artist book of my work, using laser cutting to engrave woodblocks for printing. Initial tests were promising, although the laser cutter has some limitations in reproducing smaller vector details. Rasterization tends to smooth out certain features and limits graphic complexity at smaller print sizes.

Modular printing system

My original idea was a modular system with circular print blocks that could be rotated for every run so that each book would be unique. This would mean a lot of work for the printers, however, so we agreed on a small print size of 4×4″. We did extensive tests with promising results, but in the end I decided that the small size just didn’t work. To adjust for the small size I had to reduce complexity to a point where it no longer had the qualities I was looking for.

The revised game plan is to do a book of 8×8″ single-color prints (in an edition of 50). The larger format allows for a much higher complexity, while the reduced color palette emphasises the computational geometry. Four alternating colors will provide variation through the book, and 24 pages should give me plenty of space for experimentation.

The book will be printed over the next few months, I can’t wait to dig into the printing process in more detail. My thanks again to Meg and Denise for the invitation!