The Clock

Clock...I wrote clock, I meant Block!
Stop...reevaluate...a small typing slip, yet telling in a way I had not intended when beginning this post.

I have a reoccurring thought each time I begin a block for a woodcut.  Perhaps it's more of an unanswered question that resides deep inside the process at the root of all my art making. "Why is this going to be a woodcut?"  This particular image.... why is the drawing, pastel or paint not sufficient....why of all things does this have to funnel itself through the long and often convoluted process that carving a woodblock entails.

I never make many impressions of an image no matter the size, complexity or length of time devoted to the creation of the clocks....blocks.  It's not particularly any fascination with affordability or the idea of multiple original.

Clocks mark time, they are a reminder of passing... each tick a small increment on the way to the future.

On blocks I make marks and then over the course of time compile cut upon cut until something emerges.  Then another block is begun and more marks and cuts are made, someday to be married to the first block.  So it goes until enough blocks are made and enough layers exist to interlace.

 

Each block insufficient to create the whole; each an abstraction and incomplete.  Yet each block is a complete present moment of its own; some having much detail, some only left with a small island awaiting a stray but necessary color.

Perhaps certain work organizes itself so there is a record of its creation.  a scrapbook of its birth and a possibility that a time may be relived.