Want to Spoon?

After working on my large print for White Space that I had hand printed, I was excited to see the demonstration, Spooning Large Format Prints by Dan Miller, a printmaking faculty member at PAFA.  As I got of the elevator, I saw these incredible woodcuts by Dan in the lobby.

Detail, they were hard to photograph under glass!

Another detail.  The carved lines are incredible.

Then I went in to the demo to see more of his work

Placing paper over the inked block into the wooden registration guide.  Dan simply hand printed with a bamboo rice spoon from Chinatown, a few blocks away.

A woodblock is in the foreground, and the registration guide is in the middle of the table.

His tools

The first color printed

Woodblock for the second color

The finished print

Detail of woodblock- I like to write the titles on the side of my blocks too so I can find what I need amongst the stacks of blocks on the shelf

Woodblock

The print

Seeing these large prints that were printed by hand was very inspiring.  Dan said he likes to print by hand to get subtle nuances that you don't get with the press. I was going to print my big piece on a press, but will now spoon it by hand.