Mike Lyon

Painting Drawing Printmaking Japanese Woodblock Printing Furniture Lighting

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Triangle tiled scroll woodcuts

September 6, 1999 By Mike Lyon

I made three large woodcut ‘scrolls’ in September of 1999. Two of them were installed in the Zen Garden Room I designed and built for the UMB Technology Center in Kansas city. Two of the prints were similar (I kept one for myself), and the third was twice as wide.

I had already cut a bunch of mahogany plywood triangles to adorn the big ‘moon window’ in the room and had a bunch of  triangles left over. I attached them to 3″ squares of similar plywood to make movable tiles for block printing. I made a frame which held 108 of the tiles in two parallel grids each of which was 18 tiles long by 3 tiles wide. I arranged the tiles in the grids, inked them quickly with sumi, and printed them on a thin Japanese paper (Okawara Scroll). Then I rearranged the tiles, re-inked them, and reprinted the same papers. I repeated this process a number of times until I was satisfied with the depth and range of tones, and the results are pictured below.

The printing frame was so beautiful in the end! I permanently attached the tiles with short brads, framed the thing, and placed it in the room opposite the prints, which I had pasted onto linen and hung like Japanese scrolls.

1 blocks_1600.jpg the triangle blocks arranged in pattern, framed and mounted in room at UMB (collection UMB)
2 blocks-in-room_1600.jpg the triangle blocks hanging in room at UMB
3 prints-in-room_1600.jpg two woodcut mono prints mounted as scrolls in room at UMB (collection UMB)
4 umbprints.jpg two woodcut monoprints mounted as scrolls in room at UMB
5 wood_cut_3_x_18_squaresx.jpg Untitled, 1999, 54 x 9 inches, woodcut monoprint from triangle tile set (collection of artist)

Filed Under: Woodblock Tagged With: Block Printing, Brads, Japanese Paper, Japanese Scrolls, Kansas City, Linen, Mahogany Plywood, Moon Window, Prints, Squares, Sumi, Technology Center, Tiles, Triangle, Triangles, Zen Garden

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