Mike Lyon

Painting Drawing Printmaking Japanese Woodblock Printing Furniture Lighting

Tea Room Table and Chairs

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These are my first furniture designs. Built from old fir high-school bleachers I salvaged plus some used fir 2x4s from concrete forms, these went into the tea room of the Kansas City Shotokan Karate dojo. Padauk wood inlay was used in the five chairs and table top to fill the many holes and defects in the old […]

Tiled Floor of vertical grain oak and padauk

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While building the dojo floor for the KC Shotokan Karate Club, we decided to leave an area for visitors and observers. We built benches along the windows, and I designed, built and laid this beautiful wood tile floor. First I measured the area, then designed the tile size (tiles had to be less than 4.5″ square so […]

Clouds and Water

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“Clouds and Water”, 1998, reduction wood-cut on Hosho, 16 x 10 inches.   Chine-colle on blue backing, 10 x 64 inches.

Portrait of Jerry Vegder woodcut over archival inkjet

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My great friend, Jerry Vegder, HATES to have his picture taken!  HATES it!  But several times, he’s made the mistake of allowing me to photograph his very interesting head!  This may be the ONLY portrait of Jerry which he finds tolerable, since the tiled woodcut completely obliterates his image!

Burning Leaf Smell woodcut

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Printed in December, 1997, this small edition of tiled woodcuts was produced for Christmas gifts that year.  The muddy colors and swirly patterns remind me of the smell of leaves burning in our gutter each fall, a practice now long abandoned (and illegal).  These were printed from a set of one-inch birch plywood tiles with […]

hand stamped tiled woodcuts

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Over Thanksgiving we flew to Port Townsend, WA for a family get-together with my sister-in-law, Barbara Stanny.  I took along a tiny watercolor set and a couple of stamps I’d carved — a quarter circle and a half-circle.  I entertained myself on the plane ride by printing some tilings (one sqare at at time) on […]