Letterpress
Metal type
Wood type
Edition of 10
Metal type
Wood type
Edition of 10
These abstract compositions include my writing, inspired by movement, migration, and immigration. The writing fragments speak to a loss and a redefinition of home in the context of body, place, and country. I write in English and Croatian.
I use abstract plates and create my printing plates using discarded materials, cardboard, and duct tape. I use delicate type printed next to duck-taped plates to create a dynamic and ethereal effect. I carefully curate the typographic collection and the printing plates in my studio.
A well-meaning someone once asked me, “Don’t you think that working with these tools is anachronous?” I had to look up “anachronous.” Then, I worried. “Anachronistic” has been ringing in my head ever since. Deep in my contrarian, feminist gut, I know that I tethered my art practice to tools that belong to another time. I could have made an argument that painting is equally anachronistic. Instead, I doubted. I knew that mine is a habit that involves hoarding, can be sentimental and possibly, yuck, nostalgic. It touched on craft.
To work with old wood and metal type and an ever-rusting printing press, you have to be just a teenie tiny bit reclusive. This process is notoriously time-consuming and laborious and often attracts the pedantic. It feels mischievous to work against how the equipment has been used in the past like I am getting away with something. I, on the other hand, wanted to create prints that were organic, dynamic, unexpected, and did not follow the right angles that are typical of letterpress prints. Since I understand the logic of the tools, I am able to subvert their original purpose, which was to print with mechanical precision and clarity. Am I equating my resistance to the mechanical constraints to the resistance against heteronormative, patriarchal, white supremacist structures? On some level, yes, and also, I am screaming into the void, which is necessary work if I am to remain somewhat sane. Being a non-neurotypical person with chronic health problems, this is a special task. The colorful and dynamic compositions of my work are a kind of resistance, rendered in variations that are organic and full of life and produced in multiples.
2014 - present
I use abstract plates and create my printing plates using discarded materials, cardboard, and duct tape. I use delicate type printed next to duck-taped plates to create a dynamic and ethereal effect. I carefully curate the typographic collection and the printing plates in my studio.
A well-meaning someone once asked me, “Don’t you think that working with these tools is anachronous?” I had to look up “anachronous.” Then, I worried. “Anachronistic” has been ringing in my head ever since. Deep in my contrarian, feminist gut, I know that I tethered my art practice to tools that belong to another time. I could have made an argument that painting is equally anachronistic. Instead, I doubted. I knew that mine is a habit that involves hoarding, can be sentimental and possibly, yuck, nostalgic. It touched on craft.
To work with old wood and metal type and an ever-rusting printing press, you have to be just a teenie tiny bit reclusive. This process is notoriously time-consuming and laborious and often attracts the pedantic. It feels mischievous to work against how the equipment has been used in the past like I am getting away with something. I, on the other hand, wanted to create prints that were organic, dynamic, unexpected, and did not follow the right angles that are typical of letterpress prints. Since I understand the logic of the tools, I am able to subvert their original purpose, which was to print with mechanical precision and clarity. Am I equating my resistance to the mechanical constraints to the resistance against heteronormative, patriarchal, white supremacist structures? On some level, yes, and also, I am screaming into the void, which is necessary work if I am to remain somewhat sane. Being a non-neurotypical person with chronic health problems, this is a special task. The colorful and dynamic compositions of my work are a kind of resistance, rendered in variations that are organic and full of life and produced in multiples.
2014 - present