Cobwebs, dust, and the soft scent of rotting wood filled the air of Tracy Lang’s 400 sq. ft. barn studio.  In the four corners there were stacks of crates, cardboard boxes, old picture frames, beaten sawhorses and cheap shelving loaded with rusted spray cans, solidified duct tape coils, and wads of brown newspaper.  Rafters of differing stain barred the attic where a single reclining ladder hung from the central apex.  With fresh wood and a clean white rope dangling from its backing, it was the only new fixture in the barn.  Tracy pulled it down and climbed up.

“It was a livestock shed,” she remarked.  “Thank god the smell is gone.”

She suddenly relaxed as her eyesight locked onto the workspace.

“If I had the time and energy, I’d fix this place into a lounge.  Insulation, lights, cushions and pillows…” Her thoughts drifted away as streaks of light beamed across the dust clouds.

I asked what’s stopping her.

“Well, if this property wasn’t for sale, I’d consider.  Next, I’d need to sell this new piece.”

Here was her entire focus.  After three years of imagination, creation and manipulation in the barn, today would be the day this one piece all came together.  She called her closest friends and family to gather underneath the cobwebs to help her procure her newest woodblock print.

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Her process begins with a fondness for Nature and Her subtleties.   She is outdoors each day, tending to her garden, climbing the hops vine, and sketching life-drawings with a bamboo stick and ink.

“I always make sure I’m looking at my subject from a worm’s eye-view,” Tracy explained.  “Meaning from underneath…  This way the subject becomes larger than me before I even begin to draw.  Most people paint or draw looking down or level with the [subject] of interest.  This is how I eliminate the art ego, getting rid of the control of how the mind deciphers an image.  Imagine,” she reflected, “a giant print with God’s eye-view?  How stale and boring.”

From drawings, the image is mirrored and printed on a blueprint machine to create a giant pattern.  The image is attached to two sheets of mahogany-finish plywood using wheat paste.  Then, Tracy carves out the negative space with a drumhead on a dremel tool.

“Okay,” I said.  “So you do what?”

She laughed.  “It’s easy.  I want the image to be printed on the blueprint paper as a mirror so when it’s attached to the plywood, I can carve out the negative space.  There, I remove it with my dremel, so when I roll out the ink it’s not highlighted.  The negative space never touches the paper as an end result.”

I nodded.

“One of the most important parts though is to cover the seam,” she explains.  “The square blueprint with the mirror image covers most of the plywood, so I have to find a place back in the original design where a horizontal or vertical seam can disappear.”

When all said and done, Tracy washes off the leftover blueprint paper leaving the final image carved into the plywood.  Today, the image is a seedpod entitled Sweet Gum Seed Pod.  Here’s where we come in to play.

Back down on the wood floor Tracy directed the new arrivals, “Sweep.  Clear the newspaper, move those boxes, bring over the sheets of plywood.”

I grabbed a wooden handle of the nearest broom and watched the piles materialize.  Dirt, dust, rusted nails, leaves from a fallen season.  I looked up at Tracy as she helped pull the two sheets from her car. “I feel like we’re all becoming a part of your own little art community.”

“You are!” She grunted and brought them into the center of the room. “With all this damn isolation of designing, sketching and carving while hearing myself talk, it’s a fresh breath to bring family and friends into the process.  This is my favorite part.  We all do it together on a sunny spring afternoon with beers and cherries.  What more?”

The two sheets of plywood were laid out on the swept floor.  Tracy nailed them together while each of us pushed in on the corners to flush that seam.

“More on the right,” she directed.  “A little harder.  Kick it with your shoe.”

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Next, two additional corners are created on top of the plywood and nailed through them into the floor to act as placeholders for the final paper.

There are five of us plus her four year-old daughter, Quinn and her little friend.  Dressed as Dragon and Fairy Princess, the inclusion of youth lightened the air and softened the process.

“We’re creating art,” Tracy exclaimed to the kids.  “Why not have the most fun you possibly can dream of!”  She popped off a few more beer caps, passed the bottles around to our mature hands and exclaimed, “We’re ready!”

Woodblock printing is either a small-scale process or a large-range endeavor.  From a worm’s eye view and a Goddess-like sense for detail, her art is grandiose. Influenced by German Expressionism and the nature of Paul Gauguin, her work is abstract blended with classic realism.  At six-feet by six-feet, the final print is massive and consumes a lot of space, a lot of time, and a lot of money.

On a glass-framed panel, tubes of non-toxic linseed oil-based inks were compressed and mixed with a medium gloss.  Tracy swirled her hand like a calligrapher, churning them, combining their tones.  A set of rubber rollers of varying sizes appeared from out of her handbag and we offered our palms.

“You, you and you; roll out the inks with me.”  She pointed at me and one other friend.  “You two tape the edges where ink should not be.”

We worked quickly.  The ink wanted to dry.  We stepped around each other.  We pointed out dry spots, places with not enough color. Tracy wanted it thick.  It needed to transfer onto the final paper.  And we giggled, jumped around like wild apes making mandalas. Our beers were nearby and we sipped, refreshing the heat built in our minds and bodies.

“Quick!  The ink is drying.  Here’s a spot!  Taper, tape this edge.  And over here.”  Minutes passed.  “Alright, we’re almost ready!”

Tick-tock.  Tick-tock.  Tracy leapt back.

“Everybody off!  Let’s grab the paper.  You hold this edge.  I’ll hold this.  Lily, guide the paper into the placeholders.  It needs to be flush and lined perfectly.”

I stood back, snapped some photographs and watched the massive square sheet of Japanese kozo paper stand upright, fit into its corners, and slowly with the utmost precision fold onto the wet ink of the plywood carving.  We weren’t finished.

All of us grabbed large white shards of paper that once acted as packing material for the Japanese order.  We laid it over the back of the newly placed sheet, covering it like a thick layer of peat moss, and began jumping on it as if we were miniature pigmy faeries.  We danced in circles, making sure our beers were out of our hands and all cherry pits spat on the grass.  Dragon Quinn and her little Fairy Princess friend joined the party as we stomped, shouted, hooted and marched all over the sheet.

Tracy continued leading us, “Get the center real good.”  We gravitated toward each other and bounced.  “Stomp the edges!”

We circled like a merry band of over-sized infants playing Ring-Around-the-Rosie.

“We need that ink to stick!”

Then as quick as we jumped on, we all jumped off.   Tracy was on one top corner, anxious to reveal her masterpiece.  Another grabbed the other corner.  Lily was back on the bottom to sweep up the final edge and bring it out of its placeholders.  They pealed it back.  The ink appeared, the patterns and markings, the jigsaw puzzle of Nature’s design work.  Lily caught the end and it was up, quick to hang on the wall-clippings like a soggy piece of linen.  And there the wet ink shown with glossy highlights as the “nautical charts, mazes, arterials and antique documents” of Tracy’s mind revealed themselves through our eyes.

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Viewed from afar, Sweet Gum Seed Pod looked like pure energy, like an Alex Grey beaming with light. It covered most of the wall and was blotted with ink, thick and textured.  For the first time I stared at the paper.

“It’s $250 per sheet, and I ordered ten at a time from a 450 year-old paper factory in Japan.”  Tracy wasn’t paying much attention to my paper question.  She was pealing apart her art with her eyes, torquing her head from side to side.  “It’s made of pure mulberry pulp.”

And so it was.  Thick and fragile.  Raw on the edges as if torn from the center of a mural.  The paper was beautiful.  The process was exhilarating.  The final woodblock print of a Spring’s seedpod was a masterpiece.  Flawless.  Tracy blinked her eyes and smiled.

“This is it!”

Tracy Lang is showing Sweet Gum Seed Pod (79” x 79”)

Tracy Lang will be performing large woodblock demonstrations during the Fall for Fashion at The Bravern in Bellevue Saturday and Sunday, September 11th and 12th.  During the event, the public, including kids, will have the opportunity to participate and become part of the printing process. www.TracyLang.net

‘ Art (of) Work‘ offers an intimate view into the artist’s world.

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Contributors:

The soul of the roving Cameron Juan Karsten is within photography and writing.  He yearns for expansive adventure of the deepest value in order to express the tales of humanity.  It’s Cameron’s dream to create a life within these two industries, traveling the world to share culture, ideas and beliefs.

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Contact Cameron Karsten for photography services and/or writing assignments in portrait, wedding, commercial, travel and fine art: www.CameronKarsten.com

Design by Lisa Berry
Produced by Jenn Morgan

Supported by Bemis Building’s Art Committee

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