This is a color-overboard Risograph edition of a print that I originally made in 2017 for our Community Supported Art (CSA) subscription program! The theme for the CSA that year was "Earth Defenders", and I kept thinking that sometimes Earth defends itself. In 21st century North America, we’re pretty well removed from the memory of whale hunting as a dominant means of "resource extraction" for fuel. But the Western world used to make loads of fuel in the form of blubber from these magnificent mammals, before petroleum became the thing. We damn near extirpated key species of whales from the world’s oceans due to our unrelenting hubris… and yet, sometimes they got away.
One of the quieter facets of my practice is scrimshaw, and this piece is heavily influenced by some of the Western traditions in scrimshaw and adjacent tattoo flash imagery. I created this print using only pen and ink-with-brush on transparency film. This new edition was printed by Justseeds member Mary Tremonte on her EZ390 Risograph machine. I have a soft spot for printing styles that remind me of the children's books I grew up with, and the combination of the Risograph's output and my loose color layer registration gets me that effect here.
Available in a wild limited edition PINK!
