So, this is the block I'm whittling away at this summer...tedious, excessive & obsessive as all get out - just the way that suits me. The color that you can currently see is merely Sharpie highlighter, applied in order to better see the areas I've excised away. The hot pink color works the best, as the yellow & green is too close to the actual wood tone. The blue highlighter tends to be a tad too understated. The wood is a 24 x 36" sheet of Shina from McClains & the tools I'm using to carve are various veiners (also called V-gouges &/or parting tools) and U-gouges from Flexcut, along with my every trusty #11 X-Acto blade. The drawing (for the most part) was done with 9B woodless pencils, followed by a coating of fixitive & finally, Bullseye Shellac (spray can).
Initially, I thought of printing it as a reductive woodcut with lithographic "Sharpography" underneath it, but have since reconsidered that option. Now I'm leaning towards printing it 2x, so that the entire image (bleed edge) is 48 x 72" with an almost totally washed-out umber color underneath certain sections of it.
In my own head, the working title has been "Vertigo," but of course that overwhelmingly conjures up visions of Hitchcock (Alfred, not John). I didn't start out to make a work that in anyway related to my visual escapades, but the doubling, circularity & visual dizziness that vertigo induces are all encapsulated within the work. I think that it also shows the influence of Lee Bontecou's work from the 60's - those wonderful canvas & metal wall constructions that always seemed to me like the Delphic Oracle's prophetic maw.
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