We will have a special treat for the closing reception of our Parducci exhibit Surveying Greatness: The Work of Corrado Parducci. Obviously, Parducci and the inspiration he provides are important to us, so we wanted to create a unique way to interact with his work and hopefully inspire more Parducci enthusiasts.  What better way than to throw paint to block and make your own Parducci print!  That’s right, we are setting up a printmaking station and the willing are encouraged to step up and make a personal copy of some iconic Parducci artwork.

The beautiful designs on the elevator doors at the Fisher Building.

To do this, we carefully selected four images of Parducci’s work that would translate well to printmaking from the Fisher, Penobscot, and Buhl buildings. And then we jumped into making linocuts – something none of us had done for ages.

Think back to your first introduction to printmaking – perhaps all the way back to elementary school.  When you have that image in your mind it is probably of gouging chunks of linoleum out in a pattern you hope will look like a Valentine’s Day card for Mom.

A sneak peek of Meredith’s handy dandy work

Linocuts are similar to woodblock printing, just instead of carving wood you’re carving linoleum which may or may not be attached to a piece of wood. Woodblock and therefore also linocuts are a form of reductive printing, meaning that material is removed from an object to create a relief print. Softer and easier to work with than wood, linocuts can also be cut in any direction as there is no grain. But this doesn’t mean copying Parducci’s work is an easy task!

For the past several nights, each of us has been bent over our linoleum blocks, carefully carving and gouging with wicked kinks in our necks. A few bandaged fingers later, we are done and ready to showcase our attempts to copy a master. So please don’t hold our enthusiasm to help you bring a little Parducci home against us, if anything it was certainly fun and definitely provided a whole new appreciation for the beautiful designs that Parducci created.