Printmaking; Experience and Truth

I just started taking a Printmaking class this semester, and it's amazing. As a person who spends a good deal of his energy using computers, writing code, and working in virtual spaces, it's really great to create something tangible. And printmaking is exceptionally tangible, because, as the creator, I am involved completely from start to finish (except for creating the paper, that is). You have to create the composition, transfer the image (in color stages) to your printing material, realize the transferred portion on your material (carve, trace, etc), create a color, ink your material, print, repeat! It's hands-on, and wonderfully relaxing. Class is just shy of three hours, but it speeds by.

We worked first with linoleum mounted on wood, which both of the prints pictured here were created from. Neither of these camera phone photos are great quality, and I'll post better ones once I finally get them back, but it gives a good idea.

Both of these pieces are about experience and perception. In fact, that's what a lot of the work I'm doing right now centers around, whether printmaking, digital, or music. In the last year or so, I've become really interested in consciousness and experience in particular. My personal experience used to be completely hinged on some kind of absolute truth, something scientific and exact. I understood that human perception is subjective, but felt that, behind it all, there must be something absolutely right that we could discover through science. Over the past few years, I've been letting go of that—not necessarily because I'm less interested in science or because I think there's no way to find truth in it—because I don't think it really matters. That view point has only caused arguments, misunderstandings, and judgements. It's not doing me any good, especially when my truth doesn't mesh with another person's: because we've both got stock in our own truths, there's no point in trying to push mine on another person. Let it go; there must be something more important here.

I've always been amazed (now in a positive way) at how differently people can look at, assess, identify with, or otherwise perceive a situation. A very simple example (and a relevant one for Rochester, NY) is how people feel about and deal with the cold. Some hate it, some love it, some are indifferent, a few even seem to ignore it, wearing clothing that seems completely out of place by most people's standards. And that's just barely scratching the surface, because you could probably find someone somewhere that would have a completely different view for just about everything you perceive.

So, building on this theme, for my second project I wanted to have a piece with no right-side-up. It's not quite finished in this picture, but both of the shorter ends could be considered the top: one is an ocean scene and the other a mountain scene, both abstract and non-literal enough for the illusion of two tops to work. It's a reminder that everyone will see things differently, and that that's awesome. One person may see the mountains as the top, another might see the ocean as the top, and maybe somebody else will see something I didn't even intend.