In the late 1980s and 1990s, El Anatsui—the renowned Ghanaian-Nigerian artist—produced a powerful series of wall-based works using carved, scorched, and assembled wooden planks. These pieces, often altered with torches, chisels, or tools that left burn marks and incisions, created richly textured surfaces that echoed the passage of time, cultural memory, and the scarred legacy of colonialism. When I encountered several of these works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I was struck not only by their visual impact but also by their physical presence—each piece seeming to hold history in its layers.
That experience stayed with me. I began reflecting on surface, transformation, and material memory in my own practice. I had a collection of mat board plates, all cut to the same size, and wondered what might emerge if I used them as the basis for a series of collographs—a printmaking technique that builds texture directly onto the plate. Rather than carving like in woodcut, collography allows for layering, adhesion, and surface building using found or textured materials.
I plan to pair this with chine-collé, a process that involves printing onto delicate papers (such as Japanese tissues) which are simultaneously bonded to a heavier backing sheet during the print run. This layering of surfaces—light over dense, fragile over structured—feels conceptually in tune with what I admired in Anatsui’s work: the interplay of fragility and resilience, ephemerality and permanence.
This body of work has evolved very slowly. Over the past year, I’ve experimented with a wide range of materials: wax, adhesives, cord, crackling modeling paste, metal shavings, carborundum and shellac—each responding differently to pressure, and moisture. Sometimes making quite a mess! But what these materials allow for is controlled unpredictability. The cord introduces linear rhythms and divisions; crackling paste creates fractured, organic textures that feel both geological and bodily. I’ve spent hours layering, sealing, printing, and peeling back surfaces to see what holds and what resists.
I’m not yet at the final printing phase, but the process itself has been deeply generative.
This project is not about replicating El Anatsui’s aesthetic but rather to allow materials to speak, to transform humble or overlooked surfaces into carriers of memory and presence.
#ElAnatsui #PrintmakingProcess #Collograph #ChineColle #ContemporaryPrintmaking #MaterialExploration #SurfaceTexture #ArtInProgress #InspiredByMasters #ExperimentalPrintmaking #MixedMediaArt #MatBoardArt #TactileArt #BurntWoodInspiration #PrintmakersOfInstagram #TransformationThroughArt #HandPulledPrint #ContemporaryArt #StudioNotes #TexturedSurfaces #ProcessDrivenArt #ArtMaterialsMatter #ArtisticExperimentation #PrintmakingStudio #ModernPrintmaking #ArtAsProcess #InspiredByAfrica #SculpturalPrints #WIP #PrintmakersJourney