Greetings from Mazy Path
When friends and clients suggested note cards bearing Mazy Path designs, I got right to work! The first note card features our Ilex Verticillata and Tufted Titmouse linocut print, an image that’s perfect for season’s greetings and/or a cheerful hello throughout the year.
Ilex Verticillata and Tufted Titmouse as seen in Native Plants of the Northeast by Donald J. Leopold and Birds of Connecticut: Field Guide by Stan Tekiela.
The ideas for the print began to take shape when I read Margaret Renkl’s essay about winter, "Love Letter to a Season I Never Loved When I Was Young." Her words struck a chord because while winter once made me feel melancholy, I now look forward to the unique gifts of the season, many of which are on display in my favorite New York locale: Central Park. During the cold weather months, some of the park's plants are at their most radiant. Ilex verticillata, commonly known as winterberry, has inconspicuous tones of green and white in the spring and summer, but in fall and winter this native plant bursts forth with brilliant red berries. In addition, certain birds, such as the tufted titmouse, only visit at this time of year. Drawn to the park's forested areas, tufted titmice bring their jaunty pompadours, peter-peter song, and appetite for seeds and nuts. These two joys of winter, ilex verticillata and the tufted titmouse, inspired my print of the same name.
Ilex Verticillata and Tufted Titmouse linocut print stages of development.
The artwork began with a pencil sketch. Next I used a sharpie marker to delineate areas of light and dark. I then traced the artwork with a 6B charcoal pencil, turned my traced sketch face down on my block, and gently rubbed the back of the paper. This motion transferred the charcoal lines onto the block. Using the black and white sharpie draft as a roadmap, I carved away light areas from the block and left the dark areas intact. Finally, I applied black ink to the block with a small brayer, and pulled away a rice paper print. I added the little red ink dot, a nod to ilex verticillata’s scarlet berries, with a Q-tip!
Radix Media, a Brooklyn-based printer and publishing house, used a letterpress printing press to manufacture our note cards. Photo at Right by Sabrina Hounshell, @seriouslysabrina.
While linocut prints generally don’t have surface relief, their graphic sensibility suggests volume. So, to interpret the print as a note card, I chose letterpress, a form of printmaking that creates a slightly debossed surface. This technique, combined with a heavy cardstock ground, makes the image inviting to both the eye and the hand.
The Ilex Verticillata and Tufted Titmouse note cards are blank inside, sold in groups of eight, printed on fully recycled paper, packaged in PLA (a plastic film made from renewable resources such as corn starch and sugar cane), and available for purchase online. They were designed in Manhattan, printed in Brooklyn, and are ready to fly to your doorstep!