After working together closely 5 days a week, for 3 years on books at the Arion Press, it was pretty exciting to work with Artist Rochelle Youk on a collaborative print in a whole new environment at Sunset Paperworks. We share an affinity for repetitive tasks and eating good food. Her beautifully crafted work explores identity through modern examinations of Korean folk Art. See more of her work on her website here.

We began our collaboration with an introduction to the reduction process via a small three color stamp reduction pictured below. After the initial white areas are carved out from the stamp, the first yellow color is printed. From that same stamp the yellow is carved out and the orange is printed, followed by removal of the orange and printing the deep green.

As we contemplated plans for our woodcut print it became clear that we would deviate from the reduction model and do a single pass with a gradation ink roll and paint in the second color. Carving out so much of the block for such a tiny print area wasn't efficient and we could get more variation in the colored lines by painting them in with acrylic gouache.

Here is our finished print “Moon Jar” woodcut with hand coloring. Image 7" X 7". Paper 10" x 10". Edition of 28. Carved and printed by Rochelle Youk and Nathalie Roland in San Francisco, CA. Available for purchase here.

“Moon Jar” Woodcut by Rochelle Youk and Nathalie Roland

Thank you very much to Rochelle for participating in our ongoing collaborative print series. We look forward to seeing more of your work and hope you will return to Sunset Paperworks for more printmaking experiments in the future.