Working Hands, Shaken Rust
Ever look down at the hands of someone, someone old, someone that’s been here a while? The cuts and the scars, the veins sticking out like worms on the concrete after a rain. You wonder how rheumatoid affects their grip. You shake their hands. I was thinking of the used car lot and my Uncle Bob’s hands, the way his nails look like they’d been chewed off. The body guy, Dick, his hands laden with grease and grime. My old man’s hands still stained with oil based ink from the factory. This is an ode to them, to their hands bent and broken, callous and forged through the years doing all that they know how. This is the “Ode to the Working Man,” Enjoy!
I started with the woodblock (48x32 1/2 inches) in 2017. I wanted to emphasize the blue collar shirt, as if it were hanging on a rack. I liked the way those shirts looked back when I was working on trucks for Standard Spring, the clean ones from Aramark all up in a line. I also wanted to emphasize the hands for reasons stated above. The wrench is a tool that I can I can hear dropped on the concrete of the garage in my memory. Like the hands, its forged with incredible amounts of energy. The tool is a symbol of the soul or the worker.
The pose is like that of a baseball catcher giving the sign but it really comes from watching RP Motors body guy, DIck, work while sitting on a milk crate.
I would end up doing a couple variations of monotype to put underneath the woodblock, pushing the abstract qualities of the composition.
Above is the only example of one with the monotype layered on top of the wood block. Below is an edition of four of a minimal color scheme with the woodblock printed in graphic chemical black.
I was experimenting with boarder. Either way I think the image stands with or without one.
If I give this woodblock another go around, I’d change a few things like putting bones, radius and ulna, and a few other visual elements in there. In the end I felt blue was the way to go but looking back it all works out.
The used car lot finds its way into the comic book, Run the Streets, as a steady installment. Fresh stories from Dick and Bob are illuminated on the pages with art made from relief prints, painting, and much more. Follow their stories when the comic drops.
