Darin Grassman

This work is a development of hand-held tools for printing. 

These implements hold a visible potential for mark-making and suggest interaction with interchangeable parts or variables that alter pattern. The result is a print that shows evidence of the tool that made it.  Similarly, these tools are part of a hand-made process, and I regard the objects with equal aesthetic inquiry as much as something that appears to have lived through its own odd functionality.

This family of objects with pieces that connect/attach/detach are somehow co-dependent. They repeat, realign, create sequences and form patterns by multiplication and rhythmic mark-making.  By building and rigging my own blocks and stamps, I can satisfy my own urge for playful repetition as well as create custom possibilities and limitations in print.

I’d like to extend a line of inquiry into the sense of time created by printing with entirely analog sensitivity.  In conjunction with film and bookmaking, I am able to cycle through a kind of documentation of marks and cataloging of time. I edit and censor prints, cut away pages, and translate patterns into sequential narratives of articulated printing actions.