I grew up in Santa Barbara, California, but moved across the country to Baltimore, Maryland to study at art school. A year of quarantine, plus several protracted school breaks, changed what might have been a permanent move into a shuffling back and forth between two cities. At the same time that I began to struggle with questions of what home is and what it means to exist in a specific place, I rediscovered printmaking. The studio and I have been inseparable ever since.
My art is a way of rooting myself in the cities I live in: I render my surroundings in drawings and edited photographs, and populate them with vignettes of goblins and other “little guys” that reflect my day-to-day and the strange urban folk I meet. Humor, joy, and recognition are the emotions I want to communicate.
With printmaking, the labor involved and the undeniable physicality of the finished piece create the weight I need to feel rooted in a place. Color, layering, and transparency are all important elements to me, expressed through a lot of screenprinting, a medium quantity of monotypes, and the exciting beginnings of an etching practice.
Instagram: instagram.com/philippericardart/