Fossils in Rubber

        Here’s the most recent piece I just printed, although once again I had mostly carved it last year.  I did a test print at the time but thought it had too much black, and the white didn’t pop strongly enough.  So I carved out more, including just about doubling the number of feathery lines on each frond, but I didn’t get around to printing again until now.

        In case you’re wondering, these are crinoids, or at least they’re an artistic impression of crinoids.  Crinoids with stalks are also known as sea lilies, for obvious reasons.  My piece is inspired by a large fossil slab I saw at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, followed by looking at photos of lots of other crinoid fossils.  My crinoids aren’t meant to be a scientifically accurate representation of any particular species, however.  I was inspired by the shapes and patterns of a variety of crinoid fossils, as you can see in the various ways I’ve depicted the stems.  These guys have been around in a wide and magnificent variety of forms for about 500 million years, so they must be doing something right.  I think they’re pretty cool.

[Picture: Fossils, rubber block print by AEGN, 2017.]