"Soaring" by Laurel Henn
This hand-carved relief block is the seventh in my ongoing series of Cloud woodblocks.
After carving a piece of wood, the surface is inked and printed on artist quality paper. Once the printing of a limited edition series is done the actual woodblock is primed, painted and turned into a hanging piece of art. The result of this process creates highly textural two-dimensional work that floats on your wall.
The Cloud woodblock series began in early 2019, when I felt inspired to capture the limitless things you can find in the sky.
Since weathering the unimaginable year 2020 and onwards, these Cloud Blocks have taken on a whole new meaning. The feeling of being adrift from each other, and our regular flow of life, is a widely shared sentiment. What better way to symbolize this, than individual clouds overhead. The clouds are visible, seem so close, even closer on a dim foggy morning, yet when we reach for them, nothing is there. Everything our lives use to be is out of grasp, to be viewed only from afar like the clouds floating by.
Though much of our regular world is unobtainable right now, the images in my clouds represent a portion of life that is still available to us. Birds, nature, dreams and wind still continue, despite our lack of plans. If we are lucky enough, we can still sit back and enjoy those things drifting by from afar. This particular Cloud block is titled “Soaring”. It features a majestic heron wearing One Star Chuck Taylor Tennis shoes; his name Herman. Herman seemed a fitting subject for one of my cloud blocks. This particular heron is wearing these particular shoes as a tribute to the late Maureen Hogan, a fellow artist who created a few of her own herons wearing One Stars. The sight of a soaring heron usually sticks with us a long time, but it will possibly be forgotten. The sight of a heron soaring in tennis shoes is bound to stay with us forever.
