The Tortoise and the Hare.
Linoleum Print and Sewing.
project 13.

This is another linoleum carving project that was created as end pages of a new anniversary edition of "The Tortoise and The Hare." End pages are the decorative pages at the beginning and end of a book to bind the interior pages with the exterior cover. In the new anniversary edition they wanted to harken back to the old illustration style in the original story, gritty and folk (Figure 1). Keeping that in mind, I went back to linoleum carving a traditional type of print making which would immediately date the work giving it the old style I was looking for. I wanted to elevate the composition by having these two characters, the tortoise and the hare, dancing around each other in a race that had an unknown winner. I thought of phases like 'running circles around' and 'spiraling out of control' to inspire the circular composition. Obviously if you are familiar with this old fable you know the outcome, that the Hare thought he could 'run circles around' the Tortoise and in the end of the story the Hare's chances of winning the race were 'spiraling out of control' all because he took a nap. The Hare's overconfidence and lead in the race caused him to loose focus and lay down for a nap, dreaming about I don't know maybe his favorite foods like carrots, lettuce and radishes. That idea of dreaming inspired the vegetables and stars you see around the composition. After the craving and printing process I wanted to take it a step further and add embroidery to the image. I selected thread to sew into the paper to create more depth and interest to the work. After embroidering  the paper with threads and buttons the image became more folk, more new and more dream like than the original print. Below you can see the labeled images before the embroidery (Figure 2) and after the additions (Figure 3). I wanted to create a beautiful end pages to a classic story by harkening back to a traditional printmaking technique with an elevated addition of interest.