An engaged community of creators

Creating original art to bring an aspect of the printer’s capabilities to life and treating the imagery as an art opening

In 2015, I was invited along with 11 other creatives to contribute to the inaugural FUEL event for Rochester print house, Cohber Press (which no longer exists today due to a merger).

FUEL was the brainchild of creatives Kate Sonnick, Michelle Hamilton, and Diane Fitzgerald, plus Cohber’s owner Eric Webber and print rep Judi Gavin. FUEL became Cohber’s promotional platform to engage its local community of creators and generate content for their annual promotional materials.

For FUEL 15, twelve creators were given assignments to create imagery around an adjective that related to Cohber’s print processes and techniques. I was given the word, “Lush” which referred to the Cohber’s rich inking and coating techniques.

I concepted an idea to blend an organic form—the human body—with geometric, vector-based artwork. Both the body and the applied pattern would be spot coated with varied varnish techniques to pop the form off the background and create texture within the female form unlike any natural features.

I knew that gratuitous nudity was unnecessary, so Scott and I focused on our model’s back for our canvas. Scott and I directed Kallie to cross her arms and embrace herself which reinforced the almost alien quality to her form that I was seeking. Gelled lighting further pushed the image away from the typical natural hues viewers expect from skin tones.

The resulting images and the stories behind the were integrated into a gallery-style opening party and printed in a promotional calendar as print samples for Cohber’s sales efforts. FUEL was fun since it offered an opportunity to create an image so different from the typical commercial imagery that I have spent most of my career working on. Lush felt much more like creating a fine art piece. And God I loved being part of the print production process. Ah, the smell of fresh ink!