Anatomy of a Print: Windward

A real-life, ultra-gnarled cypress fascinated Eric for a looong time before he finally decided to immortalize it in linoleum. Here’s how an Outer Sunset icon came to life as Windward. 

Eric: “I first noticed this tree like six years ago when I was running the trail between the two Great Highways. It’s right at the end of Noriega Street, and I love the story it tells. It survived even though it’s been so deformed. The wind—it just can’t take the wind.

I got inspired to turn it into a print when I went to the end of Noriega street to shoot Sutro Tower (it’s perfectly centered from there). Afterwards I wandered down to the beach with my camera and on the way back I saw the tree and thought: “Ohhhhhhhhh. Wow—that will make a nice composition." And it really resonated with me, because I wanted to do something local, for the neighborhood.

Carving was almost impossible. It’s so abstract! I think about this stuff *a lot*—in those insomnia moments, I’m always thinking about what to carve and what not to carve; and there’s absolutely no way I could explain to anyone what kind of dialogue I’m having in my head.

I think it’s important that you put enough information in that you know that there’s something there, but the more you let the viewer fill in the blanks the more successful your print can be. Here, I used different weights of strokes depending on where they were and the perspective of the piece. Despite how difficult it was, this one was carved almost exclusively in the sunshine, which was really nice.

Most of my stuff is pulled in multiple colors now. I didn’t know how many colors Windward would be until I saw the plate coming together. I knew it was going to be gray and black, but I thought with green for the spot color and the trees is going to be really really nice."

And there you have it, folks! Another classic from Mr. Rewitzer. Snag an original here!

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