woodcut glass | Washington Glass Studio

Making prints from Glass?! Instructor Kirk Waldroff has been teaching a class in making wood or lino block prints, translating that into glass, and pulling prints from the glass panels. This original process is created by expand on and combining traditional printmaking with modern glass sculpting techniques.

The glass positives inside the kiln – to be cleaned and inked.

Fresh from the kiln, the glass is carefully prepared as a relief matrix.

Kirk oversees the student Nancy Donnelly inking the block.

Some of the first prints pulled.

Instructor Kirk Waldroff expresses his happiness with the day’s results.

The class wraps up next week, with the students working on a more complex prints.

Hallo Deutsch Besucher!

Mortimer and the Octopus | 2009
left: water color and woodcut print on Rives BFK | 11″ x 24″
right: glass and oak | 16″ x 28″ x 6.5″ (closed) | 32″ x 28″ x 6.5″ (open)

Kirk Waldroff, a DC-based printmaker and sculptor, uses traditional woodcut techniques to create non-traditional prints in glass, concrete and on paper. His mixed media works depict invented saints and never-told fables.
Kirk’s work was featured in the international exhibition of glass artwork, “Glass 3” in Georgetown in 2008, where he exhibited his beautiful technique that combines printmaking and sculptural glass. Kirk has a solo show of his glass woodcuts at NOVA’s Waddell Gallery opening Jan 11 titled: Saints and Fables: Prints and Print-based Sculpture

Theodulus and the Egret | 2009
left: water color and woodcut print on Rives BFK | 11″ x 24″
right: glass and oak | 16″ x 28″ x 6.5″ (closed) | 32″ x 28″ x 6.5″ (open)

From Kirk Waldroff’s artist statement:

I draw great inspiration from art that I consider beautifully melancholy and aim to make pieces that are at once dark, humorous, and thought-provoking. I often draw upon religious imagery and enjoy employing social and historical themes as well.

Since the beginning of my education in art, I have been most attracted to printmaking. I enjoy the methodology as well as the very tactile link to the past this medium provides. In addition, printmaking is uniquely poised to integrate and borrow from new technologies and methods. My most recent glass and concrete cast-prints blend the traditional art of woodblock printing with innovative techniques in sculptural casting and are certainly the only of their kind.