Looking at the woodblocks of other artists, I realized how I should be approaching the carvings, and set out to put as much in a composition as I could, while keeping large masses of black, and not relying on contour lines. I also added hatching and cross hatching to add value to cretin areas.
What resulted was the first piece that I consider to be part of my label CtrlAltRobot. “Urban Robo”, as I would eventually call the piece, was also the piece that started my ongoing theme of technology, and the focus on robots. It was also the piece that I started to develop my own style that I would try to integrate into all of my pieces.
The robot in the piece was supposed to be like one of those old school robots you would always see in those really old science fiction TV shows, like Buck Rodgers (even though I’ve never seen any of that series), and were essentially what the people living the 1930’s would have imagined a robot from the year 2000 would look like. It’s clunky, gear driven, and obsolete. Its memory capacity is really limited; probably no smarter than a calculator, but it’s frick’n huge, so people are panicking when one shows up in the middle of their city, even though it seems to be posing no threat what so ever. People are just afraid of 50 foot robots
The print displays the citizens of the city looking out of the windows of their apartments, all reacting to the robot in different ways. Some are screaming in horror, some are trying to escape, some are oblivious to the robot, and continue their daily lives. What is the meaning of the robot, why is it here, does it pose a threat?
