Sean Starwars: 52 Weeks, 52 Prints

A little less than a year ago, Sean Starwars embarked on an endurance challenge. The rules were simple: make a 30″x20″ woodcut every week for a year. According to Starwars, “sometimes I sit around too long in-between prints, waiting for my next great idea. Ideally, you want to make something that’s gonna blast off but when days become weeks, at the end of the year, maybe you didn’t really do all that much.” So to remedy the situation, Starwars sharpened his carving tools and gave himself a quota…

When it comes to a serious studio practice, sometimes it’s not about inspiration, it’s about work and time. Not every idea hits like a lightening bolt. Tons of them come from a slow process more like combing a beach with a metal detector. By Starwars own measure, “out of the 52, I made about 30 pretty good prints, around 15 ok prints, and really only six or seven really, really cruddy ones. But still Its been a long number of years since I made 30 Good woodcuts in one year so it was totally worth doing!”

So with three weeks left in 2011 and his project goals met, what’s next? Planning for 2012: one 20″x15″ woodcut a day for the whole year (and I might add, it’s a leap year). That’s 366 woodcuts. To quote Starwars one last time, if he sees the 2012 project through “it will more than double my lifes’ work in just a year!” Nice.