I was invited to participate in a curated show at Giant Robot Store, the theme was Year of The Dog in celebration of the Chinese new year. I decided to experiment a little bit with adding some relief by gluing a cut out to the main surface instead of carving out pockets the way I had done with the red cat pieces. I also wanted to get away from the usual square format so I went with a hexagon this time.

All the wood used is birch plywood. I made the hexagon by gluing two pieces of 1/4″ birch plywood that I cut on the laser cutter, the dog was cut out of 1/8″ birch plywood. The blue background was painted with gouache and the dog with rapidograph ink. For the red border I used acrylic ink.

I’ve been “signing” the wood pieces using the laser cutter. The wolfCat workshop stamp and website are engraved. I know this will be mostly hidden for the life of the piece but I like that it adds a little touch of professionalism.

Finally, this is the flier image for the show. The main image was done by Theo Ellsworth (on IG @theoellsworth) who is an artist I really like and feel honored to be on the same show with. The show was curated by Cassia Lupo (on IG @cassloop thank you so much for the invite Cassia!).

Overall I’m pleased with this piece, the palette is somewhat consistent with other things I’ve done before, and I’m pushing the size up a little bit (about 11″ by 10″). Sometimes I feel like a make a lot of hand-sized objects that look good as online pictures but not as impressive when seen in person. I think making bigger things is healthy for me.

Happy new year!