Carving Eraser Stamps

Sometime in the early 1980's I got frustrated with the limited designs in the commercial rubber stamping industry. They were too cutesy...you could find all the bunnies and teddies you could ever want but try finding a feminist stamp or one that showed nudity or goddess images, and you were out of luck. Somewhere in that time zone, I started carving my own stamps out of eraser stock. Eventually the eraser companies caught on and started making large sheets just for us eraser carvers. Of course now-a-days you can find stamps on any subject, but nothing provides the same instant gratification that comes with thinking up a stamp design, grabbing a piece of eraser, and less than an hour later holding in your hands the very design you wanted! Recently at the Laguna Beach Sawdust Festival, I got to sit down and make a lithograph print. That reminded me of how much I missed making my own stamps. Then today I realized that since my main stamp carving days were before the internet crashed into me, that I'd never documented the hundreds of images I've carved. I thought it was high time to use my digital camera to document that body of work, and thus this new blog was born. Please visit my other blogs for more about the Sawdust Festival and my artwork.