Habla!

Mixed media xylocollage paste-up, Digbeth, Birmingham, UK

Homemade baren (top)

Homemade baren (bottom)

This is an example of how I used the carving from my one-off xylography ‘Habla!’ to create street art paste-ups. I used my homemade baren to press the paper onto the wood to transfer the image. The paste-up’s base is paper, and I used professional wallpaper paste to stick it to the wall.

Curator’s Notes: Paste-up is a composition on a sheet of paper, board, or other backing applied to a wall usually using wheatpaste. This technique allows street artists to put up detailed images quickly.

Xylography is an ancient printing technique developed in China and Japan in the 8th and 9th centuries. The image in carved in relief into a wooden block, which is then inked. Paper is pressed to the block to transfer the image.

Baren refers to a hand tool with a flat bottom and a knotted handle used in Japanese woodblock printing to burnish the back of the paper in order to transfer ink from the plate to the sheet.