California Wildfire: A Visual Language for Environmental Storytelling
Printmaking
Role
Printmaker, Visual Designer
Wildfire is a series of handmade prints developed into a visual storytelling system about the ecological impact of wildfires. I used printmaking techniques including relief printing, etching, and screen printing to explore their intensity. The series was later adapted into a digital campaign prototype and motion-based social posts.
This project taught me how the physical processes of printmaking can support emotional and environmental storytelling. Carving, pressing, and inking became metaphors for the destructive and transformative force of wildfire. Smudges, ink spills, and other unexpected results helped convey the subject’s unpredictability.
I also learned how to develop a consistent visual language from an open-ended process. Repetition, texture, and tone connected the individual prints and gave me a basis for translating them into a digital campaign. The project showed me how a personal artistic process could inform a broader public-awareness narrative.
This project explores how relief printing, etching, and monoprinting can support visual storytelling. The resulting series develops a consistent visual language that could extend into a broader campaign or awareness initiative.
Emotional Starting Point
Fear, awe, and loss were my starting points for exploring the California wildfires. I used expressive textures, tonal extremes, and abstraction to convey that emotional weight.
Expressive Potential of Printmaking
The physical processes of printmaking became metaphors: carving suggested destruction, pressing conveyed pressure, and ink evoked smoke.
Influence & Dialogue
Drawing on Jasper Johns and my earlier abstract work, I combined recognizable motifs, such as flames, trees, and smoke, with more abstract imagery. This contrast reflected fire’s capacity to be both beautiful and devastating.
Repetition as Narrative
Repeated visual forms gave the series a structure, reflecting the recurrence of wildfires in ecosystems and media coverage.
Texture & Tone
Strong contrasts, layered textures, and raw edges gave the series its visual character. Relief prints conveyed stark destruction, etchings emphasized detail and decay, and monoprints introduced unpredictability.
“Happy Accidents”
I allowed smudges, ink spills, and misregistration to shape the work, echoing the uncontrollable force of fire.