Marta Vidal

Marta Vidal is a printmaker and illustrator based in Porto, Portugal. She works in hand-carved rubber stamps — cutting the image in reverse into a block of soft rubber, inking it, and pressing it onto paper by hand. Each impression is slightly different. The ink bleeds where the pressure is uneven. The edges aren't clean. That's the point.

She asked to spend time with the tapes before she started. She listened to all four collections over the course of a month, reading the write-ups, studying the J-cards, following the dates and the venues. When she was ready, she had one question: "Why do all of these sound like they were recorded in a cathedral?" Then she started carving.

Marta carved a single block for each collection. She chose the subjects herself — the speakers for Six Hundred Four, circus elephants for New Animal, recording equipment for Young Bettys, a bear in a varsity sweater for Cornell and Company. She printed dozens of impressions of each, varying the ink weight and pressure, before selecting the final versions.

Dark indigo ink on warm off-white uncoated paper. No digital manipulation. The texture in the artwork is the actual texture of ink pressed into paper by hand.

For each collection, Marta printed several full compositions before selecting the finals. These are some of the versions that didn't make the cut.

Earlier impressions of the individual stamps from Marta's studio.