Mazy Path founder Alexis Audette was raised by a family of printmakers, painting conservators and art historians: amateur naturalists all. She spent her childhood summers in Vermont meandering through the fields and woods that surrounded the family home, an old farmhouse with bookshelves that beckoned with titles such as Masterpieces of Flemish Painting and How to Know the Ferns. Growing up in a world that revolved around art history and nature shaped her passions for printmaking and plants, both of which inspire her designs for Mazy Path.
Her two loves come together in this debut collection based on handmade linocuts that explore plants and their stories. In this art form a magical thread travels through the process of transferring a sketch onto a linoleum block, carving the block, inking it and pulling away a print. The image captures where the crevices were deep, where the ink was heavy, where hands applied pressure. The print may go out into the world, but its snowy textures, expressive lines and areas of dense coverage will always appear to have just left the studio. This connection from maker to object is what animates her work, giving it a sense of soul that simultaneously conveys nostalgia and immediacy. To translate these patterns into wall coverings, digital printing techniques are used in order to best capture the subtle textures and rich tonalities of her linocut prints.
Represented by Design Social Studio in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia
