Woosah x Merrell: Yooper

Sep 17, 2019

Woosah x Merrell: Yooper

Last year sometime...

...around late winter/early spring, our friends at Merrell created a series of videos celebrating rad folks around Michigan sharing their passion for the outdoors. They teamed up with Camp4Collective, a production company filming adventure athletes in the wildest places on earth to capture all these stories. When they reached out to us to be one of those rad folks, we were pretty pumped to spread the Woosah together.

Some of the Camp4Team rockin Woosah!

The prompt for this project...

...was a map of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Immediately I had this vision of filling the shape of the U.P. with all of my favorite trails and places up "dare". I sketched out a few routes and sent them over for their initial thoughts.

From there it was a matter of refining it down and preparing the sketch to carve. Some friends from Merrell came to the shop along with the folks at Camp 4 to capture the whole scene.

We had a short + sweet 24 hours together and I was eager to show them every step of the woodblock printmaking process. From carving, to inking, and pulling that first print.

Finally the piece was all carved out and ready to ink!

Oil based ink...

...is applied to a brayer and then transferred to the carved block. This has always been my favorite phase of carving, everything comes to life and all the lines you've been carving out reveal themselves. It's a great feeling.

Once the block is inked...

...I place it on my etching press, face up, and grab a sheet of paper to lay on top. My favorite paper is Thai Unyru or Thai Chiri paper. They have a great texture to them and absorb the oil based inks really nicely.