MB Flanders
After receiving a Masters Degree in Graphic Design from Yale University in 1978, MB worked for several graphic design offices before opening her own office in 1983, in Boston Massachusetts. Her clients included architects and landscape architects, museums, hospitals, philanthropic and arts organizations, schools and universities. Projects included branding and promotional materials, exhibitions and sign systems.
In 2018 MB closed her graphic design office to pursue other interests. She began making prints in 2020.
Artist’s Statement
My work as a graphic designer informs nearly every aspect of my work as a printmaker. I create Monoprints using etched copper and plexiglass plates, wooden blocks, handcut stencils, Chinè-Colle, and color—an open-ended and flexible kit of parts.
I begin by creating background environments on copper plates and wood blocks, filling the plates and blocks with marks deriving from many inspirations—parts of Roman letterforms, pieces of mathematical symbols indicating actions, and notations found on technical and architectural drawings. Some marks suggest map making, others indicate speed, and some represent gestures, movement and measurement.
I respond to the partially completed pictures, pushing the visual relationships, creating contrasts and invoking a conversation among the components. The print is complete when there is a dynamic tension that is, in fact, a balance among all of the components within the boundaries of the print.
Process
As I begin working on the backgrounds I’m not aware of any narrative associations I might have with the marks I am making. But once a background has been printed I begin creating the narrative by inserting shapes, lines, and additional textures. I add the additional elements as needed, to create a picture that suggests a larger three-dimensional world. I imagine the pictures to be emerging worlds—some I think suggest the cosmos with its infinite arrangements and rearrangements of floating gases and matter; in others, birds-eye views reveal land masses and property divisions; while others coalesce into closer-in landscapes and vistas seen from the ground up.