If there was a patron saint of things like print-making, wood-cutting, and drinking coffee, Martin Mazorra would be it. If he was Catholic, that is. We didn't think to ask. But we did meet him in his Bed-Stuy studio to check out his darkly funny and incredibly expressive prints, made almost exclusively from handmade woodcuts transferred on an old-school press.

Chief Magazine: Can you tell our audience your name, title, etc.?

Martin Mazorra: Martin Mazorra, One-Eyed Printmaker.

How long have you been woodcutting? How did you decide to make this your format?

I have been cutting woodblocks regularly since about 2000, but I've been making prints for several years before that... I worked as a printer's assistant making fine art lithographs, etchings, and such. I dig all that stuff but I never liked how long it took to make the plates and print each one. I kind of fell in love with woodcut when I figured out that I didn't really need all the studio crap that goes long with the other processes.
Woodcut is so much more direct, drawing Pre-Castro, and inherently expressive. I am into this tension between the raw wood material and the refined carving/mark making. The real corn in the shit was when I saw woodcuts and letterpress type printed together. That put me out of my mind. I haven't wanted to do any thing else since.

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You're from West Virginia, but your father was a Cuban ex-pat. How do these aspects of your upbringing show up in your art?

They are stuck together like stink on a monkey. Sometimes the southern shows up, and sometimes the Cuban, but they are always both mysteriously there. I am proud of belonging to both.

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What was it like growing up in the Appalachians with a Cuban father? Aside from culture shock, how did that inform your sense of being an artist?

My aesthetic was developed submerged in Appalachian economics, Pre-Castro nostalgia, and the beauty shop (which my mother still runs) in the house in which I grew up. Everybody around me worked really hard for everything they had. I learned to have tremendous admiration and respect for hardworking people, and people who had learned to live with the loss of everything they owned and had worked for. These ideas definitely show up in the work.

How has teaching printmaking, etc. changed or influenced your creative method?

Man, I live Printmaking. I look at, talk about, and trouble shoot printing problems seven days a week and dream about printing at night. I have seen printmaking taught for years from a very technical and process skills level. I don't think that stuff is that hard for a student to pick up with a little practice.  What has been the biggest challenge is getting students to address just what the fuck they are going to make prints about and use the skills that they have to do hell out of it! I can't just tell kids to clean the ball ground out of their ears and not live by my own words. So I have had to dig deeper in my own work and make stuff that I feel is really important for me too.

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Would you describe what you do as craft, art or both?

Art.

How do you approach a project? Like your duets, for instance: did those begin as an image in your head, a real image you wanted to re-create or a concept that you found images to go along with?

I have a concept first, and I think of a good visual to go with it. The ideas that get addressed first are the ones where I can also think of good imagery to express them.
Sometimes I think of something I'd like to make a print about and I'm like, "What am I going to draw to go with it?"

When you are starting a project, how do you decide on the size of the end result?

It depends on how much time we have. The projects grow in exact proportion to how many weeks there are before we have to print the suckers, and hang them up.

Is the wood cut the piece of art, or the print itself? Talk about why you print limited amounts of your projects.

Sometimes making art is the art of storage. I don't want to store anything. So I make it good, I make it practical for people to collect; I move it out, and make way for new stuff constantly. The woodcut is a by-product of the prints which are in small editions. I do recycle prints of images into other collaborative projects, collages mostly, but we have been known to make sculptures with the prints pasted on them too.

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Could you tell us when and why you and Mike decided to start Cannonball Press? And why "Cannonball"?

We started it in 1999. The original idea was to create a venue for friends to show prints, and a place where our peers could afford to buy art. The mission was to produce high quality graphics and artwork at accessible prices. Why the name Cannonball Press? Well, cannonballs are heavy simple objects that if properly aimed do untold damage. It is our intention to create a publishing venue that would focus a salvo of like minded work at a collector base that is priced out of the usual dealer/gallery art market.

You seem to be a sort of woodcut printing prophet-spreading the word from state to state. Could you tell us about some of you and Cannonball Press' events?

Prophet... no. Cheerleader...maybe. I really love and believe in what I am doing. Cannonball has taken us to some far off places and let me meet some super cool people!  I have traveled to around the United States and to Estonia and South Africa. The traveling and meeting new people has extended the network of artists that have parallel visions to making/sharing art. It has been a recent mission to bring artists together and form a community of printmaker/artists that work mostly in woodcut. We provided them with a platform to exhibit their work and voice a vision uniquely their own. I am talking about our affordable art fair called Prints Gone Wild. Prints Gone Wild is a print fair that we have done in Brooklyn for two years now, and we just held another one in St. Louis. These are not wine and cheese affairs. We have live music, performance artists and plenty of shwag.

So, does CP have a style book? Aside from doing black and white wood cuts, is there anything else an aspiring artist should do if he/she wants to be a part of your Press?

No pictures of ladies in big sun hats...and we have to at least like you a little.

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What do you like about collaborating with Mike and Dennis? Could you describe some of the collaborations you do?

Mike Houston, Dennis McNett, and I like to drink sick amounts of coffee. And we all work our asses off. We all trust that none of us will flake out. The work gets done somehow, every time.

Though I know you have used computer-printing mediums, you don't prefer them. Is computer printing the enemy, or just not your cup of tea?

Computer printing is a cup of tea. I drink coffee...hot and black!

Are there other artists that have been an inspiration to you, or that you would like to give a shout out to?

No, I don't want to leave anybody out.

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Website
Martin's website

Interview by: Steve Roberts

Images courtesy of:  Max Ryazansky