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Blocks and Prints

Sophie Bond

Profile picture of Sophie Bond

I explore the relationship between natural and manufactured materials through carving, printmaking, and handmade paper. Guided by texture and process, my work reclaims industrial materials like plywood, creating 'artificially-natural' forms. I focus on repetition, surface, and transformation, blurring boundaries between object and image, material and meaning, block and print.

I explore the relationship between natural and manufactured materials through carving, printmakin...

My work centres around the interrogation of plywood. Recognising it as a manufactured material made for purpose. I carve into the found ply blocks, mimicking bark-like texture, creating a sculptural surface. I then print them, documenting the craved surfaces. I often ask if the block is made specifically to get the print or if the block can exist as a sculptural object on its own. My work is process based and comes from a thinking about transformation of. materials and a possible destruction of structural integrity. This work is also a reflection of the biography of plywood as an object, its edges become more prevalent the more I carve and the more I interact.

Final work

Black and white print documenting all edges of the block including one carved side and one uncared side showing wood grain

Net of Carved Plywood Block, 2025

Relief print on cartridge paper, 70cm x 50cm

This print comes from a place of thinking about documenting the entire carved block as an object, investigating plywood as a 'naturally artificial' material.

A woodcut and print alongside eachother

Block, 2025

Carved 17mm marine plywood with ink and print on cartridge paper, 12cm x 30.4cm

Mimicking the history of plywood as a heavily manufactured and recognisable material, as I carve, a bark-like texture reveals the layers of plywood that have been laminated together.

Carved plywood block with ink on surface

Big Block, 2025

16mm marine plywood, ink, 17.4cm x 47.6cm 

Print of woodcut block, mimicking bark

Big Block (Print), 2025

Relief print on cartridge paper, 46cm x 59.5cm  

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Blocks and Prints

My work centres around the interrogation of plywood. Recognising it as a manufactured material made for purpose. I carve into the found ply blocks, mimicking bark-like texture, creating a sculptural surface. I then print them, documenting the craved surfaces. I often ask if th...

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