Project: Index

In early 2025, I undertook a project to combine the stylized look of hand-carved relief prints with the ubiquitousness of the lowly index card. Counterintuitively, with only 3″x5″ of space to work with, I found the project’s extreme restrictions surprisingly freeing.

Allowing for a modest border on the 3″ x 5″ cards forced me to work at even smaller sizes, which in most cases was only 1″ x 2″ in size. (There are also a few 1″x3″ as well as a few 2″x2″.) With such a small space in which to work, even the simplest subjects had to be simplified and stylized. Creating wide angle landscapes with a maximum width of 2″ was surprisingly engaging.

At first, knowing I would be doing this thousands of times, I printed on the cheapest index cards I could find. But the “cheap” index cards of today are quite unlike the index cards I remember from high school and college. They are hardly thicker than copy paper. So, I quickly found a source for thicker index cards which I found to be much more pleasing to work with. Most of the final collection is on the thicker paper, but many hundreds of the thin-paper print are included as well.

I don’t imagine anyone would actually frame these little prints, but I can see them ending up under a magnet on a refrigerator or perhaps pinned to a corkboard.