The making of "Tejas Waters"

Right by my house, there is a pond.

It’s technically a retention pond, but I would always admire it while walking my dog to the small trail system on the other side. The water was full of various thriving plants, and often we’d find magnificent birds like Swainson’s Hawks or Great Egrets hunting near its edges.

One day, I saw an excavation team dredging out all the plants and mowing down the margins. Horrified, I wondered what could possibly have prompted this destruction. The removal of this vegetation would eliminate crucial hunting grounds for the birds, disrupting their ability to feed and potentially driving them away from the area entirely.

Curious, I attended an HOA meeting later that week, where I learned that the destruction had been ordered to “clean up” the pond. This decision bewildered me. What had been a thriving ecosystem was now stripped bare, leaving stagnant water that would likely become an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes. Without the natural filtration and habitat provided by the aquatic plants, the pond would lose its ecological function and become little more than a water catch basin.

The heartbreak of this loss paired with the knowledge of what could be inspired me to create this linoleum block print, called “Pond.” In it, we see a thriving ecosystem filled with species native to Texas waters — Wapato, Arrowroot, a red-eared slider. It’s a vision of what that simple retention pond could become with informed stewardship: not just a water management feature, but a vibrant habitat supporting local biodiversity.

The process

The general composition of the piece was pretty clear to me from the beginning, but I wasn’t quite sure how I would represent each of the areas in the final block. One of the things I love most about creating block prints is that it’s an iterative process — I don’t need to know everything from the start, and that presents fun challenges along the course of carving the print.

The first thing I knew is where the Egret would be, and that its body would be mostly negative (carved) space, so I started there. For the Arrowroot on the other side, I knew that I wanted the leaves to be mostly positive (uncarved) space. I had no idea yet how I would make the water look like water or how I would approach the lotus.

Often in printmaking it’s helpful to do a test print partway through, to understand how the composition looks in ink. At this point I wanted to make sure that the water texture I went with came across that way, since there was still enough uncarved block to decide to do something else. I decided I liked the water texture, but that the empty water space needed someone there — and since turtles are some of my favorite creatures, I thought a turtle sunning on a log would be perfect to balance the piece.

The final piece features artistic interpretations of Water Plantain, Wapato, Fakahatchee Grass, Broadleaf Cattail, American Lotus, Red-eared Slider, and the regal Great Egret.

If you like this story and would like to support the artist, or want your own print of this work, you can purchase it on my Etsy shop. Thank you for reading!