Squid. Supernal. Order I. Tshilubha. Tuatara. These are the words Lyndeborough printer and sculptor Aaron Brown picked from a dictionary for the titles of his shape-centered works of art.

Brown will share his work with the public at the Francestown Labor Day Juried Arts and Crafts fair.

“I love making shapes — I guess it’s kind of my forte, but I also love color,” Brown said.
Brown cut the plate used to create “Squid” 12 years ago, and only recently began printing from it at his etching press. He uses oil-based ink.

“Sometimes, these things have a life of their own. They just sit in a file cabinet for a while, then they come out, come alive,” he said. “I always wanted to revisit it.”

When he needed a name for “Squid,” Brown turned to an old dictionary. He said he had been using the dictionary as a sort of oracle, turning to its pages for answers and advice.
“I just shut my eyes and flipped through the book, flipped through the dictionary and my finger landed on [the word] squid,” he explained.

His first reaction was that his oracle wasn’t working. “I hadn’t seen it,” he said, referring to the squid shape. As he looked at the print again, though, he found the shape. “The unseen world has its say with us artists, sometimes.”

Brown’s method of naming his work isn’t unlike his creative process. “These designs just come to me spontaneously without much forethought.”

The print process at Brown’s Lyndeborough art studio across the street from the home he grew up in begins with tempered masonite, which he cuts free form.

“The shapes come,” he said. “That’s the magic of it.”

Brown adds color to the plates and assembles them for printing.

One of the artist’s chief influences is German-French artist Jean Arp, one of the leaders of the Dada movement, but Brown doesn’t think of himself as part of any particular movement. That qualification will have to come after he’s dead, he said.

“I don’t know what’s coming,” he said, referring to his artwork. “I think a lot of nature comes out in it. All the art I’ve ever seen percolates and comes back out.”

The print “Supernal,” which Brown worked on with his wife, Susan Brown, who is also an artist, was inspired by a view from a camping site on the Connecticut River on the edge of a potato field in Northampton, Mass.

“It’s a big sweeping curve of the river,” he said.

It’s been 15 years since Brown last exhibited at the Francestown fair. Back then he was producing 3D wooden puzzles, something he did for 20 years.

“I once figured out I’ve cut 250,000 puzzle pieces,” he said. “I’ve always had my hand in art.”
Since then, he’s devoted himself to printing and designing steel sculptures, many of which are inspired by the shapes in his prints. “Shangri-la,” a powder-coated steel work, for example, was inspired by the print, “Order 1.”

Brown is especially passionate about the prints.

“It’s interesting how these prints have a life of their own,” he noted, different from paintings in that he can return to plates over and over again with different
colors.

This article appears in Sept. 1, 2011, edition of the Ledger-Transcript.