In keeping with the tradition of the German expressionists of the early 20th century, woodcut printmaker Sean Starwars embraces imperfection in artwork. The frayed edges and fingerprints are what make the work his own.
“Printmaking is very precise, process-oriented, particular and kind of painstaking,” said Starwars, who adopted the unique moniker during his time as a collector of Star Wars memorabilia in the late 1980s. “That’s not me at all. Most printmakers would have a heart attack just seeing day-old ink out.”
He certainly doesn’t deliberately try to do things the wrong way. And yet, “every part of what I do is 10% wrong,” he said. It just comes natural for Starwars, a member of the Outlaw Printmakers, a collective of printmakers who forged their own path through the world of art.
“There’s a lot of built-in inconsistency that shows up in the finished print,” Starwars said. “You could be very deliberate about how the marks support your image. There’s so many ways to do it, but it all just shows up in the work, and I love that.”
His own brand of pop expressionism
Growing up in Virginia, Starwars didn’t think of himself as an artist. It was during high school, in the early 1980s, that he began skateboarding.
“You’re surrounded by creative energy,” Starwars said of the culture. “The fashion, the music, the energy, the activity itself, just the group of people — it was like, ‘This is something else, and I want to be a part of it.'”
As skateboarding became grew in importance to him, Starwars was drawn to the work of Neil Blender, a skateboarder and artist who designed his own skateboard graphics for Gordon and Smith Skateboards (G&S). Blender’s art was the impetus for Starwars to begin drawing.
Another skateboarder, Chris Miller, designed woodcut skateboard graphics for G&S, and the style really caught Starwars’ eye. They were bold black-and-white graphics with none of the buildup of pencil drawings or the range of paintings.
“I was beginning to learn that it was kind of analogous to what the German expressionists were doing, especially with their woodcuts,” Starwars said. “Those guys, right around the turn of the century … they’re the same age as these skateboarders. They’re these young crazy guys. If skateboarding existed back then, half of them would’ve been skateboarders. It was the same energy and the same kind of imagery.
“I was like, ‘This is way bigger than a skateboard graphic,'” he added. “And that’s what got me into printmaking, or into making woodcuts specifically.”
The Laurel-based artist has blended that influence with pop culture to create his own brand of pop expressionism.
Starwars earned a Master of Fine Arts in printmaking from Louisiana State University, and his big break came while he was a student there and submitted a couple of work samples to the Southern Graphics Council International conference.
One of them was a 1996 piece called “Frankenberry vs. the Klan,” depicting the monster on General Mills’ Franken Berry cereal box holding a bag bearing the words “Think Pink” while riding a bicycle past hooded Ku Klux Klan members holding various objects, including a sign reading, “Monster Go Home.”
A few days after the conference, Starwars received an answering machine message from his biggest influence in printmaking, woodcut artist Tom Huck, who he regards as “the greatest living relief printmaker.” Huck told him that everyone at the conference loved the print, and he invited Starwars to contribute to a portfolio project he was putting together.
“That phone call changed my entire world,” Starwars said. “For years, every opportunity I had was directly because of that connection.”
Guided by Voices and Mountain Dew
A beautiful thing about printmaking, Starwars said, is that each artist truly has their own style, a distinct way of mark-making that gives their work recognizability.
Starwars tends to draw directly onto the wood — almost always Baltic Birch, sometimes Japanese Shina — before digging into the wood’s surface with a chisel to make cuts.
Upon completing a woodcut, he rolls ink onto it, lays paper over the top and runs it through a press to transfer the image and create a print.
Virtually every woodcut Starwars has done since graduate school has been made to the soundtrack of Guided by Voices, his favorite band.
“I’ve never made anything that didn’t have Guided by Voices going through it,” Starwars said.
Lead singer Robert Pollard is one of Starwars’ two greatest artistic influences outside of printmaking. The other is poet and novelist Charles Bukowski, less a result of relating to the themes in Bukowski’s work than to his work ethic.
Paraphrasing Bukowski, Starwars said, “You’re only a writer when you’re writing.”
“I’m not writing, but I’m a printmaker when I’m making,” he added.
Whether he gets started at 5 a.m. or stays up working to that hour, his work is also fueled by caffeine in various forms.
“Since I was 15, when I started working, I pretty much have not had a day where I didn’t have at least three Mountain Dews, and some days where I would have 15,” Starwars said.
Due to the high sugar content, he’s switched to Diet Dr. Pepper, though his love for Mountain Dew remains.
Still driven by skateboarding — and a million other things
After years creating art while making ends meet as a teacher and other roles to provide for his wife and their five children, Starwars has worked full time as an artist for a few years now.
All these years later, Starwars still visualizes his work on a skateboard deck.
“I hold it to that standard of what a skateboard graphic should look like in my head, like the things that I love,” Starwars said.
His work is representative of his personal energy, and he takes great pride in the use of color to make his pieces pop.
“I expect that, if I’m in a group exhibition, my thing’s going to take over a wall because of color,” Starwars said.
Another principle central to his art is work ethic — the ability to produce new art day after day.
“I did ‘Frankenberry vs. the Klan’ in 1996, and you could say it’s the best thing I ever made. I hope it’s not, but a lot of people, that would be their favorite print, that would be the one thing that they know,” Starwars said. “I was making stuff just about every day before then, and I’ve been making stuff just about every day for the 30 years since then. That’s the part that I know not everybody can do.”
From animals to robots and monsters, a variety of objects and characters are incorporated into the images Starwars creates. He still loves the same things he did when he was 8 years old, along with a million more new things.
Whether it’s social media, his website or exhibitions, Starwars will never make something and keep it facedown, out of public view.
He’s developed a following of more than 115,000 people on Instagram and nearly 85,000 on TikTok where he shares his art.
“I know it’s going to be put out there in the world, however small that world is,” Starwars said.
The essence of Starwars’ work goes beyond a collection of individual woodcuts. It’s every curling scrap of wood lying on the floor, every drip of ink on his worktable, every design pressed into paper and fabric. It’s a lifetime.
“There’s no end,” he said. “Like, I’m never going to make something that’s, ‘OK good, I’ve reached the end. I can stop.'”
