Mohawk News : Artist Doris Mitsch Featured in New Work from Mohawk

COHOES, NY – In a dramatic new book just released by Mohawk Paper Mills, Inc., San Francisco-based artist Doris Mitsch uses natural subjects to create extraordinary images of amazing clarity and beauty. Wired magazine called Mitsch “Georgia O'Keeffe with a hi-res scanner.” In Doris Mitsch Scanning, familiar objects such as flowers and shells are represented to the viewer from non-traditional perspectives so that the subject matter becomes a harmonious arrangement of line, color, lights and darks. The book is printed on Mohawk Superfine.

To create her work, Mitsch scans images of natural forms on a flatbed scanner, into a Mac G4. She then spends countless hours tweaking each image in Adobe Photoshop, studying how the surfaces of the objects reflect light and hold darks. The original images are printed in six to eight passes of archival inks on thick rag paper, giving the images an inky, matte surface that's very different from that of traditional photographic prints. The evocative imagery is sometimes abstracted and always offers a new perspective or sense of mystery. “I have a lot of questions about beauty,” says Mitsch. “I find almost all natural shapes beautiful and most people agree that flowers, especially, are beautiful. I'm interested in what happens when you isolate familiar things and look at them with unfamiliar closeness and clarity or for unfamiliar perspectives,” she says.

NYC - based Pentagram designed the book, which Laura Shore, Mohawk's Vice President of Marketing Communications describes as an homage to Mohawk Superfine. Shore challenged the design and production team to produce the job with conventional printing. “These days most mill marketers would default to U.V. printing to capture the brilliant colors associated with Mitsch's work. We felt that the saturated colors were achievable on Superfine and early testing proved it was possible. The final results exceeded all of our expectations and came very close to matching the inkjet output of the original prints. Superfine's superior formation and highly receptive print surface provide the perfect setting for these images.”

Adds lead project designer of Pentagram Michael Bierut, “Doris' original prints combine soft, deep colors and velvety blacks with razor sharp detail. There is no richer, more precise printing surface than Mohawk Superfine, and no paper would show the work quite as beautifully.”

The job was designed by Michael Bierut and Kerrie Powell, Pentagram, New York, New York. It was printed by Williamson Printing Corporation, Dallas, TX.

To obtain a copy of Doris Mitsch Scanning or Mohawk's Superfine swatchbook, please call 1-800-THE MILL.

Mohawk Paper Mills, Inc. is a leader in the manufacture of premium printing and imaging papers. From its flagship grade, Mohawk Superfine^™, to proprietary Inxwell^® products, Navajo^® and Options^® to Mohawk Color Copy^™, Mohawk engineers its papers to provide optimal performance for sheetfed, web and digital printing. A leader in environmental stewardship, Mohawk is one of the first large-scale production facilities in the U.S. to use non-polluting wind energy to manufacture paper. For information about Mohawk papers that are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and/or Green Seal please call Mohawk at 1-800-THE MILL.