Salty Bitch block prints

I made some pickles for you.

I don’t know where the idea came from but I have a series of prints floating around in my head of foods branded with derogatory terms for women that we’ve reclaimed. What am I working on now that these pickles are printed? Hot Slut hot sauce. So if you’re not a pickle girly, maybe you’re a little more firey, hot sauce is comin’ your way soon!

This is a three-layer, three color print, which means that each color was printed separately, and each color has it’s own hand-carved linoleum block. This is my first multi-color print since college, so part of making this print was just relearning the process of registering each layer so that it aligns with the others.

In a way the current prints I’ve been making are just an exercise in having fun, making art in a way that is rooted in play, and getting my body moving in an art-making way again. Kind of like a warm-up, if you will. I would like to be making more deep and meaningful and impactful work at some point, but right now as I re-enter my artmaking space, making things that feel silly and lighthearted has been where I’m following my curiosity. So you get some silly pickles.

sold out

Salty Bitch relief print

$35.00

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Liz Morrow (@liz.morrow)

Retaining Wall Mural Process | Tacoma Mural Artist

I’ve got this terrible mural client. She doesn’t know what she wants, she keeps jumping from idea to idea and giving me inspiration photos that have nothing to do with each other… it’s exhausting. Did I mention the client is me? Lol. Le sigh.

This is the problem of designing for yourself. With anything, really. As artists we’re our own worst clients sometimes. All that to say, I’ve been playing with mural ideas for my front retaining wall for months. MONTHS. But I think I finally have something pinned down that I really love.

When we bought this house we’d intended to fix it up and sell it, but plans changed and we’ve been living here for five years now. So some of the early decisions I made, design-wise, were more tame than my current style. But now, I’m really wanting to lean into a creative, artistic, and bold vibe for the house as a whole, and while most of the interior reflects that, I’m working on bringing that outside to the exterior.

This was the house when we bought it. So painfully underwhelming and neglected.

And this is where it’s at right now. I’m actually starting the process of painting the white trim black to match the body of the house (mocked up on the right), which I’m really excited about, but…if you take a look at that before photo, you can see the cinder block retaining wall along the sidewalk. That hasn’t changed. Dull, boring, meh. But it’s the perfect spot for a splash of color and visual interest!

Top is where we’re at currently, bottom is the idea I think I’ve settled on! I really wanted a way to incorporate some quotes about community, liberation, mutual aid, and the like. I have an Angela Davis quote planned for the left side section, but I’m still working out what quotes I want to put in the squiggles on the right side.

My next step is to pressure wash the cinder blocks so they don’t have moss growing out of them, then do some research into the best primer and paint to use. I’m super excited. I’ll most likely pull the mural into the gap where the stairs go, too, maybe add something cool on the riser sections?

I’ve really been working towards doing more murals and getting involved in the public art scene here in Tacoma, so I figured a great way to build my mural/public art portfolio would be utilizing my own house as a blank canvas. I’m also trying to work on playing around more stylistically. I did a lot of color blocking shapes murals in the past, which I do love, but I also want to keep playing and finding my own style and approach to mural design.

Anyway! I’ll share more as I progress on the actual install of this mural! Hopefully the weather will cool down a bit, and I’ve got a bunch of work to get done creating a booth set up for some pop up shop/markets I have coming up this summer! I have a really fun design schemed up, and I’m planning on doing the build out for that in the coming week so I’ll share more as I build!

Need a mural to take your home or commercial space to the next level? Let’s chat!

The Co-Lab Mural | Tacoma Mural Artist

One of my favorite businesses in Tacoma is The Co-Lab and the Pod Family of Businesses— Tacoma Children’s School, The Pod Works, and The Co-Lab. They’re all businesses aimed at supporting families and parents in Tacoma through childcare, education, and co-working spaces. My son, Jack, attended preschool at Tacoma Children’s School, and has spent countless hours playing at The Co-Lab while I was able to head off and run errands or do work.

When The Co-Lab opened, they did a ton of renovation work to the interior, but the exterior maintained it’s unassuming light greyish blue paint job— not really giving much of an indication of what was inside. When Natasha and Kayla approached me about doing a mural on the exterior of The Co-Lab I was thrilled. Not only because it would be an incredibly fun project to undertake, but I loved the idea of giving the outside of the building a look that would hint at the vibrant, fun, creative space that existed inside those four walls.

I started the process by brainstorming and mocking up a few different designs for mural options. We wanted to go with a colorful vibe that felt playful, but wasn’t super basic primary-colors. The Co-Lab branding already utilized a somewhat more muted but colorful color scheme, so that was our launching point. Being able to create something fun and playful really meant the world was my oyster when it came to designing, but in the end we went for a circle-based overlapping color block design, which I loved.

The install process for this mural was done by drawing it all out using a pencil., string, and level to draw out all the shapes, then it was just a matter of filling in all the colors. You can watch it come to life in the reels below!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Liz Morrow (@liz.morrow)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Liz Morrow (@liz.morrow)

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Honestly, I feel like more classic craftsman houses should have fun, graphic murals on the exterior. So many commercial spaces with big flat concrete walls get murals, but I love how this mural looks tucked in among all the architectural elements of this pretty classically Tacoma house.

Jack doesn’t go to The Co-Lab anymore now that he’s a bit older, but I still get to visit this mural every time I drop off a batch of orders at the post office across the street! It’s still one of my favorite projects.

Thinking about getting a mural for your space, either home or business? Amazing! I would love to chat more about the process and your mural dreams!

I deleted Instagram...

The download button on the app store already is tugging at me to reinstall. And if I'm being honest, I probably will reinstall it at some point. As much as I hate so much structural and policy elements of the app, and the way it snags you into endless scrolling, it does afford access to a community-- one I've spent over a decade cultivating.

But for all it's positive elements of community and inspiration and sharing art and ideas, I can't help but think about how we as a collective of users of that app have for years complained about how it constantly makes choices that we hate-- from updates to the algorithm that make it nearly impossible to see the folks we follow in our feeds, to their policy changes that greenlight their company being able to steal our content in order to train it's AI on our artwork.

All of this has been slowly unfolding over years, but as I think more and more about abolition and community care, this idea that we have to create what we want to see in the world comes to mind. That can be a world in which we don't need carceral systems to “keep us safe” but it can also mean a world in which we don't need a billionaires app to keep us connected. 

 And the reality is, both of those realities existed before, and can exist again, but it's up to us to build them. I often think about the nascence of blogging, before social media. I started blogging in that era of the 2000's. We built our own communities around our blogs, there were networks we created of audiences, other bloggers we connected with and organized with. We think that same thing isn't possible now because we rely on social media to do the connection and organization for us.

 Anyway-- all that to say, Instagram has seemingly put us in a place where we have to choose between building a community from scratch off of their platform, or opting into their app and all the myriad negative elements that come along with that in order to gain access to the community that already is on there. And for many small business owners and artists that's not just a thought experiment, it has real impacts on their ability to make a living selling their art or goods. 

 So where does that leave me? I know that the access to the community I've built on Instagram is deeply important, not only to my ability to make an income and support my family, but also because that's where my people are. But I'm also tired of living in a way that feels like we're stuck being pawns in a game played by billionaires who only see us as dollar signs, dependent on the scraps they allow us, endlessly complaining about the exploitative platforms they've designed.

And on top of all that, I'd like to model behavior to my kiddo that feels healthy, like not scrolling on social media endlessly. And now that school is out and he's home with me all day every day, I'd rather him watch me being creative than mindlessly opening an app on my phone.

So where will you find me? I think this means I'm going to try returning to blogging, and, you know, maybe actually launching that podcast I said I was going to launch in March 🫣. If you're here and reading this, you're already a part of my community that has detached from Instagram. If Instagram disappeared tomorrow, we'd still be able to connect because of this access via email, which is cool! 

So, where can you find me? 

• One place I'll always be is here on the blog. I own it, I own the content I post on here, there are no dumb algorithms I have to contend with, and it's free for you to access!

• Over on my newsletter. I try not to spam you with stuff in your inbox, but I'll do my best to keep you updated on what I'm up to-- maybe a weekly round up of blog posts or something like that? I'm not sure exactly what that would look like but my mental juices are percolating.

• Local events! Obviously this is only helpful for folks who live in the Seattle/Tacoma/Olympia area, but I am doing some events this summer! I'll be doing a Pop-Up shop at Hive on the 20th of July, and then I'll have a table at Moms After Dark at the CoLab on August 2nd. I also have a piece that will be featured in the Washington State History Museum's “In The Spirit” exhibit this summer starting July 21st, with the opening reception on the evening of July 20th. 

Thanks for being here! In this phase of online interaction where going beyond the easy follow click and scroll routine, investing in community via blogs and newsletters and patreons etc… it really means a lot. 

Tacoma Wayzgoose Printmaking and Book Art Fair 2024

As a printmaker, I’ve always had Tacoma’s annual Wayzgoose festival on my radar. My first time attending, just a few years out of my college printmaking program, was back in 2014. But life started happening, I fell away from my art practice, I got busy, had a kid, and never made it back to another Wayzgoose event. Then, at the end of 2023 I started slowly returning to my art making practice and made a promise to myself to fully give myself over to my art making, and to actually apply for art opportunities— especially local ones.

The first thing I did was apply for Wayzgoose, to be one of the steamroller print artists. When I got the email that they accepted me, I had to read the email like 10 times to make sure I read it right. I was so excited prior to even getting that email that I made a mini version of my steamroller print as a proof of concept.

Wayzgoose is such a perfect event that represents so much about what I love about Tacoma. It’s interactive by design and as a printmaker, I love that it gives a community hands-on introduction to printmaking as an art form. I was only introduced to printmaking in college and once I discovered it, I fell wholly in love and ended up focusing my BA in Art on Printmaking. So for other folks to have this event to potentially discover the magic of printmaking without having to go to a whole 4 year art program, is really incredible.

And beyond that, there’s such a beautiful, thriving community of letterpress and printmaking artists here in Tacoma. I love that this longstanding event celebrates that community every year. And I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll get to be a part of it again next year!

If you’re interested in purchasing one of my Wayzgoose prints, you can shop the full size limited edition steamroller relief print, the giclée reproduction, and the mini relief print below!

sold out

Home Sweet Tacoma Wayzgoose 2024 Steamroller Print

from $275.00

Home Sweet Tacoma giclée print reproduction

from $80.00

sold out

Home Sweet Tacoma Relief Print- Small Version

$40.00

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Liz Morrow (@liz.morrow)