Medium: Collagraph on Reeves BFK, Cream
Year: 2019
Edition Size: 4
Dimensions: 15″ x 18″
Inscriptions: Edition, Title, Signature, Year
Published Spudnik Press Cooperative

Huggy Muck I and its companion print, Chunk Hugger I, was Paul Nudd’s first foray into collagraphy. In this very sculptural intaglio process, the textures to be printed are built up onto the surface of the plate. The prints began with the construction of two custom laser cut plexiglass plates that would become heavily textured with the artist’s homemade “goblin’s stew” comprised of thread and string, synthetic hair, old bits of paint-encrusted latex, vinyl netting, modeling clay, hardened fabric paint, and dryer lint, bound together with wood glue and gel medium and sealed in shellac. Nudd’s collagraphs resulted in grotesque figures whose bodies’ construction reference both a kind of primordial mess, and industrially produced materials.

“The plates soon resembled compressed garbage layer cakes, and would eventually yield, through tremendous technical know-how and troubleshooting by Spudnik’s printers, crisp and concise images – like a visual fossil record of seemingly random gobs of lost and unwanted chunks of old art making supplies and other such studio detritus. The results are my two little fun-loving humanoid forms Chunk Hugger and Huggy Muck.” – Paul Nudd

Paul Nudd is a Chicago-based multimedia artist born in Harpenden, England. His paintings, drawings, prints, and zines heavily feature grotesque, playful, and exaggerated renderings of bodies and their physical matter. His work has been shown extensively in the U.S. and in Germany, and is included in artist book collections at MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, MCA Chicago, and the National Academy of Design. He has an MFA from University of Illinois at Chicago.