- My name's Jeff Palmer, I'm an artist and media maker.

I would never consider myself sort of a formally trained artist.

I guess you could say I'm self-taught.

Painting, colors, abstractions, I think it was also what I called the Pandemic Pivot, I had been doing a lot of media, a lot of filmmaking up to that point.

(energetic music continues) And then our lives were put on pause.

But I needed to stay busy doing some artwork.

Creating things, (energetic music) making things, really became my outlet for creativity.

I started to see some things (keyboard clacking) on Instagram about printmaking and I started to get curious about it, because when you make a original piece of artwork and sell that, it's gone and that's a good thing.

But I got curious about printmaking, because you can create a negative image, a plate that you can ink and make copies of.

And you can not just sell 1 or 10, but as many as people wanna buy.

I mean, I always tell people, "We're born with our own block print and it's our fingerprint."

So, basically that's what it is, and there's ink that lands on a surface and you press it, that's what makes those lines.

If we didn't have a fingerprint, it would just be all black, right?

I've always been kind of into chaos, (laughs) which kind of spirals into, you know, making art, taking things apart, putting them back together again.

(energetic music continues) And I think maybe in my head there's, you know, a lot of ideas that you could get out.

It's messy.

I guess maybe that's more of it.

It's like creativity to me, spills all out, all over the place.

I love music, I love movies.

You know, acting, artists, Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Debbie Harry, Keith Haring, Alice Cooper.

I love portraits.

I love capturing sort of the essence of a face.

And then sometimes I'll incorporate little snippets of lyrics from their songs.

You know, or just something like Prince, "Let's go crazy!"

(energetic music) I think my graphic design experience over the years really started to play into how I thought of Rhode Island, and I was just starting to think of it in terms of catchy phrases.

I have three cats.

So cats are really big part (laughs) of the content that I create.

(cat purring) What I do is I try to, you know, I find those folks that have really touched me and influenced me.

The people, the musicians, the politicians, you know, the big thinkers of a moment in time, right?

A point in history that are influencing us, that are affecting us.

But what I love most, I think is, like, really bringing the artwork to the people, you know, to the folk, folk art, right?

It's always a trip.

You never know who you're gonna connect with.

You never know who you're gonna meet.

(energetic music continues) - [Tracy] All right, well, why don't you show me what you do?

- All right, let's see some carving.

- So what have you got going on over here?

- So this is a blank block, right?

This is four by six and it's like a really hard eraser.

You wanna talk about the tools?

- Yeah, let's talk about the tools.

- All right.

Here's some blades.

95% of what I carve, I use this number one blade, mostly moving the material under the blade as opposed to moving the blade.

- Now we gotta put the ink.

- That's what we're going for, hopefully.

The ink on the inc.

I like that!

(block thuds) (press clicks) - [Tracy] So how did the first one turn out?

- I knew it wasn't gonna be perfect.

It never is.

There's this whole strip here against the A, so I've better get back in there.

- You said typically you'll do three proofs, - Sometimes more.

(water gurgles) (block thuds) (press clicks) All right, so here we are, take two.

Let's take a look here.

- Oh, it's looking good.

- Yeah!

- Looking sharp.

- Right?

Sharp.

Art sharp - [Tracy] Art sharp.

Well, Tracy, you tell me what you think, it's okay.

This is when you gotta be critical.

What do you think?

What do you think?

- [Tracy] Maybe like here there's a little bit on that I- - [Jeff] Mm-hmm.

- [Tracy] Still.

This looks sharp.

- I think that'll do the trick.

- Three time's the charm, right?

- Three time's the charm.

- All right.

(laughs) (block thuds) Okay, this should be good to go.

All right, Tracy!

"ART inc." in color!

- I love it!

It's perfect.

(energetic music) (static crackles)