2023
Featured
Parallel marks catch my eye on white birch bark. In contrast to these marks in the natural world, barcodes show up on goods nearly everywhere, with their purpose well known to us all. I’ve learned the parallel marks in birch bark are called lenticels, whose function is to absorb carbon from the atmosphere.
The printing technique of paper lithography is ideal for capturing the fine vertical lines of barcodes. The chine-collé process lets the light-colored bark images be contrasting backgrounds for the mechanically made lines.