Quercus

We will read an excerpt from the Vladimir Nabokov’s novel "Invitation to a Beheading" to get inspired by the images. We will cut and print linocuts together with the Print Commune. We will make prints on an etching machine, on handmade paper made in the Elina Li’s Paper Studio with the addition of preserved oak leaves.

We will try to imagine how the scenes from the non-existent novel "Quercus" ("Oak"), which the main character of ‘Invitation to a Beheading’ reads, could look like, and cut them out in an engraving. You do not have to be an expert in painting or drawing to join us!

‘The novel was the famous Quercus, and Cincinnatus had already read a good third of it, or about a thousand pages. Its protagonist was an oak. The novel was a biography of that oak. At the place where Cincinnatus had stopped the oak was just starting on its third century; a simple calculation suggested that by the end of the book it would reach the age of six hundred at least ...’