Artist Statement

During my years as brand image designer I frequented printing companies to supervise my client’s projects, I became familiar with “make-readies”—the term given the test paper sheets lying in stacks among the presses. This was re-purposed “trash’ smothered with unintentionally printed layers of ink from unrelated jobs—resulting in typography and images commingling in unexpected, and in many cases traditionally inharmonious ways. These captivated me and became the inspiration and foundation for my visual exploration and creative pursuit beyond my day work.

I was fascinated with how layered lines of type became fragments, interacting with mostly unrecognizable images of ads, book plates, and other subjects. Unwittingly, this emerged as my visual language. I called this work “well-involved vacant structures,” after seeing a make ready fragment with words relating to fire fighting. “Well-involved” suggested the multitude of layered imagery, whereas “vacant structures” implied the abstract nature of mostly indecipherable messaging ephemera. The final name of the work changed to Make-Ready.

Both sides of my education—degrees in art history, painting and drawing, and communication design, with decades of offset printing experience—now converged into something fresh and exhilarating. A doorway into the art world.

–Benj Čziller, Ojai CA