Artist Statement
I make collagraph prints shaped by tree-ring cross-sections, cellular growth, and geological fracture. I use these structures to explore how force leaves visible traces, how interruption redirects growth, and how environmental stress can remain present as form even after its original source is gone.
While the imagery often begins with remnants of fallen trees or other material traces shaped by stress and time, the work is driven by what printmaking itself can generate. I build plates through carving, layering, and sealing, then print multiple inks of differing viscosities in a single pass. During printing, the inks collide, resist, and merge. Mechanical pressure and chemical resistance produce dense surfaces of radiating rings, cellular buildup, and rupture that cannot be planned or produced in advance.
The resulting prints are not representations of nature. They are objects produced through extended labor, technical decision-making, and instability within the process. I am drawn to intricacy that rewards sustained looking and invites viewers to consider how the work came into being. The plate is a starting point. The print is what happens when I push the process until something unforeseen emerges from pressure, constraint, and accumulation.
Artist Bio
Don Dao is a Los Angeles based Vietnamese American artist and educator. He works in experimental printmaking primarily using viscosity techniques. His work is process driven and centered on making this and the forces that shape us visible.
Dao has a BA in Art from UCLA and an M Ed in Curriculum and Instruction from CSULB.