Avery Maltz

Avery Maltz

VISUAL ARTIST / EXPERIMENTAL INK MAKER

My second west coast ink: Candelabra Aloe! Here’s an older piece, “It’s the Pits”, a gift for a friend who loves peaches. I saved all my peach pits from August 2024 and then boiled them down to make ink. It was a tough process, they didn’t give much color, but with some patience I was able to extract the pigment and paint this peach pit in its own ink. It’s about 9x12”. New year, fresh color!! I made this ink, my first on the west coast, from invasive buttercups on the roadside. Oxalis pes-caprae, or Bermuda Buttercup, is an aggressive weed that grows pretty much everywhere here. While it’s not great for the native plants, it is lovely to see fields of yellow after a week of rain. These had a fresh honey scent, especially when I opened the bag! And they produced a rich golden-brown color. Watch the color shift as the ink encounters the paper! Here’s a recent drawing, a banana slug!! I’ve been so inspired by them because they’re adorable and very abundant in the redwoods. I’ll eventually color this guy in with paint, but I’ve also been thinking about making informational coloring books about different California ecosystems. Wouldn’t that be fun? 🍌 Here’s a quick draft that I sketched yesterday of an interpretive infographic combining my microscopy skills and botanic illustration! Wow, my first quarter of grad school has been amazing, but very overwhelming! I have not found the time to sit down and make art, and yet I am still so inspired by my work in the lab! This image is a cross section of a redwood twig that I harvested, cut, stained, and photographed under a microscope. It’s about 80 micrometers thick (very thin!) and roughly 2 centimeters across (pea size). The stain helps us the differentiate between different types of tissues so we can easily observe anatomical qualities. I definitely want to make more images like this, tree anatomy is so beautiful! 🌲 Hello! I’m Avery and this my art account! I’ve been creating art my whole life and have worked in a variety of different media. I’ve always been very inspired by nature how humans build relationships with the world around us. In my 30s I went back to school and got a bachelor’s in plant biology with a minor in studio art. Since then I’ve been very interested in botanical illustration and experimental ink making. My work also encompasses woodblock printmaking and immersive installations.