Reclaimed Reprint: Artistic Duo Puts Cityscapes on Wood Flooring

By Doug Dalsing
June/July 2011
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For their “Wooden Postcards” series, artists Hugo Garcia Urrutia and MK Semos printed urban landscapes on reclaimed wood flooring. (Photos: Hugo Garcia Urrutia and MK Semos)

"Instead of throwing away that flooring, we’re going to give it a new life,” artist Hugo Garcia Urrutia says. Garcia Urrutia and fellow artist MK Semos are currently in residence at the Fairmont Dallas, creating new works in exchange for studio space and displaying their “Wooden Postcards,” an art series made from reclaimed wood flooring. The pair starts with film images snapped with Semos’ Holga camera, and then Garcia Urrutia constructs the wood floor medium on which the images are printed. (To view more from the series or to purchase a piece, visit decorazongallery.com.) The wood flooring was reclaimed from homes in the Dallas area. Semos and Garcia Urrutia—who are married—chose wood flooring for its green qualities, namely the fact it can be torn up and re-used (even in completely different applications, like art). “We like the concept that the wood was once used as flooring, and now it is on your wall,” Garcia Urrutia says. When creating the composite works of art, Garcia Urrutia takes into account the physical characteristics of the wood. “I like to find interesting pieces of wood with the right notch or grain that could even be incorporated into the image,” he says. “We’ve used mainly white oak since it seems to be the right color and grain. Maple would also work, but you don’t find maple too much in this area.” So how does the duo print its images on wood? Sorry, but they’re not telling. “It’s kind of an ancient Chinese secret,” Semos jokes.

                Oak wood flooring    Reclaimed wood flooring