Between 2010 and 2020, Jer Crowle produced a series of drypoint etchings using a restored Charles Brand press, housed in a boathouse studio on Galiano Island. The press, salvaged from the University of British Columbia and repaired in collaboration with educator Kit Grauer, became both a technical tool and conceptual lens — shaping Crowle’s early thinking around reproduction, variation, and the role of human error within mechanical processes.

Working with copper and zinc plates, Crowle used drypoint engraving techniques to build small-edition prints — mostly black ink on cotton rag. These works often feature people from the island community, visitors to the studio, as well as recurring motifs of tools, seascapes, and exploratory compositions. Rendered with crosshatching, linear incision, and a fidelity to observational form, each print carries the residue of its making: subtle anomalies caused by ink distribution, pressure variance, and the softness of the paper. In this way, the edition itself becomes a site of inquiry — not just a method of duplication, but a study of deviation.

Though anchored in traditional technique, these etchings reveal an early interest in the aesthetic of systems interrupted. Each plate captures not only its subject, but its own unstable logic — a foundation for later explorations in painting and sculpture, where the themes of iteration, disruption, and formal language would continue to evolve. 

2010
U43
Drypoint on Cotton Paper, 4 x 5.5"

2010
U44
Drypoint on Cotton Paper, 4 x 5.5"

2013
Dale, Stihl 440 Magnum
Drypoint on Cotton Paper

2013
Thor, Husqvarna 390 XP
Drypoint on Cotton Paper

SOMETHING DIFF'RENT
GALIANO ISLAND