Casey Williams, otherwise known as Luminoom, is a printmaker and self-taught artist based in Boston, Massachusetts. She primarily creates linoleum block prints, with some mixed media elements, such as watercolour and gold foil accents. Recently, Casey has begun mixing her own inks in order to print in the iridescent hues she loves so much.
Currently, Casey works as an Operations Associate for an academic publisher (but sometimes also finds opportunities to lend her art skills to designing covers), and Luminoom is what she does outside of work and on the weekends.
Casey first learned about printmaking during her undergraduate program at Washington College. The college’s literary centre had a printmaking studio where staff and students could print limited editions of chapbooks along with a rotation of broadsides inspired by the current year’s visiting writers. “I was very fortunate to spend a summer interning with the literary center, and even helped print an edition or two of their broadsides,” says the printmaker.
She continued her printmaking journey by taking a joint broadside design and creative writing workshop, and was quickly hooked. Casey continued creating prints after graduating and moving to Boston in 2018 to attend Emerson College for graduate school. While she doesn’t have a formal art education, Casey took graphic design courses that specialised in editorial design, and worked a for a few years as a graphic designer for a nonprofit.
Her set-up at that time was very modest; “I would hand burnish all my designs with a wooden spoon an old roommate had left behind and would lay out prints on empty tables and whatever wall space I could find”. It wasn’t until 2021 that Casey would decide to take the plunge and officially launch her store, Luminoom. After several successful markets and an online store launch, she began to invest in more equipment, like a small printing press and oil-based inks.
Casey has always been enamored by folklore, mythology, and fantasy, and as a child she hoarded collections of books spanning ancient mythology across the globe. She tells us; “What draws me to mythology as a subject matter is its ability to persist across time and culture: though these stories were written hundreds of years ago, they continue to capture the hearts and minds of people today. Whether it be Arthurian knights’ tales, Ezekiel’s writings, or American folk creatures, people from all walks of life not only recognize the imagery, but relate to it in their own personal way.”
Nowadays, the mythos that primarily grounds her work is medieval literature. As an undergraduate student, she had a focus in medieval literature and art, and even wrote her thesis paper on medieval storytelling and symbolism. The aesthetics of that specific period continue to heavily inspire much of Casey’s work.
She also gathers a lot of inspiration from pop culture she personally enjoys, particularly anime and manga, video games, and science fiction/fantasy books and shows.
A customer once described Casey’s art as “fun”, and she came to realise that this is a core part of her working process too; “I love incorporating details that are vibrant and much of my subject matter leans into the fantastical: medieval bestiary art filled with outlandish creatures, biblically-accurate angels, and dragons. If my art doesn’t bring myself joy, how can I expect it to do the same for others?”
As an artist, Casey is always looking to find ways to stretch herself. She hopes to one day create art prints at both extreme ends of the sizing spectrum: “a print so large I can hide behind it and a series of prints so small you could put them into a gumball machine!” She has also recently improved her process for registering multi-layered prints, and aims to create a print with more than 5 layers.
Additionally, she’s love to participate in a gallery show with a group or independently. Casey recently participated in the Open Press Project 2023 Print Exchange, so hopefully will check this goal off soon!
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