Most days, Tucson printmaker Joe Marshall can be found carving his latest work in the back studio of Heart of the Sun Gallery.
The gallery, which sits just off Fourth Avenue at 418 E. 7th St., is owned by Marshall and his wife, Josephine Thomason, who create stunning painted and wood-burned art pieces together on scavenged wood. Most feature desert landscapes, with canyons, saguaros and dreamy clouds.
“My wife and I started doing these pieces two years ago,” Marshall said. “She paints them, and then I go in and burn or carve in lines.”
He describes the process as the pair playing a tune together.
“Like we're playing music together, trying to harmonize,” Marshall said.
A lifelong artist, Marshall himself specializes in color prints, hand-carving each of his designs into vinyl or wood blocks.
“I started doing really small blocks,” he said. “I've been doing them for about 25 years at this point and I've been exclusively doing color prints for about 15 years.”
Paintings, prints, cards, stickers and t-shirts are for sale at Heart of the Sun Gallery at 18 E 7th St in Tucson, Ariz. on September 25, 2026. The gallery and shop is owned by Joe Marshall and his wife, Josephine Thomason.
His artistic style is inspired by other printmakers such as José Guadalupe Posada, and Gustave Baumann as well as cultural arts from Japan.
“I've always really liked Japanese printmaking,” he said. “Their color and their composition has always fascinated me.”
In his own work, Marshall said, the weirder the subject, the better. Some of his favorite designs are his bats, and a print of a printing press.
‘Sometimes I just want to do really weird stuff,” he said. ”My range of interests is very wide. I wouldn't say niche, but I get very into my weird interests.”
He is a self-proclaimed lover of the desert, and takes a lot of his inspiration from the natural world around him.
“I really like the landscape. I really want to do clouds, colors, because it changes so quickly,” Marshall said. “I take photos of the sky, sunsets and the sunrises all the time.”
Each print starts with a sketch, which he draws directly on the board. They don't need to be detailed, Marshall said, following his instincts and letting the design evolve is part of the process.
“I don't try to map everything out before I start something because I would get too bored, and I would go outside my own lines, anyways,” Marshall said. “I usually look at my reference image, but then I also look at the print itself to see what's going on with it and what I want to have removed.”
It's easier for him, he said, to think about the shapes in his designs rather than lines.
Joe Marshall, co-owner of Heart of the Sun Gallery, works on a piece in his studio and gallery at 418 E 7th St in Tucson, Ariz. on September 25, 2026.
To create his detailed, multi-colored prints, Marshall works layer by layer to carve out his designs. Each step is done on the same wooden or vinyl block, starting with the largest base color first, removing as little as possible, and leaving blank space for the lightest values. Marshall then adds darker and darker values on top, adding detail until the work is finished.
“It's backwards and reverse. You're removing material when you carve something,” he said. “If you're just going to do a single color, you're removing what's going to be the color of the paper.”
Depending on how many colors a design has and how consistently he is working, Marshall said it can take weeks to months to finish a carving and print process, and each design will be used for 30 or 40 limited edition prints.
Joe Marshall, co-owner of Heart of the Sun Gallery, works on a piece in his studio and gallery at 418 E 7th St in Tucson, Ariz. on September 25, 2026.
One of the things he loves most about printmaking, Marshall said, is the opportunity for collaborative work within the printmaking community but also with other kinds of artists who specialize in paper making and book arts. A future dream of his is to open a collective studio and gallery space with other local printmakers to facilitate that kind of creative collaboration.
“We'd like to get a space where you can do community stuff,” Marshall said. “To have other people get involved in it.”
Earlier this month, he helped organize the first Sonoran Valley Print Fair dedicated strictly to artists and makers working in printmaking, something he said he’s wanted to do forever.
“My real goal is to get people to meet each other and work together,” Marshall said. “To get people excited about printmaking and get the printmakers to know each other because maybe they'll end up working together and doing other stuff.”
The print fair will hopefully be returning in February with more work from local artists, live printing demonstrations and skill sharing. Until then, Marshall’s work can be found at Heart of the Sun Gallery, Pop Cycle, at the Made in Tucson Market, and a few other events throughout October.
