For the past decade, Hautala has studied self-taught and visionary artists, underground comix, and museum collections to understand how symbols carry meaning across time and cultures. His work investigates consumption, digital culture, and the tension between the handmade and the mechanical, explored through printmaking, carving, and functional objects. His work has been exhibited internationally, from New York City to Seoul, South Korea. He has taught Illustration, and Printmaking at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design and led woodcut workshops across the United States and in Tokyo, Japan. He recently received a City of Bellevue, WA arts grant and earned a 2025-2026 Pratt Fine Arts Center & Seattle Print Arts Partners Scholarship. I make art the way I make sense of the world—through symbols, pictographs, and coded imagery that form a language somewhere between instinct and intention. Drawing from print ephemera, advertising, and archival research, I create a lexicon of icons and patterns that function as coded messages.

@NoMaxPrint

Process

Printmaking is my medium of choice because it’s all about process and resourcefulness. I carve, ink, and repeat—multiples multiplying, ideas evolving. The lineage of printmaking, from early woodcuts to mass media, makes it the perfect tool for communication. My work plays with that history, using symbols, flags, and sign-like forms to explore themes of consumption, ecology, and the strange mechanics of digital culture. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how to push my work beyond the flat surface, moving my prints into sculptural objects, installations, and functional pieces. Teaching public workshops has taught me the power of hands-on making—how the process itself can be just as important as the final piece. I want to keep exploring, experimenting, and creating work that invites people in, whether through a print, a carved relief, or a collaborative project that gets people thinking (and making) together.

Influences

I’m influenced by seeing people do things. It is important to see art & artists existing in the world. Meeting nice people in creative spaces gives me hope. I seek out artist built environments, self taught art, and people who have compulsions to make their weird visions in physical form. I like when art museums have “free” days and can make their collections be viewed by all people.

Challenges

Surround yourself with kind, creative, and motivated people. This will help. Keep in contact with people you care about. Each year I ride the wave of depression through different modes of making. Winter is time for carving wood, spring is printing time, summer is time for drawing, fall is for crocheting. I have to keep my hands busy. Teaching public printmaking workshops energizes me. I emphasize accessibility and physical engagement, bridging art with everyday life. These interactions reinforce my belief that process is as valuable as the final piece, fostering deeper engagement with visual language and material exploration within my communities.

Reflection

Find a mentor. Doesn’t have to be in the same artform as you. Someone with a little bit more life experience and who enjoys spending time answering your questions. I want to do more residencies, murals, public artworks and teach workshops. My experience laboring in factories directly parallels my artistic practice, where I establish systems of efficiency to produce work in series, much like a production line. In the screenprinting factory in Houston, TX, I spent long hours pulling ink across screens in a high-volume, repetitive process designed for maximum output. This methodical, labor-intensive work shaped how I approach printmaking in my own studio, where I carve woodblocks, ink surfaces, and produce prints in structured, repeated motions. The mechanics of mass-production screenprinting, includes precise color layering, consistency control, and problem-solving, which have directly influenced my woodcut printing process and reinforced my commitment to working in multiples. Moving between industrial labor jobs and independent printmaking has strengthened my appreciation for production systems, repetition, and material experimentation. My process involves carving intricate symbols and pictographs into woodblocks, mirroring the precision required in factory settings. Each print I create is part of a larger body of work, evolving through a structured yet adaptable workflow.

*Forthcoming solo show in Milwaukee, WI at Grove Gallery @gallerygrove - New exciting prints, woodcut classics opening in Spring 2026.