Vancouver's Printmakers: Pressing the Boundaries

This is a show I've been working on for a couple of years - the idea being to showcase half a dozen or so local printmakers.  Part of the idea is to introduce the printmakers and their work to a larger audience and the other part to educate the public about printmakers.  In this show we have about an even split between relief and intaglio with some monotypes thrown in to make a terrific mix.  Vancouver has been having  really good turnout for the First Friday Art Walk - we hope that will hold true even though it is a long holiday weekend. ( Hold your breath! )

There will be fish printing for adults and children going on in front of the gallery and Barbara Mason has agreed to bring the small press and demonstrate intaglio in the gallery.  With all that, lots of terrific prints,  a little wine and some good food it should be a terrific evening.  If you're in the area the date for the opening party is July 2, 5 pm - 9 pm.  Hope you can make it!

Support Group

Lately I've been putting up with a knee that has decided to join the other side.  Way back when I was knee high to a grasshopper I was in an auto accident and my knees were slammed into the dashboard of one of those old cars that had knobs that stuck out.  This was way before seat belts and air bags.  At the time the doctors told me I would probably have trouble with the knees when I got older.  Since that was about a hundred years away, give or take, I didn't give it a moments thought.  Well, guess what?  That "older" business has caught up with me.  Anyway. long story short – it is down to bone on bone and time for joint replacement.  But, that can't happen until mid-August.  Meanwhile, though, I have a fantastic support group.  Everyone needs a good one of these – they are worth their weight in gold.

So, of course, this warranted a print.  This is multiple plate intaglio and chine collé.  I'm working on another one along this same vein which will be larger and a woodcut, probably.  I think it will be my recuperation project for after the surgery.  I will get everything ready to go before I go under the knife.

While working on this group of prints, the poetry muse must have passed through the area and the next thing I knew I was up to my neck in Haiku.  I, of course, know nothing about poetry, but that has never stopped me from doing anything else, so it didn't stop me from this either.  Although, I did consult the Baren.com Poet Laureate, Bette Wappner, and sent me to a website that was very useful.  In usual form, though, the deadline was approaching and I didn't have time to really study the subject.  (Must do that in the near future.  Maybe another recuperation activity.)  This is my try at Surinomo - the Japanese prints which included poetry.

Wet Concrete Carving Workshop

This is so exciting! Barebones Art will be hosting Elder G. Jones, a pioneer in the development of wet concrete carving, for a three day workshop this July 16, 17 and 18th in luxurious, (we hope it will not still be raining) Vancouver, WA.  We will work from 10 am to 4 pm (more or less) for three days and when it is all over, besides having the time of our lives, we will have a finished piece for our home or garden, know all there is to know about the medium, plus have the tools to do the job again.

Granted, this has little or nothing - probably nothing - to do with printmaking, except that possibly you could ink and print the vessel you produce should be so inclined.  Or maybe you could squish a carved block into the wet concrete, remove the block, and carve around it?  How about pressing leaves into the wet concrete and carving around them?  I'm sure there will be lots of ideas from others and I can't wait to hear them.  Printmakers, especially, can always come up with some way to make their medium work with another.

If you are interested in joining us for the workshop please let me know at barebonesart@comcast.net or you can also go to www.sandpudding.com

I have a lovely flyer I can send to anyone who is interested, but be darned if I can figure out how to get it onto this page.  If you'd like to see it, let me know! 

More Skin

We are now ready to get back to the business of printmaking - almost.  My last contribution to the skin show is a handmade paper piece.  The skins, aka peelings, from onions, carrots and broccoli have been boiled beyond recognition with a little caustic agent and at the end of the process, a buffering agent to make it Ph neutral. Only a few sheets were made and one was carefully draped over my hand to form somewhat of a casting - albeit a speed record in the casting process.  The color was not anticipated, but is very pleasant and works well with the title: Skin.

Skin

Life just keeps interjecting and taking more time than I am willing to devote.  The latest development is bursitis in the left hip.  This is probably because I've been walking, sitting, and moving in unnatural ways because my blooming knee hurts like hell.  So, that is my excuse for not doing much art work.  And then, the deadline for the Skin show at North Bank Gallery decided to be closer than I could imagine and I got to work on a couple of quirky ideas.  I figured others would do the tatoos, body painting, hanging by hooks in the back from the gallery ceiling, etc.  So, I would do something from the opposite direction.  The closest I could come to the opposite direction was nursery rhymes/lullabyes, hence Bye Baby Bunting - Daddy's gone a-hunting, he will bring a rabbit skin to wrap a baby bunting in.  And, New Summer Colors - thinking if we could just get babies to come in all colors, not just the traditional ones, maybe we could get over racial prejudices.  Probably not.  Someone would think up a reason for hating my lime green babies.  Or, Heaven Forbid!  The mauve ones, now that sounds dangerous.  One more piece is in the works, but it is still drying.

detail of the babies                                                                              Bye Baby

                                                    New Summer Colors

Back at it: making art

It has been ages since I've communicated via blog.  Mainly, because I was laid low the months of Oct., Nov., Dec., and January with emergency surgery & all that goes with that.  In January I was back in the hospital again because I had done everything wrong - ate all the wrong things and was, in general, a very bad girl.  In my defense, the hospital sent me home with no direction.  When they said I could eat Bananas, Rice, Applesauce and Toast, I ate what was in the house: brown rice & whole grain toast. No! It was supposed to be white everything.  Basically, I could eat anything over-refined and with absolutely no nutritional value.  It is hard to generate any energy on such a diet. 
Due to this turn of events I missed my Christmas visit to Granddaughterland, aka North Dakota, and by March I was getting desperate for a Granddaughter fix.  I've just returned from glorious Grand Forks and Camille and I managed to get in a printmaking session.  I helped Grace with a couple of paintings

for a school project, and Camille and I did various craft and art related projects.  After a rousing game of Fancy Nancy we drew bedrooms and Nancy.  But the printmaking was the most fun.  Here is a shot of Camille burnishing her foam plate.  I'm not sure she ever really got the concept as the plates seemed to be much more important to her than the prints.  I think Grace will be ready to do some actual carving next winter, so maybe I can get her to do a little linoleum print - or we might find time for that this summer, though their time here seems to pass much too quickly to do much of anything that requires staying in one spot.
Next on the agenda is some studio clean up and then Grandma had better get back to work or she won't have much for a July show. Yikes!

New Work

A lot has happened around here in the last couple of months and sandwiched between the earth shaking events of daily life I've managed to find a little studio time to produce some new work. Because I've been having so much trouble with my hands (ugly old arthritis) I've temporarily given up on woodblocks and been indulging in solarplate™ intaglio. With this medium all you need to do is get the desired image onto a transparent format and you're good to go. I like to draw directly onto aquaeous media acetate. It allows you to remove and add to your heart's content, take as long as needed, and then just expose it onto the plate using UV light, develop the plate in tap water, harden with a little more UV and print. In this case I've printed many layers of colors and textures and stenciled some blocks of color onto both sides of a very thin, transparent mulberry paper, then printed some small plates on the paper's right side. Meanwhile, I've printed the drawings/images onto another piece of fairly transparent (but not as much as the original paper) and very carefully torn around the image while the paper is damp. Mulberry paper is very tough and almost impossible to tear when it is dry. When dry the images are dampened again, sprinkled with adhesive and placed on the background sheet on a plate and run through the press. Then I may print a bit of color over the top of the two sheets which have now become one. When the image is completely resolved it is trimmed and chine collé to a Western printmaking paper - I like Somerset Satin. It is versatile and has a nice hand and is a soft white. The image above is named Persephone after the ancient myth of Demeter's daughter having eaten a seed of the pomegranate while in the underworld (she was forbidden to eat anything if she wanted to come back up topside) and thereafter having to spend 3 months down under (winter) and the other 9 with us (spring, winter and fall). Her mother brokered that deal. So, she is here with her scythe, watering can, rake, and a few samples of what she's grown so far. Since we have gone from "yard" (rather shabby & kind of unkempt) to "garden" (a place to be kept free of weeds, moles, voles, slugs and looking decent) I see that three of my new images deal with gardening and critters. As you can see there is no mercy in my heart for voles. I don't understand why they were invented in the first place and am certain that the world would be a better place if they were not here. The varmints live on the roots of your most expensive plants. They will gladly pass weeds by giving them nary a thought. They can completely wipe out a yard in a heartbeat. One day your plant is looking robust and healthy and the next day it falls over dead & has no roots. My plan is to lead a hunt and not look back until they are all gone. However, my feeling is that one pregnant vole will always be missed and before you know it you will be infested again. They were probably here with the dinosaurs and will still be here with the cockroaches long after we are gone and forgotten. But, while I'm here I will be doing my best to win the fight.