DeCordova Museum School BIG Woodcuts

I LOVE that moment of printing, after you've carved and inked and layed down the paper and placed the blankets and cranked the press. That moment when you roll back the blankets like a curtain and hold your breath as you pull the sheet of paper from the block...

It's especially magical when I teach because I love seeing that glint of joy in the eyes of my students. Below are images from my class at the DeCordova Museum School (in Lincoln MA). The students are all artists, in some respect. Some have never done printmaking, some have way in the past and wanted to rekindle the flame. Some are painters or sculptors or photographers, and then bring that aspect of their art into their prints. I teach the class with an open mind, responding to each person's needs, ideas, and queries. As we are approaching the end of the Fall term, with only two classes left, students in the class are well onto thier individual paths. Some came in with an clear intent of what they wanted to accomplish, others kinda played around a bit to discover a personal goal. The images here are from that moment when the path is clear and the goal is a wide open target.

Freehand Drawing at the BAC

This fall I have been teaching a class on Wednesday afternoons at the Boston Architectural College. What's that you say? How can I teach at an architectural college when I don't know the difference between a corinthian column and a doric column? Meh, doesn't matter. The point of the class is to understand and apply observational drawing and rendering three-dimensional forms into a two-dimensional space.

Now I love teaching, and I especially love interdisciplinary teaching, where I get to work with students from all sorts of different backgrounds. They may not go on to careers as fine artists, but they can still appreciate a basic drawing class and take the greater skill of observation and attention to detail to whatever future they have set for themselves. John Ruskin noted that he enjoyed teaching drawing to people like craftsmen, engineers, mechanics, etc, because it helped them to "see" better and that they were better at their trade for it.

Following are some pictures from a recent BAC class. The focus was rendering drapery and fabric so they were drawing their coats and bags, incorporating all of the various techniques we've covered this semester including gestural drawing, contour lines, variation in line weight, rendering reflective surfaces, volume, shading and negative spaces using charcoal and/or pencil.

As You Wish

Up late again, finishing up some prints for Melanie Yazzie in Colorado.

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Lucy, The Late Night Studio "Guard" Dog

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Not such a failure after all?

I'm in my studio very late tonight and the experimental book with the poly urethane is much drier and more interesting. The dried surface is stretched tight and has become slightly more transparent. I can see some of the text below the surface of the amber glowing pool.

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More Monoprint Books

Here are a few more monoprint recycled books. One made with a re-used book cover, another made with a vinyl floor tile sample.








Then this "book" is still in progress.




I liked these stencil letter forms and the idea of looking at text through text windows. But not sure yet where the "book" is going, if anywhere at all. This might just be a process project that won't become an actual finished work.

Test post

Cool! I can blog from my crackberry!
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Jlee and me in the studio

This past weekend was Vernon Street Open Studios. Lucia and Jackson hung out with me for a bit and Jackson and I made paper turkeys. In fact, Jackson is a good little artist, loves to paint and draw and appreciates visiting museums and galleries.

Sky Goddess

Often times I start a drawing intrinsically, intuitively, not necessarily knowing yet where the source is. Only after working with the image for some time and having conversations with friends and colleagues that I am able to dig deeper and see how the image has developed and what possible relationship it has to the greater world outside of me.

For a few months now I've been working with this image that started off as a simple doodle on a page margin (now lost) and stuck in my mind. I later drew it again on the background of a litho print that I never finished.



Then carved it into a woodcut.



And started experimenting with a series of small monoprints that also included found textural elements like lace and embroidery.





I've talked with a few people about this image and this process of mine of drawing and printing and using textures. But this weekend when my friend Deb Santaro was visiting my studio, she saw something in the image that I had not. She made reference to the Egyptian Goddess Nut. In mythology, she is considered the protector of the inhabitants of earth, arching her body over separate the world from chaos and disorder.



Nut is represented by the sacred symbol of a ladder, used by Osiris to enter heaven and also placed in tombs to protect the dead. This also reminds me of the Christian symbol of Jacob's ladder, envisioned by Jacob in a dream as path between heaven and earth. Again, like the sky goddess, the symbol that unites two.

I am not yet sure what this means for me. Certainly there is a lot of chaos and disorder in my life... as I type this my son is poking at the CPU on the floor squealing "button!" and threatening to push the power off...

Recycled, Re-made

While in graduate school at the University of Iowa, I had the great fortune of learning two wonderful techniques to supplement my printmaking: papermaking and book arts. Years ago I had taken old proof prints and made them into new paper by tearing them up and tossing them into a hollander beater. I then re-printed a series of woodcut monoprints.





Now years later these prints are taking on yet another life as artist books. I have taken them and cut them in to strips.





Then attached the strips together and folded the whole thing into an accordian page book.







There's an old copy of "Cry the Beloved Country" by Alan Paton that I have in my studio and for many years I have been using the pages of text in my collages. Now there's not much left of the book except a few cut up pages and the book cover. I used this old book cover for my new accordian book.







Another book, however, did not turn out so well. It was just an experiment to start, to see how long a book filled with polyurethane would take to dry. It's been a week and so far it's just dry on the surface. When I touch it, it's squishy underneath. Kinda cool, but not what I was aiming for.





Next I'll try epoxy...