New work in acrylic

Influenced by my monoprint silkscreens and woven art, several new paintings have emerged in the last 2 years. As with all of my work (except etching and lithography) , these pieces are saturated with color. This is far from finished but I often find seeing works in progress , photographed in stages, to be fascinating. Enjoy! 

Showing one's work...

I am an art maker. A printmaker. A teacher of art & creative process. One thing I have never really been is an exhibitor. Here is why:

It takes work, time, effort & money.

Anyone who makes art-on any level-will tell you that the process can be a bit daunting. You have to be creative-not always easy. You have to (as you get older) wisely manage your energy-it is not as endless as it used to be & that can effect what you make & how you make it. You need space-both to make your art & to store it. (If you work with toxic , expensive or specialized materials/processes you need studio space as you can not do this in your home and storage wise-art gets damaged very easily when not stored properly.)

Now a days, you need to have a virtual presence:you HAVE (?) to be on facebook, flicker, vimeo, have a web site, do the Etsy store , be on linked & have a blog.

And then, you have to take your work around in the effort to get it out there. into the light of day. You should be networking , you might also be teaching to make ends meet or have access to facilities such as a darkroom ,welding , sculpture ceramics studio, or printshop...If you like making art-it is really tough to spend so much of your time, energy and resources on all of those other, none art related tasks. They can be full time jobs , in and of themselves & it is hard not to feel like you are taking valuable time away from your real goal of making art.

To be continued...

The summer semester looms...

I have gotten the catalog in the mail...weeks ago. I Forced myself to look up the pages of printmaking classes and tear them out to read one morning during breakfast. I have ignored them. And classes have a tendency to fill. The good ones do anyway. Summer semester has it's good and bad points : the shop itself is less full as full time students flee for the summer. Summer is more relaxed. But then there are the down sides:the heat and humidity can be really horrible for printing and deadly for drying . Printing is largely physical & that can be hard to do in the heat. So your production slows as you pace yourself. And then everything takes longer to dry:screens , emulsion, ink-especially if you are layering on top of multiple layers of ink. So you have to come up with ways to work with that-stop printing early to add drying time, slip sheet with glassine and hope that it does not adhere to the newly printed ink and so on.

But the real reason I am holding off is my sprained wrist. And the $. But really it's my wrist and wondering if I can nurse it along -and if not-how painful it might be...I am becoming a wimp actually...

collage

I printed up two of my designs today=both originally done in cut paper. Once home I began playing around with the various bit & pieces... Not sure what I think yet. Maybe too tired to tell much of anything right now. Maybe tomorrow morning...

working in another medium this week:

The printshop is closed until mid-September & there is a void left open. Filling it is easy right now:I am finally getting to view & print photos from a quick and unexpected trip to Istanbul & Paris. I have not had any ideas about how the images will impact beyond their printed photograph state...they sit on every surface as the past few days humidity seems to keep them from drying properly. While I like the look of a room covered in photos the cats love it too ,forcing me to think of books and frames.
Back in college I was required to take a darkroom class & did fall in love with the peace of the red lit room and the images, floating and developing in trays of fluid. It had a sense of mystery to it & it taught me a great deal about manipulation of negatives.I have always longed to one day get back to a darkroom ...but it is so expensive! (Like much art making is.)
I have never been much of a computer artist. Working on the computer simply did not entice me. I liked mixing ink colors, I like the smell & feel of materials and computer art seemed devoid of all that. But this week, as I began playing with the printer I got absorbed by the ability to crop and zoom on in to some barely visible detail.This manipulation and the slightly blurry & grainy image texture seems to perfectly suit some of the images and convey the feeling of the moment they were taken.
I have never done photo silkscreen but some of these altered images are just interesting enough to make me entertain the thought of taking the plunge in September...

Transparent magenta or opaque pink ?

Back to work! Summer semester has begun, the printshop is open and I am back adding layer of color upon layer of color in curiosity . The latest Valentines are shaping up nicely and one of my many tree house prints is also nearing completion. It would be fantastic to have everything done in the next 9 weeks! 

New art to ponder

There is nothing like some new art! As I spent Thursday evening wrapping up the spring 2009 semester at School of Visual Arts I was able to silkscreen several pivotal layers to 3 prints I have had in the works . It is wonderful to see something go from unfinished to almost finalized! & my love of color never ceases to amaze me. It feels like hitting a home run, bases loaded. Or drinking a perfect cup of steaming hot tea. Or smelling the scent nearby flowers, warmed by the sun. It is a "makes my heart sing" kind of thing. Certain things make life fascinating & worth living and color is definitely one of those things for me! I also love seeing work at the stage where it is going somewhere and my job is to figure out the next step. That is so inviting & curiosity provoking!