Three Girls

Three monoprints, in order of genesis, from the demo at LA Art Show.

The first is a straight reductive monotype, the second is a rework of the ghost and the third is a rework of the previous one.

LA Art Show

The Los Angeles Printmaking Society borrowed my wee press (Wernecke) because the LA Art Show had granted them one of the nonprofit booths at their massive and exuberantly pricey event.

I demo-ed collagraphy and monoprinting, after soaking my paper in the hotel bathtub and bringing it in a wetpack. Though I just did those two media, everything considered printmaking but lithography was presented throughout the show.



A couple of people wanted to buy the prints I made, and I impressed upon them my willingness to sell them those prints just as soon as I was allowed to do so given the rules of the event. Sadly, none of them emailed me later on, but the event was fun anyway, and was worth it to meet the bizarre people who think spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on art is a hobby. In fact, they are exactly the sort of hobbyists I'd like to meet more of.

Hotel Room

My birthday I spent in Los Angeles, sleeping in and then taking a nap.

4th annual

I found these in a book while doing a late night rearranging (see photos of books arranged by color). I don't know why they are there, or where they are from. What occasion did I memorialize and subsequently forget by pressing asters in a book about Chagall?



My birthday is on Thursday. I'm going to spend it at the Los Angeles Art Show, doing demonstrations on printmaking techniques. For all of my complaining, I think I secretly relish the ghetto-ization of the medium I work in. The mystery of it, the secret knowledge, the potential that no one knows much about how the image came to be, not because they just don't care to find out, but because such processes are concealed.

Anyhow, happy 4th annual 25th birthday to me. I'm going to give myself a set of taxidermy eyes.



PS:

Message me for address if you've met me in the flesh and you've a fairly good idea that I don't find your presence intolerable.

Blind Embossing

This is a detail from a larger print, but this part is my favorite from the whole. Also, I don't have any good pictures of both the ink and the blind embossing, so it's the embossing that you get.

Tents

The streetlamps hold up taut gauzy tents of incandescence at night in the thick fog that comes in off of the Pacific. I'm unaccustomed to the cold still, even this milk toothed California cold.

I heard a story about a troop of Boy Scouts years ago. I always resented the Boy Scouts, because the domesticated and diluted camping that the girls got. In the story, the troop arrived at the campsite late, and it was snowing heavily. Most of the boys were handicapped by the cold, chattering and shivering, incapable of erecting the tents and lighting the fires needed.



One boy, though, worked quickly and efficiently. He was the same size as most of the other boys, and wore similar clothing. An adult asked him how he was able to work so efficiently in the cold. "I accept the cold." he said.



One of my studio mate's grandfather was in "Lawrence of Arabia." That's the sort of information, one's relative being in one of the most famous and influential films ever made, that is commonplace and told offhand here. I'm re-watching it for the umpteenth time, all four plus hours of it including the overture, in segments.



There's a scene near the beginning of the film that I would mentally refer to all through my adolescence. Lawrence lights another soldier's cigarette, and then snuffs out the match with his fingers. The soldier becomes a background character and Lawrence speaks with a higher ranking official. The soldier toys with a match, and tries to replicate the action of snuffing it out with his fingers. "Ouch, it hurts!" he says. Lawrence says "You ignore the pain."



That's how I recalled the scene. But I was incorrect; all those years a false reel was projected against the inside of my skull. What he says is "The trick, Potter, is not minding that it hurts."

Incidentally, T. E. Lawrence did not smoke.

Sculpted Multiples

This was my final for my monotype class. They're monotype on fabric, original form pattern with white flannel, hand made ceramic faces and graphite.



They were an absurdly arduous undertaking and took me ages to finish, sewing them right up till the deadline. The little quilt they are on is sort of my epiphany for the semester--creating an environment for the pieces, and controlling their context more. I've been toying with the idea of merging the medium and techniques which I like most now, printing on fabric and then making volumes out of them, and the sculpted ceramic pieces I made a few years back. These fellows aren't the most seemless marriage, but I think I can do something exciting with this in the future.





There are two flat wall pieces which went along with this whole thing, but being less exciting I haven't gotten a good photo of them yet, but you can see them up in this photo of Ah Rong watching me set up:



Here's the professor of the class and I:



P.S. Check Drawerman out on Printeresting.