More monoprints from the monoprint class

These guys were described as "thumb people" by my students when I made them last.  I was demonstrating basic monoprint process to some artists new to the medium, and then spent my downtown reworking and printing the ghost (the residue of ink left on the plate from the previous print) and printing on scraps of paper.  The shop I work in has been around for a few decades now, so the scraps of paper have built up considerably.

I have a million of these little demo prints from the monoprint class I teach every other Saturday and now I'm starting training to take over the etching class as well.  I have no idea what to do with them all. Suggestions?

Overhead Lighting

Painting from pictures of people when they look the ugliest--head jutting forward, stomach protruding, slouching beneach bright overhead lighting and naked in mid summer, their skin dappled with the uneven contact of sunlight. The light sends the shadows down their faces, dripping from the sockets of the eyes and out of the nose. I promised the subjects that no one would ever see these photos, and I flip the pictures facedown whenever someone visits.



I have not left Southern California at all this summer. Instead of travel, I've stayed inside during the day and worked until the sun sets and only then venturing outside to tend to my tiny herb garden and to swim slow laps in the pool filled with sidelong evening light.

Black Lipstick

Skin turns to parchment in the heat. Curling up in papery layers, pulling back from the flesh, and exposing it in warm pink stripes.



A friend, to explain a complaint, told me that poverty is not typified so much by a lack of money but by the attitude that everything is irreplaceable, and so the poor amass yogurt containers, mop handles with decaying sponge heads, dishes in boxes unused and ugly. His complaint was towards my own habit of hoarding, assigning more importance to the funds which might be spent replacing the ephemera in the future should I find a use for it once its gone than to the money spent on storing the ephemera in waiting for this phantom purpose. Still I can't shake the desire to hold onto anything which passes through my possession, and go out of my way to amass the detritus of other people as well. Yet I get a luxurious pleasure when I assign the shoe rack, which I know I could make into something else, to the Goodwill pile. It feels rich to value space.