Three headed cat

I wanted to give all my friends a present for New Year's Day.  Originally, I though a family portrait (me, my partner, our cat) would be perfect, but the partner didn't want to be in it, and I thought it would send the wrong message if it was just me and the cat.  So it became just the cat, Mulcifer, which I think was the best to begin with anyway.

Two color relief print (a sintracut) with screenprint for the calendar bit.  Printed with Gamblin's Portland black on Rives BFK.

My inking glass slab is salvaged glass from discarded scanners.  The glass is thick and holds up well, plus it's for free.

I'm thinking about listing a couple of the leftover calendar's on my etsy.  Anyone interested?

Edited to add: If you want one, you can find it here.

Postcards for pals, part 3

Three new postcards sent to pals who live far afield from my home in Los Angeles. Linocut, screenprint, and watercolored postcard sent to Joey Behrens in Ohio:

Colored pencil and monoprint postcard sent to Paul Kaloper in South Dakota:

Linocut, monoprint, and chine colle with hand coloring sent to Miguel Aragan in Austin, TX:

RipRap, 34

Here it is, my first book cover job. Ah, so exhausting this was. I designed the imagery given the few themes that loosely unified the contributing artists and writers: that they were in California, and mostly attend(ed) California State University, Long Beach. From that, I riffed on the California flag for the bear imagery and kept the palate pretty muted, because hey, you don't hire me because you were expecting neons, do you? The anthology was made in an edition of 650, with 50 of those being part of the deluxe edition and printed on dark blue paper with gun metal grey foiling on the text. Even though it's not "deluxe" I think I prefer the regular colorway on the grey paper. If you're interested, I have some of the left over state proofs for sale here on my etsy.

And hey, look, here some unflattering pictures of me screenprinting this massive edition and all of the covers laid out to dry on my studio floor:

Speak and See

I attended the Southern Graphics Council International Conference in New Orleans last week, and my oh my, was it wonderful. The conference portfolios were pretty amazing, and I got to meet Katherine Polk, whose work I have long admired.

I made a special print to trade with other people for their artwork, and because I am insane, I printed an edition of 500 with four colors. I am in some ways trying to prepare myself for the book cover I'm working on right now. The book cover I will be printing in an edition of 750, but thankfully only two colors.

I made great use of the paper cutter I was gifted awhile ago.

Here's my table at the SGCI New Orleans conference. I traded this print for a few awesome prints by other people, and I gave some away, too. New Orleans was gorgeous and amazing and I wished that I could have stayed longer.

This was my second trip to NOLA. The first time I went was actually ten years ago, also to attend SGCI. I pretty much only ever travel for work, and I wonder if I should try actually going on a real vacation sometime.

Polystyrene

As part of the workshop I taught in Salt Lake last month (check the last blog entry), I researched what substrates could receive ink beyond just paper. Fabric is an obvious solution that I've explored extensively, but I also found that polystyrene plastic takes acrylic screen ink wonderfully

Here's the skeleton girl screenprint on polystyrene with colored pencil, cut and ready to be reduced in the oven:



An illustration of just how much the polystyrene reduces:



One of the issues I'm coming ot understand is that the colors intensify--the individual marks are moved closer together, so the color appears more concentrated after reducing the image.

I added drilled the holes into the pieces to joint the doll after reducing using a 1/16th drill bit, and added a jump ring and silver chain:



This guy reduced a little more, maybe because I left it in longer:



I used plastic adhesive to attach a pin backing, making the little acrobat a brooch:

Alternative Surfaces

^Bleach screenprint demo sample, made by me

I just got back from Salt Lake City. I was in town to teach a workshop at Saltgrass Press, Alternative Surfaces. It was a beginning level course, so I tried to keep most things pretty low-tech, and relied upon the unexpected nature of the materials: bleach, velvet, plastics.

^Screenprint on plastic by Stefanie Dykes, one of the founders of Saltgrass

^Monoprinted muslin form, made by a student

^Bleach stenciling on velvet

^Embossed and bleached velvet by student

^Embossed and bleached velvet by student

^Monoprinted muslin, a demo sample made by me

Danny

Xkot (pronounced "Scot")

My pal Xkot Toxsik in monoserigraphy! I haven't decided yet if I should title this "Xkot" or "Scot" but I think he'd be really annoyed if I used the "x"-free version.

JRC

Another monoserigraph, this one of my friend JRC.

Steph I & II

A portrait of my friend Stephanie Carrico in monoserigraphy.

I found out that I'd actually already done this portrait while moving out of my studio the week that I write this post(*sob!*):

And here it is while being worked on the screen:

David

This is David Bessent, an artist living on Phoenix, AZ:

I made this portrait in a last minute flurry of activity as I tried to squeeze the last bit of useage out of the printshop as I could. Here's the David print on the screen, and two others in the background:

Jenny

Here's a portrait of my friend, Jenny Cotterill. I found a cache of prints I never photographed from early this year while moving out of my studio, and this is one of them. I've been really enjoying playing with powdered graphite on the monoserigraphs. It holds the water differently than watercolor and can behave unpredictably.

Skelly tights.

I screenprinted feotal skeletons on navy blue tights. I love these so much that I'm already wearing them out, even though July is obviously not the time to be wearing tightly woven leg coverings.

From the MFA Show: "They've Already Left"

This piece involves literal printmaking the least of all the four in the show. There's black on black plastisol screenprinting of an image that most people can't see until it's pointed out. And then, beyond that, the pattern is repeated in each figure, but slightly modified, and the figures are dotted with clay elements that are reproductions of an original made from a mold. So, maybe I don't know if I care about strict boundaries around printmaking anymore the way I did when I was an undergrad and always so upset when people didn't understand or know about it.

From the MFA Show

I had my MFA show at the very end of the spring semester, during finals week, giving me as much time as possible to finish the work.  Because of all this extra time, the work was all new, finished in 2011, and fewer students looking for dinner came to the opening reception than usual.

The tall piece, seven feet tall, had to be assembled in the gallery because I don't have enough room in my workspace to put the components together.  Lighting, as usual, takes longer than I think it will and even then,

it's not quite satisfying.  The work in the show is screenprinted and reliefprinted, sewn, and welded steel.