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.

Lou, cont'd

I like this sort of slow revealing of photos from a shoot. Now that I've all but stopped trying to work with photographers, the occasional unpaid shoot with a great photographer is more pleasant, and seeing the photos is a lovely unexpected surprise as opposed to an eventual end to waiting for my share of the TFP work, or seeing if the paying photographer will even deign to let me see them at all.

Anyhow, photo by Lou O'Bedlam:


Also:
Photo by Laura
Photo by Laura
Photo by Lou

Cover-alls over thermals I wear today, to venture to the unoccupied print shop to hoard the solitude.

Never alone

Look at him, so wee and perfect:



I'm absurdly proud of him. Truly, I've been volunteering information aboutt this print to students who I've never spoken to before.

He's an engraving, using a Resingrave block from McClain's, carved with a burin graver, and printed on Rives BFK on a Showcard letterpress.

Shop shop shop

Nobody else does it. Not ever.

Monoscreenprinting is a medium I see few to no people working in, but I always adore using it whenever I get to it. The specifics of is can be a bit tricky, so I'm not going to get into a technical description of it here, especially as I'm working up a proposal for IMPACT to do a demonstration of it there next year.

I mixed my own black in watercolor, using complementary colors mixed together instead o just using the blakc out of the tube. This way, the black reticulated into slightly varying shades and color separations as the paint settled and dried.

Here are my screens, painted and drying:


This one is just monoscreen, nothing else:



And then with these two I added flat matte areas for the clothes, trying to create that dissonance between soft painterly areas with hard edged solid areas:

Bedlam

I shot with Lou O'Bedlam a couple of weeks ago, and he posted one of the polaroids from the shoot up on his meticulously maintained blog.



Tom Jones is on "Morning Becomes Eclectic", the morning music show on 89.9 that I listen to sometimes. It's funny that I feel the need to clarify that I like Tom Jones sincerely, not ironically--that enjoyment could somehow be ironic.

It's still there, in my neck, bothersome, achey, and invisible on the surface. I was told that it doesn't need to be removed, at least for now, so instead it's there, slowly expanding and contracting like a heart which takes days to complete a beat. Sometimes I forget it for a while, and then it heaves a great lazy demanding child sigh, and I recall it again--rub up against it with my hand to remind me of the mystery there, the unknown nestled up against my spine.

Metro Rail

I don't live in Los Angeles. When I travel, I sometimes tell people I do, but then add the addendum "Well, I actually live just outside of Los Angeles in Long Beach." You can see their faces fall a little. They thought they had just met someone who had made it, who had arrived in the glittering city to the West, but then they found out they were just talking to another plebian like themselves. LA isn't far from me, 15 to 25 minutes in a car in good traffic, but I don't have a car which means it's 2 hours away on the Metro.

Ah, the Metro. Think of all the strange things you've witnessed on public transportation and then put them all together in one single trip. The homeless man who keeps dropping little plastic packages and then shooting across the train car to retrieve them and then breaking into deafening laughter; the smelly man sitting across from you who openly and ostentatiously picks his nose and then runs his fingers through his hair; the tall young man with the looks of an Adonis who regaling boards the car to hoots and whistles from the teenage girls, he nods at them only briefly before taking his seat like it's a throne.

J lives in LA, and I had yet to visit him up there. I have school every day, but Tuesday was Veteran's Day so I had no class. This seemed an ideal time to make the great trek up to the 7th and Flower stop, plus I was motivated by the opportunity to shoot with Lou O'Bedlam.



His friend Laura Taylor came too, and the above shot is by her. She, with a sleek digital camera, and he with a persnickety little double lensed antique punctuated by the rare use of a polaroid camera. It was fun, though I haven't really modeled for anyone in ages. Maybe I will be able to work with them again, given they're aowed love of hotel rooms and my easy access to one.



I returned home to Long Beach, again on the Metro, and finished printing the accursed thing you see above. I wanted to make something pretty for the print exchange Tyler and I set up to help fund a trip to Southern Graphics Council this March, because I wanted to make something that would sell. What I did not anticipate was that a great many people see someone drowning in that image. I did, however, finish another print on Tuesday that I am happy with which you can read about in the print blog. If you want one of these prints of a person swimming lazily/drowning, they are available for $20 and there are ten available for sale. Shoot me an email and we shall discuss.

Thinking about printing fills me with horror right now. I do not want to assist great hordes of undergrads on how to not destroy their awful poorly done prints today, and so I look forward with great anticipation to National Indiginous Persons Day, only because I can have the printshop all to myself.

Victory Potato!

Oh, Mr. McAbee, I've tried to live up to your high standard in the noble art of potato matrix printmaking. But over and over I have encountered defeat and failure. Today, though, today, Mr. McAbee, I have victory.



Three color potato reduction. I was shooting for five colors but the potatos just couldn't hold up past three.



I printed them in my studio with watercolors when I was sick to dying of helping undergrads not make total fools of themselves. I used watercolor left over from some mono-screenprinting when I mixed my own blacks, and linocutting gouges--printing them like stamps, with little lines down the sides of the potatos and onto the paper for registration.



I added a fourth color (or rather, fourth shade of grey) by rolling up a sheet of plexi and covering the faces with wax paper.

I made another reduction print this same week, a print of a swimmer, and done a bit more traditionally, using type-high lino, but I far prefer the potatos.

Winner

We fucking won.

I've never, in my entire life, voted for winner before. I'm told this is what cocaine feels like, only better.

Ape? APE!

APE=Alternative Press Expo

I'm going to be at APE this year.

Will you be at APE this year?

I'm at table 202.

2D vs. 3D

This print is in a suite of 8 that are apparently my break out hits of the semester. Three people want to buy this specific one, but I haven't told them the price I'm asking for it, and another would like one from the suite donated to a permanent collection. I think I'm going to shoot pretty damn high and just see who stays interested after that. Mind you, pretty damn high for me is probably rather low.

The prints in this suite are one BFK white with a first run with a simple collagraph, and then a few subsequent runs with inked plate.

Here's an example of an inked up plate prior to printing it:



The half of the suite that are 2-dimensional:


The half of the suite that are 3-dimensional (and my studio mate Tyler's legs):


I've been interested in subtle interplay in processing 2 dimensional aspects into 3 dimensional aspects without being overt about it. The whole intent of some of my prints lately is to get a viewer to understand how a 3-dimensional print is made without being didactic about process.

Well, my few and mostly disinterested readers, if I were to sell my prints online whigh venue would be better: Etsy, Cartfly, or Big Cartel?

Girl Twice

I will share a secret with you. The persons in the plate below are actually the same person twice.



Another collagraph, this one with fabric making up the background and my ubiquitous carborundum grit painting for the faces. I was uncertain about the fabric, it being so much taller than the rest of the plate. The embossing could have been overpowing, as could have the texture been. In the first inkings of the plate, the fabric was just way too obvious, but I think it worked out pretty well in the end.

The press at school is giant. I do big prints just because I can now, eating through paper with great rapidity, and seeing my savings dwindle in $2.50 increments with each print.



The image itself is 14 by 20, which only seems big because I'm a printmaker. Painters scoff at the miniaturized images in printmaking, the dictates of paper size and press ever present in the artist's considerations when working on a print.



I included this print in a portfolio for a grant application from the Los Angeles Printmaking Society, along with five other prints, three of which were three dimensional. So far, I only know that one of the graduate students in the program recieved the grant, but which one is still unknown. I hate hate hate waiting to find things out.

Glasses

A week and a half ago, I stayed up late making a portfolio case because my other case was in my professors office containing prints awaiting grading. I needed the case in order to apply for a scholarshop grant. I found out yesterday that I recieved one of the three scholarship awards from the Los Angeles Printmaking Society. I shall be buying so much fancy papers and great sheets of wood in only the finest grains with this money.



The LAPS requests a print, a flat one on paper, for their collection from awardees. I get to choose the print, and I've got till December to figure it out. In the meantime, I'm trying to find any images of mono-screenprints online. There are none!



Oh, and also, new glasses:

Mono vs. Mono

I'm feeling foul towards monotypes, but monoprints, my friends, those I adore.

A monotype is when you have no reproducible matrix. A monoprint is when only aspects of the print are unique to each impression, and a reproducible matrix is utilized in conjunction with it. For example, the David print below is a monoprint because the inking is unique to each impression, but the matrix is permanent and so reproducible. The prints of Cein below are monotypes, because they are paintings made directly onto smooth plexiglass in graphite etching ink and then printed.



But, they're still pretty good, at least for monotypes.

I also did two of Nate. I rather like his hat.

Print of the week

It's back up and running. I post a print every Friday, along with a little work history on it.

Print of the Week

I just spent way too long trying to track down the origins of the Lilith myth and just how apocryphal it is for my art history class, then I got sidetracked finding out that the story of Cain and Abel as I knew it, the one I was raised with, is not the traditional version at all. And then I read about Nephilim, which are not the offspring of my brother in law Nephi, but the angels who walked the earth and got it on with earth ladies. And now I haven't got any work done today at all and must make up for all of this tomorrow.

Men, print 1

Holy crap, I'm back!

I'm working slowly on a series of portraits of men I'm friends with. This is the first finished one, and it's a collagraph of David Bessent. There are loads more prints besides this one, but I'm going to try to stick to a schedule of posting a new print, and a pretty ok one at that, every Friday. I'm back in school as a graduate student at CSULB, so it really shouldn't be hard to keep up with.

Here's the plate:


and the history of inking before I arrived at the top image as the final print: