Apogee

I'm in a show at DDR projects in Santa Ana with Rob Brown and Tyler Ferriera.

Apogee, Cont'd

At the opening reception for Apogee: Drunk guy stabs at one of my sculptures accusingly and says "WHO is THIS?!" gets a beer from the cooler, and stuffs a second beer in his pants. As he leaves, he pauses by the door and whispers "There's a second beer in my pants."



The three of us screenprint on t-shirts and paper in the back of the gallery for $10, but end up doing them all for free, too grateful to our friends for driving out to the event in the middle of finals to charge them.

Apogee

All the way over in Orange County, I have a show opening this Saturday. It's myself and two other artists. Sure, I could tell who who the two others are, but this blog is about me, me, me!

(Tyler Ferreira and Rob Brown, who are both, like myself, printmakers.)


It's in Art from the Hive in Santa Ana.
Pluses: open bar, next to the Amtrak Station for easy getaway, LIVE! screenprinting on stuff
Minuses: far away from other stuff that isn't Santa Ana, and maybe you just aren't awesome enough for this show.

Anyhow, should you be so inclined, it would be nice if you stopped by.

Angela

Portrait of my friend Angela H. Brown, done in monoserigraphy with powdered graphite and water. Currently in the show "21 Days" at Pravus Gallery in Phoenix, AZ.

This Weekend

(images aren't mine, but are from the showcards)
Tomorrow night in Phoenix, AZ, at Pravus Gallery:



I have a single piece in the show: a powdered graphite on paper portrait of my friend Angela Brown.

And then, on Saturday in Long Beach, CA at Phonebooth Gallery:



The piece in this show is a portrait of Filiz Osman.

Two more shows the following weekend which I will post about later.

I've reduced the prices on some of the old pieces in my shop, so stop by and have a look.

Litho

I've gotten vastly behind in my weekly printing posting duties, so I'm just going to pretend I'm not and resume now.

This is a lithograph drawn and printed for the print survey class's litho demo.

Everyone in the class drew on the stone for the lithography demo, and we used litho crayons, litho pencils, rubbing compound, stopping out with gum arabic, and spray paint. It was started with a drawing by Tyler Ferrera, who is the resident litho expert at CSULB and he was in charge of showing the class how to do all of the finicky stuff required by litho. I was largely in charge of retrieving stuff and tearing down paper.

High School

High school is different in big cities. The school is massive and an impenetrable fortress, with guards buzzing you in and out. I arrived early, but ended up late to the classroom because I couldn't figure out how to get inside of the building.

Anyhow, these lucky students have a printmaking class, and I was a guest artist earlier today who showed them monotypes with waterbased inks.





This made me realize that I need to expand my go-to images for demos. Frontal view portraits and skulls are well and good, but I've got way too many images of them from demos now. Trouble is, they're the easiest thing to draw upside down.



I really like the way watercolor pigment can shatter on the plate before printing. It's not something I've tried to play around with before, but I want to give it a try now:



The students were wonderful. I really expected a group of mostly apathetic adolescents, more like the way I recall art classes from high school, but they were engaged and interested, excited about the process and art in general. Teaching is pretty fun, but I always end up just exhausted from it.

Morsel

Walking to the bus stop after spending a day watching the gallery, a man stopped me on the street by tapping my shoulder. He looked into my eyes, pulling his brows together slightly. "You belong to me," he said. I've just returned to LA from the other side of the country.



I can see it there, and I know it's not intended to be mine. But even so you have so much, so very much, that surely you won't notice when I take only a little bit--wrapped in tissue paper, placed carefully in a breast pocket, or tucked into an used jewelry box in the decaying cushioning foam while your back is turned, your attention diverted. Just an imperceptible amount removed to store away and take with me.



And the next time I see you I will take just a bit, each time nothing more than a tiny fraction. You won't notice it's gone, but I'll get home and add it to a small pile accruing on a shelf, hidden behind the books. Perhaps sometimes you will give it to me even, offer it up or nod agreeably as I take a pinch. You won't know what you're doing, what you're really giving away slowly, bit by bit, is everything, not just that portion of it.



It will take a very long time, but eventually there will be a critical point and it will be mine instead of yours. You won't have noticed, but at some point, and not for a very long time, I will have more than you. I don't know if you will take it back or not; I don't know if you can.

"John"

"John"

In the "Liminal" print exchange showing at Kayo Gallery in Salt Lake City till April 13th.

Smith portrait

Portrait of a Joseph Smith from a potato. This is one of two prints I'll have in the Liminal show opening at Kayo on Friday in SLC. I cut my thumb while carving this, much to embarrassment, and my brother in law suggested it was blood atonement.



Print on washi with Akua ink, and then chine colle-ed onto Rives BFK.

I used my couch as a drying rack:



This is one of two prints I'll have in the Liminal show.

Business Men

I've got a bunch of fancy events this month, so I needed to make some fancy new business card. The card can be cut up to make a little man, with four varieties: devil in tighty whities, sad guy, cat, and a blank so you can draw a face yourself.

Around around

Still untitled, two color relief print, 22 by 30 inches, edition of 20.

Liminal

Winter tan

Slender young women with cultivated winter tans walk past me, their foreheads dotted with ashen grey targets, as they walk past and away from me their pants command or entreat me with single words emblazoned across their ass.



On Friday, I give a demonstration to the students on simple relief printing, over enunciating the Japanese words and mentally pen an autobiography in 100 words or less. Entire years compressed into two words, influential portions omitted for the sake of propriety. I attempt to resist my natural inclination to come off as a bit of a wet blanket milquetoast.

Two faced

Monoserigraphy with powdered graphite and blind embossing. I made this after printing a series with the face, once, and then found a scrap of paper in the print shop and made this with it.

To leave and never return

Monoserigraphy and blind embossing, variable edition.

Graduate Shmaduate

I was awarded the Southern Graphics Council Graduate Student Fellowhip. The award includes a solo show at the 2011 SGC in St. Louis, MO, $1,000 towards creating a body of work for the show, and giving a presentation at this year's SGC in Philadelphia banquet dinner. Yay!

I almost hyperventilated from excitement when I found out this morning.

Graduate Shmaduate

I was awarded the Southern Graphics Council Graduate Student Fellowhip. The award includes a solo show at the 2011 SGC in St. Louis, MO, $1,000 towards creating a body of work for the show, and giving a presentation at this year's SGC in Philadelphia banquet dinner. Yay!

I almost hyperventilated from excitement when I found out this morning.

Oil Stick Monotype

One of my old studio mates got rid of a box of old oilsticks. Before recommending to the students that they try to use them for monotype printing, I gave them a quick try. They work pretty good, but still don't give a very fine point or much control. I've still found it's easier to get much detail and depth with reduction (wiping away material with tools) that with the addition step.

Oil stick and kitikata chine colle on buff BFK:


I drew the skull without referrence, which explains if not excuses the misproportion.

Print Survey Class First Assignment Demo: Monotype

Friday, I did my first demo for the Print Survey class I'm assistant teaching. Luckily for me, last week I spent hours making monotypes in front of a crowd so I was prepared to do it for the 26 or so students in the class. Though the crowd at the LA Art Show was significantly more enthusiastic, I still think I did a pretty good job.

First print: flat of color, reductive monoprint using oil based inks with a stencil made from torn paper and talcum powder.


Using the ghost of ink from the first print, I made an additive monotype with oil based inks and chine colle for the shirt:


Roxanne Sexauer, the professor for the class, showed the students tracing and then printed the traced plate. Finally, I showed the class an additive monotype using hydrated watercolors (the kind which comes in a tube) and aquacrayons:

Using waterbased materials is useful if you can't spend a lot of time in the studio. Since you have to wait for the watercolor to dry before printing anyway, you can make the painting on the plate at home and then bring it to school to print it.

Then, we let the class go, and while I was cleaning up all the inks and rollers and such from doing the demos, I made this final print using the ghost from the previous plate. I think this one is the most successful of the day.

Monoprints from the Show

A selection of the better monotypes I made at the LA Art Show:


1. mono14, 2. mono15, 3. mono13, 4. mono12, 5. mono11, 6. mono10, 7. mono9, 8. mono8, 9. mono7, 10. mono1, 11. mono2, 12. mono3, 13. mono4, 14. mono5, 15. mono6

This one is my favorite:

I mostly used sample paper that I've collected from various product fairs from when the economy was better and companies gave away all that stuff for free. I've run out now, so I need to stop being such a cheapskate.

LA Art Show, 2010

I returned again to the LA Art Show with my wee press, and did LIVE! printing of monotypes at the Los Angeles Printmaking Society's booth.



My little didactic speech about the process I mastered, and repeated the same set of jokes over and over. Thankfully, the only people who heard their repetition were the poor people staffing the booth with me. I didn't bring any referrence material, so some of the monotypes I made are rather poor as I figured out the right pressure for the plate and paper and got used to painting in front of people, but perhaps it's good to get used to embarrassing myself in front of of a crowd of people. It's practice for teaching.



This was my second year in a row doing this at the LA Art Show. Perhaps next year I'll plan ahead better and see if we can sell the prints I make for charity or something.

The Irritant

I also made it a gif, but I think it looks better as a video.



My knees hurt from crouching on the ground. Next time I'm going to do something on a table top instead of on the floor. Making something fall slowly is surprisingly the most difficult part of this.

These fellows are from my old series "Invisible Coterie," and I'm selling some of them in my website.

Panties

I drew this for the Copper Palate Press Panty Exchange. Each artist does an image and then they screenprint them on a variety of panties.

I was going for a vagina dentata feel, because all of my other ideas I thought were too phallic.

The Panty Exchange takes place Friday, 15th, at Copper Palate Press in SLC from 6-10pm.

Spin

My first stop motion animation! Made using the little dolls I make. I want to make an animation using much bigger things that is longer, so this is my practice to see if I can actually make a stop motion at all.

I sell these dolls at Frosty Darling in Salt Lake City, if'n you're interested.

Carrot Persons in their room

I got into trouble for using this campus gallery (every department is so territorial and it serves me right for forgetting about that part of academia) but I'm still glad I did just because I'm finally happy with this piece after seeing it as I had intended it to be.

Bunching up in the armpits and waist

Time and distance push you ahead and apart. We stand in a circle holding varisized tumblers, waiting for someone else to say something after the first gulp. Children are larger, and you're less prepared for the ice and snow each time, each year owning fewer and fewer of the things which made the season bearable. Bundle up in inadequate Southern California coats, one on top of the other, bunching up in the armpits and waist.





The sidewalks are roughened, salted, and won't let you easily slide across them. The air is thick from the atmosphere above it pushing it down, bowling it into a mass, refusing to allow it to waft away. The poison gathers up, bunches itself, falls to the ground with the snow and re amasses. Conversations are awkward and littered with self corrections--cuss words unsaid, recollections of what particular detail is appropriate or not--and suddenly an entire year was spent doing nothing worth mentioning.



I've added some old pieces to my shop.