Back in Business

It's been about 2 weeks since the last time that I posted here. A good bit of that was because of Hurricane Irene. The day before it arrived I stopped by the Studio to make sure that anything of value that could be damaged by flood waters was wrapped and off the ground. And because of ongoing pockets of power outages around the county, I minimized excursions for the following week. Then there is my ongoing move, and some school related activities. I did stop by a few days ago and found no evidence of storm damage, so that was a relief.

Over the weekend I learned that I had 3 of my boardwalk prints accepted into a show in Asbury. (I'll post details in the near future) I currently have two edition copies of all 7 completed prints, some of them in frames. One of the accepted pieces is my night scene, which is in a frame, but that framed print is out as part of a traveling show and won't be back until after this Asbury show has started. I do have an available mat and frame for the second copy of the piece, but that would leave me without a completed copy in my hands, should I need it for something. The solution is to print a third edition proof. If it was a black and white piece I wouldn't worry about it, but the only way to get the colors exactly right on this is to copy them from an existing one, so I need to take care of that in the next 2 weeks before I deliver the piece.

I began that process today. Actually I spent the first hour putting away all the stuff I had carefully packed before the storm, so I could have my work table available to work on. Spent the second hour inking and proofing the block on the standard Okawara paper used for these editions. It seems that some of the special tools that I had taken home before Irene are still at home, including the thing that I use to rub my blocks, but I did have the old wooden spoon that I use for class demonstrations, and it did the job just fine. The above photo shows the process half done- rubbed with the spoon on the right side, and just a bit of initial hand pressure on the left. Just a few small spots required re-inking, and then I had a nice clean print to hang up to dry. By this weekend it should be dry enough to color, which will keep me on schedule for the gallery delivery.

In the next few days I am hoping to find time to pull a new full size proof of my smoking block on white paper before next week's critique group, but that could be a 3 hour job, so it will have to wait a little bit. Meanwhile, the shortened framed copy is currently on display at the reopened Boatworks through September 23rd, part of the Art on the Edge show.