At Last, the Linocut Workshop

It was last May that Carol Bernard first spoke to me about her plans for the Creativity By the Sea art festival, which would arrange for local artists to teach workshops all around the town of Ocean Grove. Organization started in September, and by December I was committed to a date and time and began to prepare. Over the last few weeks I spent a lot of time shopping for and purchasing necessary materials for the workshop, only learning that I had a relatively full class last week. Yesterday afternoon, Molly and I gave the Studio its most thorough cleaning in quite a while. As for the class content, no special preparation needed. I've never taught linoleum printing before, and am not used to working with students who are more oriented toward crafts than fine art, but I know relief printmaking and figured the rest would follow.

There was an opening reception last night at one of the traditional inns in Ocean Grove and I decided to go. About 50 people were there, a mix of organizers, instructors, and students. I met two of the women who would be in my class, and chatted with some local arts people I know. There was still some uncertainty about the number of students in my class. It was five, with the possibility of a sixth, then it was down to four, then last night back up to five. Some of the planned classes were cancelled for lack of participants, so I felt good about getting close to my maximum.

I arrived at the Studio this morning around 9:30, and by 10:00 my students had arrived, coming from as close as Red Bank and as far as Connecticut (some having spent the night in town at local inns). The student who was on and off the list didn't show, but four is still a good number for a class like this. I started as I do with my woodcut workshops, showing prints from my collection. Due to the nature of the crowd, the emphasis was on prints that used relief and collage, as well as unusual materials, pulled mostly from my collection of group folios, as well as a few of my own. After that, I distributed paper, pencils, and markers, as well as the linoleum pieces (above), and let them start working on ideas.

They started with paper sketches, then drew their ideas onto the linoleum. Since they seemed ready to cut, I gave a quick demonstration of how to use the tools safely. I handed out a mix of standard linocut tools, some really cheaply made woodcut tools (never good enough to cut wood, but with some quick sharpening, acceptable for linoleum), and even a few of the better student woodcut tools I bought for my workshop in Belmar last fall. Two of my students just did one block. One did two blocks as separate prints, and one came up with a design to put two side by side to make a larger piece.

Two took a lunch break, the others worked straight through, and they were all ready to try printing by around 2 pm. I had brought a wide variety of papers (top), ranging from traditional western printmaking paper, to a variety of decorative traditional papers, to inexpensive scrapbooking paper in a variety of patterns. Some printed with black, some mixed specific colors, like the special blue that Susi used on one of her blocks. I showed them how to roll out the ink to the right consistency and ink their blocks.

Above, Jodi hand prints her block onto Lama Li paper using a custom mixed dark green ink. Below, she lifts the resulting print off the block.

Eileen (above) dabs some ink on a finished print to cover the hairline gap between two printed blocks.

By the end of the day, everyone had finished at least one print and had demonstrated the ability to do the process from start to finish. Some were done on standard white paper, like the above print from Vicky (she plans to experiment with adding color later). Most of the prints were pulled on various color paper (below- click to enlarge), resulting in a variety of effects.

We finished more or less on time (everyone pitching in to help with the clean up of the ink and tools), but three of the participants stuck around afterwards long enough for me to give them a tour of our unique historic building. All four seemed to really enjoy the whole workshop, and indicate a plan to continue working with their cut blocks, as well as maybe making some new ones. Overall I think it was very successful, and would be happy to do another such workshop for the festival next year (planned as of now).