A Day in the Life of a Studio

We had a busy day in the Studio today. I arrived in the early afternoon to find Molly's friend still working away on her edition. Molly arrived shortly afterwards to photograph some of her past work for a potential customer. I wished Molly a happy anniversary, and after a moment of confusion she started throwing out possible occasions I could be talking about, none of which were right. Today is the 8th anniversary of an event that made this Studio possible, the day she and I met.

The Southern Graphics Council decided to hold its annual conference at Rutgers in 2004. The SGC is an academic based group, so most of the attendees go at the expense of their colleges. I have no full time job (and thus no expense account), so I am not in the habit of going to these things. But with New Brunswick less than an hour away, the two biggest conference expenses (hotel and airfare) were eliminated from the equation, so I was on board. Even better, Tom Huck had put together a traveling group exhibition of the Outlaw Printmakers that would debut as one of the official conference events for the Saturday in New York City. So on that Saturday morning we all took a special charter train up to Penn Station, and had fun wandering the city until the scheduled opening at Big Cat Gallery in the afternoon. The show looked great, and we had a steady stream of visitors. At one point I overheard someone at the desk mention something about Manasquan, New Jersey, a relatively obscure topic in Manhattan, but a place I knew very well. I was using the basement of a family house in Manasquan as my studio space, and had plans to move into that house in a few weeks. The person talking to the gallery owner was Molly, and it turned out I wouldn't be the only printmaker living and working in town. In fact, once I completed my move, we'd be living only 7 blocks apart. It would be a couple of more years before the circumstances that led Molly to want to rent studio space, and it's certainly possible we would have met through some other local arts connection, but the establishing of Studio Arrabbiata in Ocean Grove can be traced to that day eight years ago in NYC.

After Molly finished her business there today she went on to her next stop of the day. Grace continued to work for a while until she finally finished her edition, some of which can be seen above. Besides being a printmaker, she's a chef in an Asbury Park restaurant, and took on the job of making a unique woodcut print menu for a special dinner event this week. The multi-block print will be given to diners as part of the meal. She cleaned up her stuff and left the prints there to dry overnight.

I had the space to myself for the rest of the afternoon, but I had things to do. One thing that I wanted to get done was to re-cover my bound copy of my Fourth of July series. Shortly after finishing the prints in 1994 I had made photocopies of the complete set and bound it into a book for convenience. Nothing fancy, a simple sewn and glued edge binding, and covers made from matboard and the whole thing covered with heavy colored drawing paper. I used metal type to print the name of the book on the cover. The structure has held up fine all these years, but the paper spine eventually wore out and started to break off. A few years ago I bought a piece of interesting paper at the former Pearl in Woodbridge, with plans to use it to make a new cover. Finally getting to that now. Since the binding was still strong, I decided to just glue the new paper over the old cover. Shown above is the old book and the new cover cut to the necessary pattern.

Above is the closed book with the new cover on it. Below is what it looks like open. I still need to redo the title page, but at least the book is in better condition when I bring it to my various classes over the next week or so.

At the same time as I was working on the book I was also working on another wood mounted copy of the house print. (I went back and forth, working on one as glue dried on parts of the other) Did this one a little different than the first. I cut a piece of white paper to the exact size of the house image and glued it down to the shaped pine plank.

After the white paper had dried, I spread a thin layer of glue over the whole board, carefully lined up the print over the white paper, and glued it down, using a bone folder to smooth it out.

After the print was completely dry I trimmed the extra paper and used sandpaper clean up the edges. The current state can be seen above and below. Eventually I'll put some kind of coating on it like I did for the first one.

I packed up and headed home, ending another day at the Studio. The day wasn't over yet- I drove around the county and bought more things (art, hardware) that I'll need for the upcoming workshops. Tomorrow I need to make a few things, and start gathering everything together in one place.