Back Up Plan
This coming Sunday I will be doing demonstrations of block cutting in Belmar as part of their annual Art Walk. I don't usually participate in this event, but it occurred to me that this could be a useful way of promoting my woodcut class, which is scheduled to run at the Belmar Arts Council a few weeks after that. That means I have to come up with a block to cut, and when I need a sample block and don't have something already in progress, I often start up a new saint.
I've done about 75 or so of these saints. My source for saint stories, Butler's Lives of the Saints, has thousands of options. My first plan was to consult my original notes from mid 90's, when I read the whole thing. I used those notes in the run up to my MFA show, cutting 66 blocks, 61 of which made the show. Most of the ones done since were done by looking up specific requested dates and going from there. A few have come from looking up a specific saint by name. There have been a few occasions when I needed an idea and just pulled out the notebook and looked for an interesting story that didn't get done in that original batch. I last saw this notebook early in the year (it had notes useful for one of my current college classes), but despite an extensive search earlier this week, it hasn't turned up. I next considered just reworking an old print. Though I still have at least one copy of all the prints, all but 29 of the original blocks were destroyed by Sandy. If someone really wants to buy a print that I don't have the block for, it would probably be worth it to just recut the block. Working from the original print, it wouldn't take long to redraw the composition and then cut the new block. Last week on a day in the Studio I catalogued which ones survived, and I suppose I could have picked a saint that had sold in the past but is no longer available to reprint.
In the end I came up with a different plan. The day I'm going to be doing this demonstration is April 28th, so why not that day? Maybe someone sees the demo and realizes how I can work from a request for a specific day and gets the urge to commission one. I checked my master list and the day hasn't been done yet. I went through my copy of the April volume and found suitable idea. I'll save that story for when I start the drawing, but today I dealt with the necessary step of preparing the block. Went up to the Studio, cut a nice piece of lauan, and gave it a layer of wood filler. (didn't have the camera with me today, but it looked pretty much like this) Turned out all my sand paper was in the bag of supplies back at my apartment, so I'll deal with that tomorrow.
I've done about 75 or so of these saints. My source for saint stories, Butler's Lives of the Saints, has thousands of options. My first plan was to consult my original notes from mid 90's, when I read the whole thing. I used those notes in the run up to my MFA show, cutting 66 blocks, 61 of which made the show. Most of the ones done since were done by looking up specific requested dates and going from there. A few have come from looking up a specific saint by name. There have been a few occasions when I needed an idea and just pulled out the notebook and looked for an interesting story that didn't get done in that original batch. I last saw this notebook early in the year (it had notes useful for one of my current college classes), but despite an extensive search earlier this week, it hasn't turned up. I next considered just reworking an old print. Though I still have at least one copy of all the prints, all but 29 of the original blocks were destroyed by Sandy. If someone really wants to buy a print that I don't have the block for, it would probably be worth it to just recut the block. Working from the original print, it wouldn't take long to redraw the composition and then cut the new block. Last week on a day in the Studio I catalogued which ones survived, and I suppose I could have picked a saint that had sold in the past but is no longer available to reprint.
In the end I came up with a different plan. The day I'm going to be doing this demonstration is April 28th, so why not that day? Maybe someone sees the demo and realizes how I can work from a request for a specific day and gets the urge to commission one. I checked my master list and the day hasn't been done yet. I went through my copy of the April volume and found suitable idea. I'll save that story for when I start the drawing, but today I dealt with the necessary step of preparing the block. Went up to the Studio, cut a nice piece of lauan, and gave it a layer of wood filler. (didn't have the camera with me today, but it looked pretty much like this) Turned out all my sand paper was in the bag of supplies back at my apartment, so I'll deal with that tomorrow.
posted by arrabbiata at 10:58 PM
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