Blast from the past

Not much is on tv on the weekends, especially now that we are heading toward summer.  My father suggested some entertainment for the evening, a new HBO series called "The Time Traveler's Wife.  It was based on a best selling novel from a while ago that sounded familiar.  I read a lot of science fiction, so things involving time travel are familiar to me.  So I decided to give it a try.  The show began at the time expected and suddenly I knew why I was familiar with the title, even though I never read the book.  I know the author.

Actually I don't know her that well, but we did spend a week working side by side back in the 1990's, in Carbondale, IL  Audrey Niffenegger was part of big print exchange program back then.  A bunch of printmakers from the Chicago area, a group of print faculty from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, and a bunch of Mexican printmakers from a studio in Jalisco, Mexico (Guadalajara is there, if that helps any).  Audrey was an etcher from Chicago, I think attached to the Art Institute, as we had a bunch of people who were from there.  There were gatherings in Chicago, Carbondale, and Jalisco.  I didn't travel, but I was around for the Carbondale events, a print assistant as people like that were needed.  What I learned quickly was that the experienced printers from Chicago varied in knowledge-  those who had more "experience" (and more fame) claimed to know nothing, so they could make us do all the work for them.  (what they asked was often very simple stuff, things any professional would know, so assume it was just because they didn't want to work)  One of the Chicago people (Doug Houston)  knew a lot and showed these skills in silkscreen, and I learned much from working on his multi screen prints, often involving an image and computer color separation for each screen.  I used ideas from his set up when I had to do multi block color prints in my print workshops in Belmar.  Below is an example of one of those.

He later sent some tapes he made of interesting tunes, and I even ended up buying one of his conceptual books, a novel made from phrases found in numerous cowboy novels, all footnoted so that we knew they came from other cowboy novels (called "Vast"), an interesting piece.  Audrey was working on a series of etchings about bad things happening to hands, injuries and such.  I never kept up, and would not be surprised if she left the print world for the literary world once this book became a best seller, and the first movie was made, which was at least a decade ago.  This new series is also an adaptation of the same book. 

I had a bunch of prints that came from this combination of printmakers working in Carbondale, but they are all in storage right now.  Maybe later I will get hold of them and post an image here.  I doubt that I had any of Audrey's solo work, because I doubt she did anything while there.  There were some collaborative pieces done in that room, and maybe I have one of those. Someday.

As for tonight's show, it was strange, as happens when events occur in a non linear sequence, a problem with time travel stories.  For now I will continue to watch it.