Studio Arrabbiata

House Project part 3

2012-01-28T20:58:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I had some time to kill between classes. Lucky for me I had stashed my new house block in my bookbag. Having thought about it for a few days, I decided to go ahead and put in railings around all stairs and walkways. As much as I didn't like that it would obscure some of the piled up stuff in my house, I decided that having no railings or bannisters might cause some viewers to concentrate more on the extremely dangerous nature of the house and less on the intended theme. As a bonus, I think the spindles hide a few of the flaws in the architectural drawing. The results of those efforts can be seen above.

Today I had time to go into the Studio and work on it some more. I made a few adjustments to the perspective, based on further observations from my second floor perch. Most of the time was spent sketching potential clutter for the house- first on paper, then on the block. At the end of the day's session, I had done what is shown above, all of it things I have moved from one house to another, or disposed of through trash or the recycling center. On the far side of the main staircase I put in an open closet revealing hanging clothes. Next to it, a frame on the wall, to filled with some artwork later. On the near side of the staircase, a filing cabinet with a drawer bursting with papers. Next to the cabinet, a desk with a somewhat out of date computer. Up on the first landing, some generic cardboard boxes. There's a good chance that I will have to redraw a lot of the individual objects, but I think the idea works. Next time I'll consider what's seen through the door on the lower level, and start adding stuff at the top level.

House Project part 2

2012-01-25T19:17:00.001-08:00

Still working my way through the first week of the spring semester, but all the classes are locked in and all my copies are made, so I could afford to devote some time to art today. It's been almost two weeks since I surfaced my house shaped block, and though I hadn't touched it since, I've given a lot of thought to the project.

Other than the general theme of "house", artists are allowed to do anything they want with these blocks. The promotional material did mention the current housing crisis as an optional topic, but the possibility of a lot of people doing that is a good reason to do something else. So I decided to go with an idea that hits closer to home, literally.

Over the past year, every member of my immediate family has been involved in moving, one way or another. My brother got married and moved in with his new wife. I moved into a new apartment, and my parents are moving down into the area as part of their retirement. One thing we've all had in common is finding that we have way too much stuff to fit into our respective new homes. Downsizing has been the buzzword in the family. Through a combination of garage sales, charity donations, recycling, curbside abandonments (intact furniture or significant metal objects left out overnight will usually be snatched up by somebody), and garbage pick-up, we are all making progress. Based on numerous cable tv shows about hoarders, pickers, pawnshops, and storage unit speculators, having too much stuff is an American epidemic.

So my piece is going to be an interior view of a house with too much stuff, along with efforts to empty it. The stuff will be the kinds of things I've spent the past 6 months moving from one place to another. Lots of boxes, furniture, clothes, books, papers, etc. I expect to have a few figures in there as well, generic humans hauling items around.

My first concept was to divide the block into 3 layers, a cross section of a house with two floors and an attic level, connected by stairs. The photo above shows an early state, the paper strips representing possible locations for stairways. However, I decided that it wouldn't work at this scale- each floor would give me 4 inches or less of vertical space, and the accumulated stuff would have to be too small to recognizable. Plus the simple box like structure was kind of dull.

I still liked the idea of multiple levels, and a connecting stairway, so I took a walk upstairs to the second floor of the Studio building. The late 19th century school building has some pretty cool architecture, including this stairway that connects the first and second floor. The view above is looking down over the 2nd floor railing. I brought my block up there and did some very rough sketching. Back downstairs in the Studio I cleaned it up and did the detailed sketch seen below.

The orignal staircase has a wide central stairway, and at a landing near the top splits into steps to the right and left continuing to the second floor. I changed the stairs to the right to a large landing, and indicated some possible first floor architecture. The perspective needs a lot of adjusting- I don't mind if it's a bit skewed, but I'd like it be more consistent. Logically I should put in the various railings and banisters, though it would obscure some of the spaces where I plan to show stacked up stuff. But I think the general composition is good, so my plan right now is to fix the perspective and then go from there.

Warming Up

2012-01-18T20:14:00.000-08:00

Been busy getting ready for the spring semester, so I haven't had a chance to work on any ongoing projects this week, but I figured I could spare a few evening hours to draw. Just a few Wednesdays ago I mentioned that the weather had turned cold enough that the model asked us to raise the heat in the room. So we were a little surprised tonight when well into the first pose, she asked if we could lower the heat. Sure, those spotlights can be warm, but this is the middle of January. If she could take it, we could, and the thermostat was nudged down a little.

My first drawing of the night is best left unseen. The second one, a 30 minute drawing shown above, was definitely the better of the two. Sometimes I do better when I have to work more quickly, or maybe I finally got warmed up myself.

House Project

2012-01-14T20:25:00.001-08:00

Although I've spent some time over the past few weeks preparing to start a new boardwalk print, a different piece will likely be the next thing that I finish. The Belmar Arts Council is organizing a fundraising exhibition called Gimme Shelter, which will benefit the Affordable Housing Alliance and the BAC Housing Help Project. Participating artists get a 5 sided piece of lauan plywood, to be used in the creation of an artwork that addresses the theme of home in some way. Most will probably paint on it (the prospectus repeatedly refers to it as a "canvas"), but it can be used in a sculpture, and the website shows an example (from a similar exhibition elsewhere) of it used as a woodcut block. All the details about the project can be found over on the BAC website.

Since I have the experience of carving several hundred pieces of lauan, it's a pretty sure bet that I'll be doing that again here. What remains to be determined is whether I will be exhibiting the carved block or a print pulled from that block. I'm leaning toward the former, which would probably fit in better among the many painted versions that will likely fill the gallery. I will take prints off the block no matter what and I'll make the final decision after I see both.

I'm still working on the idea for my piece, but meanwhile I got the first step out of the way. It was already a relatively smooth piece of wood, but I decided to go ahead and do my usual surfacing with wood filler. Above and below are before and after, which I admit don't look too different from each other. But it will be easier to draw on when I'm ready to start drawing.

Benno In Belmar

2012-01-12T22:41:00.001-08:00

Went to the Belmar Arts Council twice today. On the day I dropped off my piece I had signed up for a gallery sitting shift for this afternoon. But when I got there I was told that the sign up sheets had been prepared in error, and that the show wouldn't be ready until tonight's Salon event, so I would not be needed.

Came back after dinner for the Salon event, where all the participating artists are invited to present their work to the assembled crowd, talking about what, why, and how, and taking questions. My piece (shown above) was hanging by the door and assigned #1 on the list, and it was decided that I'd go first. I gave people the quick version of the idea behind the whole series, and read the piece of the paragraph from Benno's entry in Butler's that inspired the print. We had 38 works in the front room, and 26 of the artists showed up to participate. Limiting each to 2 to 3 minutes (much shorter than our Studio critiques, but many more people), we got out at a reasonable hour.

An Important Lesson

2012-01-12T21:01:00.000-08:00

I learned from my father yesterday of the passing of a former neighbor of ours, Lee White. The viewing was today, in a funeral home that I used to walk past on my way home from school. I knew Mr White from his heavy involvement in Boy Scouts, where he was active with local troops, the council, and with the whole national organization. It seemed like he knew everything that was taught in scouting- once he taught me the whole morse code alphabet in about 15 minutes. (I've forgotten most of it since) His regular job was his business designing displays for advertising and exhibits, which were constructed from corrugated cardboard. The two came together (for me) in 1985 when I was on his staff for the National Scout Jamboree at Fort AP Hill in Virginia, just a few months before I'd be moving to the state to begin college. Along with some other scout leaders and some older scouts from around the country, our job was to build and run a recreation area for our section of the Jamboree grounds, and he shared some of his expertise with corrugated cardboard so we could construct signs and decorations.

Ten years later I'm finishing my third college degree and starting to get work into exhibitions in places far enough away that I need to ship them. Some might just get a generic box, throw in the art along with a pile of styrofoam peanuts and send it on its way, but not me. Using my memories of corrugated construction, I'd get a flat sheet of cardboard, cut it and score it, fold and secure it with paper tape (part of my kit since etching classes) and have myself a strong, safe, and reusable container custom designed to hold my framed artwork. (by the way, gallery directors hate styrofoam peanuts- static makes them stick to everything and you can never repack the artwork for return shipping) Some of my boxes have made multiple trips across country, and I've never had a piece damaged yet. Doesn't have to be a flat sheet- I can take any large cardboard box (love appliance shipping containers- really strong cardboard) and recut it to whatever dimensions I need it to be. A few years ago I had a major show in Iowa and spent the better part of a month making shipping boxes. I don't love making boxes- I'd rather be drawing or cutting- but I'm glad that I can do it when I need one. And I owe that skill with cardboard to Lee White.

New Year, New Critique

2012-01-09T21:59:00.000-08:00

After a planned one week delay to move out of the shadow of New Year's Day, tonight we held the first critique group of 2012. Twelve artists showed work, and no one cried. I guess that's why Bravo doesn't give us a television show of our own.

Most of the work can be seen on the main wall above. At ground level from left to right: a watercolor from Harriet, a graphite drawing in progress from Katie, an oil painting from Tim, prints and printing plates from Mary, a mixed media sculpture by Edy, and a painting from TJ. On the wall above those: mixed media pieces from Molly, a completed graphite drawing from Katie, a small watercolor from Molly, and my just completed pencil sketch. (click the photo to enlarge).

A little later we looked at two more, a digitally derived image from Vince (above, far left) and Sheilagh's diptych (above right), now reconfigured with hinges to form a triptych when opened. Below is the opened piece, so we could see the work in progress.

After that we moved to our annex (the cafeteria) to see the last two artists. Lisa's construction (above) this time was intended to be a cereal bowl, though she was admitted the results looked more like a basket.

Jane brought two pieces of alabaster, leftovers from a class she teaches. Both are in progress. She also brought in the pastel drawing below, part of a never ending series of family portraits.

When it was my turn, I passed around the little linoleum print I made for the upcoming workshop (my most recently completed artwork) and presented my very preliminary version of the next boardwalk print, executed moments earlier. It got some interesting reactions. This may have been the first time I showed such an early state of one of these boardwalk prints, and so some wondered how the composition would be affected by the eventual dividing lines of the diptych format. I explained that I would work out what would be in each half at a later stage in the process. There was a request for a more prominent position for the former Howard Johnson's (triangular windows/roof near the center), as an iconic Asbury location. I'd think that Convention Hall would have that effect, but I'll consider the suggestion.

In a carefully worded suggestion, Molly wondered if any of the people in the print would be gay. Not a completely random question- over the past few decades Asbury Park has become as known for its large gay community as much as anything else (something that I'm sure many residents prefer to other associations like drugs, gangs, economic ruin and decay, political corruption, etc), which figures heavily in local arts and businesses. Relatively recent New Jerseyan Molly is most familiar with this version of Asbury, but I guess my associations are older, more Springsteen related- his time and song subjects, and it hadn't even occurred to me. I'm not sure how it would even be relevant, as I expect that most of the figures will be small and crowded and relatively indistinguishable. For what it's worth, that photo show I saw in Asbury a few days ago was full of images from the boardwalk, but mostly empty buildings lacking people of any particular orientation. I'm still a long ways away from worrying about any individual figures in the print, so I can consider the matter later.

Boardwalks in Winter

2012-01-09T20:23:00.001-08:00

Off from work today, but had some things to do related to tonight's critique. One was to go to Point Pleasant. I needed to get something to contribute to the night's refreshments (not going to be up by my favorite cheese factory for a few more weeks) and figured I'd find something suitable at Joe Leone's, and I did. But on my way there I diverted down to Jenkinson's boardwalk to see if I could get some reference photos of a few rides. I didn't have great hopes, as many of the kiddie rides are the type that can set up at fairs and I figured they might put them in storage for the winter. Indeed there wasn't much there, and in fact there was a crew that appeared to be replacing major stretches of boards in the middle of the ride area. A few larger structures remained, like a small roller coaster, and the rotating ride above (a composite photo made from shots though the fence.)

I can always seek out reference photos on the web, but I prefer to take my own or sketch from life when possible, so for that reason it makes more sense to start the daytime scene now and deal with the rides in the spring. Wanting to have something to show tonight, just before leaving for the Studio, I pulled up some of my weekend photos from Asbury on my computer, and did some very simple sketches of general architecture in a sketchbook. Molly was already at the Studio when I arrived, and as others walked in I chose one of the views from my sketchbook, and in about 5 minutes did the sketch below at the full 15" x 20" size of the boardwalk prints, throwing in a few sample figures.

None of this is final, and it's not to scale or in proportion. I just wanted a basic visual as I discussed the idea with the critique group. Normally I'd wait until I'm further along in the process to post something here, but since I showed it to the public tonight, I'll post it. For the reaction, see the post about the critique.

A Change of Season

2012-01-07T21:37:00.000-08:00

Just a few days ago, we had single digit wind chills around here, and I found myself shivering on short walks from my car to whatever destination I was heading to. Today, we got back up into the 60's, a situation that must be taken advantage of when it comes around in early January.

Took care of many unrelated errands, but got in some art stuff, too. In the morning I framed a piece to submit for the upcoming annual BAC Members' Salon. Despite years of effort, the BAC has never been able to get the same kind of popularity for its critique group as the one that meets in my Studio. However, allow people to put the work up on the walls for a few weeks of exhibition, and they'll come out in droves. By the end of today's intake, about 3 dozen artists had brought work in. It will get hung early in the week and on Thursday night we'll have the Salon- every artist who shows up will have the opportunity to present their work and take comments and questions- basically a critique group. I don't want to waste a major work in a minor show like this, so I decided to submit the St Benno print that I just finished last month. I could have swapped it out with another saint in a frame, but I decided to borrow a slightly larger frame, but with a window mat cut to similar proportions. After three other stops, I dropped by the Boatworks and dropped it off. Didn't bother to take photos of the framing process, but I'll post photos of the framed piece when I shoot the show next week.

From there I drove to the Studio. I can't finish my ongoing boardwalk print series if I don't get started on the remaining prints, so today was devoted to getting something going. I brought some of my notebooks and collected reference clippings of the past few years, to see what developed. Of the planned themes from my original list, the next likely one will either be a general daytime scene or boardwalk amusement rides. For the latter I will need to do a bit of on site research, but to get going on the first I just need a good background setting to build around. Although I have generally avoided using real locations for most of these prints so far, I have considered using some of Asbury Park's iconic structures as background. On one hand, there are people who are predisposed to buying artwork that features Asbury's famous structures, and plenty of local places that like to feature it. On the other hand, Asbury's boardwalk area buildings are pretty much an art cliche around here, and I'd be adding my print to that huge pile. But while I considered that, I figured I may as well use the beautiful day to collect some references. So I walked up Main to the ocean, turned north, and walked through the remains of the Casino and onto Asbury's boardwalk. I continued walking until I reached Convention Hall, at the northern end of the built up boardwalk area. I hiked out over the sand to down near the water's edge and took some shots looking back toward the boardwalk, such as the one above.

From there I walked back through Asbury toward Main, alongside the lake. I detoured to Cookman Ave to check out a gallery opening. A photography gallery has moved to a new larger space in its same building, and tonight was the debut. Between the permanent and portable walls, there were maybe a couple of hundred photos on display...and the majority of them were photos of Asbury's landmarks in various states of decay. On the first Saturday of the month, Asbury galleries will often have coordinated receptions, but after checking out a few other spaces on the street I found nothing new, so I walked back to my car in Ocean Grove and drove home.

Time to Turn Up the Heat

2012-01-04T21:15:00.001-08:00

Around this time last year we were still digging ourselves out from the biggest snow storm in recent memory, and with the temperatures rarely getting above freezing for weeks at a time, that snow stayed around for quite a while. By comparison, this year the weather has been pretty mild. Instead of looking at 4 foot high piles of snow and ice, several of the days in the holiday week reached into the 50's. The months that closed out the year were pretty much the same way. However, some true winter weather showed up the past few days. No precipitation, but some bitter cold temperatures. It was only recently that one of the models at drawing night had requested that we turn on the air conditioner; the hot lights shining on her more than made up for her lack of clothing. Not tonight. I had turned the heat up before we started tonight, but halfway through the evening she requested that we raise it again. For the moment anyway, winter is here.

Our model was in one pose for the whole night, but I can't work two hours on a single charcoal drawing, so I drew her from two different sides of the room. For the first drawing I had a profile view with her face mostly in shadow. During the break she agreed that it looked more like her than most of my drawings of her, though (we did not discuss) I felt that the body proportions could have been better. For the second drawing I set up on the other side of the room, right next to a freestanding spotlight that had her completely lit from my point of view. Hardly any of the shadows that are normally a big part of my portrait pieces. The only true darks were all around her- the unlit purple and black stage area behind her. As a result, surface modeling (see above) is more subtle than my usual drawing style (though still a little darker than in reality). Never got the model's opinion on this 45 minute drawing, and the face doesn't look particularly like hers, but my fellow artists really liked the 2nd drawing, so I decided to post this one tonight.

The Year That Was 2011

2011-12-31T20:23:00.000-08:00

As is my custom, my end of the year wrap up of what I did related to art. For full details you can look back through the last 12 months of this blog, or read this post for the highlights.

Prints- Like many recent years, I didn't finish as many new prints as I would have liked. Only one boardwalk print was completed, but I did devote a bit of time to finally finishing the smoking figure (my largest ever single panel woodcut), a piece that I had started thinking about 5 years ago, and finally began in 2010. My only other significant print was a new saint print, which didn't take long in itself, but sessions were spread out over months. There was also a little (linoleum) demo piece, and this year's Christmas card.

Shows- Another year without a solo show, something I really need to work on. However, most of the year I had something up somewhere at any given time. Most of these were in spaces I am very familiar with (Belmar Arts Council, PCNJ), but for the first time I had work at New Jersey City University, at Rutgers- Newark, and in an international show in Estonia. Another new venue was in downtown Somerville, where I was chosen by PCNJ to represent the medium of woodcut, with 5 prints on display as part of Arts on Division. All together, I can remember 14 prints in 8 group shows, with two of those shows traveling to a second venue.

Publicity- Not much this year. I did get extensively quoted in an article about a project at the BAC, but it wasn't about my art. If the analytics that come with this blog are accurate, I've had over 8000 page views in 2011, for whatever that's worth.

Awards- The only one that I remember right now was an honorable mention for my print in the 7th Annual Jersey Shore Juried Art Show at the BAC.

Firsts- The show in Estonia was the first appearance of my art in a show in Eastern Europe. Over the summer I was involved in the creation of a freestanding mud mural. Last I checked (a few weeks ago), it was still in remarkably good shape, despite being exposed to an earthquake, a hurricane, a few other major storms, and the many coastal winds.

Miscellaneous- Had a day of fun in New York City, meeting up with some grad school friends in town for CAA. I did an artist presentation and demo in Westfield and a four day workshop at the BAC. I contributed a little to a more traditional painted mural in Belmar. I might have done more, but the organizer insisted on working early in the morning (protection against the 100 degree days at the time) and I'm not so into that.

Studio- Nothing new, but it's still a great place to work, when I can find time to get there. I did an emergency pack up this summer to secure my art in advance of Irene, but the 19th century building held tough against the hurricane. The critique group continues to remain popular with all who attend- old regulars and new visitors.

Next Year- Have plans for another workshop (this one being taught out of the Studio) and I've been offered another artist demo opportunity. Don't know about any shows yet, but I'm sure there will be some. I plan to get back to my Boardwalk series in January, and maybe even finish it before the end of 2012. Details will be posted on the blog as they happen.

Christmas Time is Here Again

2011-12-29T22:00:00.001-08:00

Christmas isn't over until I get my cards out to all those who earned them this year. Last night I had time to get back to this effort. I had all the cards at home, along with my watercolors, and taking care of a relatively mechanical task like coloring a large run of cards is easily done while watching late night tv. Above is how they looked after the first of many colors. Below is a later stage, with four colors done. I added a couple of more colors after this, before going to bed.

In the morning I added the last few colors, and after taking care of a few important errands, found my way to the Studio. I had brought my paper cutter home in case I ended up doing all this at home, but to this point had only completed my prototype on Christmas morning. As part of my ongoing effort to clean up my apartment, I figured I'd bring equipment back there and use my big work table to finish the job. The equipment and tools stayed there, and the cards came home with me.

Now I have 16 finished cards available to send out. The most time consuming part, actually writing out all the cards, is yet to come. I remain hopeful that I'll have a bunch out before New Year's Day, which is still way ahead of last year's blizzard influenced timetable.

Creativity By-The-Sea is Ready to Go

2011-12-26T19:29:00.000-08:00

Got word this evening that the website for the upcoming Creativity-By-The-Sea festival is up and running. The festival will open with an evening reception for teachers and attendees at one of the vintage hotels in Ocean Grove on Friday, March 23rd. Classes will be taught as either half day or full day on both Saturday the 24th and Sunday the 25th, all within Ocean Grove. Options include painting, drawing, jewelry, fabrics, assemblage, soldering, fused glass, quilting, photography, even baking, and of course, printmaking. Registration hasn't begun yet, but you can read all the details about the classes, and there's a list of 8 quaint hotels in town that will be offering special and/or off-season rates for the weekend for those coming in from far away. Go to the Creativity-By-The-Sea website for more details.

Merry Christmas from Studio Arrabbiata

2011-12-25T17:09:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I printed cards until I ran out of paper, which was right about when my last Christmas cd ended. When all was done, I had 17 good proofs. One was handed out today, and I'll try to get the rest colored over the next week, and the first batch out before the end of the month. If you don't recognize the inspiration for this year's card, I'll tell the story in a few days.

There Can Be Only One, One More Time

2011-12-23T21:11:00.000-08:00

My thoughts on the final episode of Bravo's Work of Art Season 2, including spoilers.

As with last season, the game changes once we get down to the final 3. Each is given a budget and 3 months at their home studio to make whatever they want for a small solo exhibition. We catch up to them 2 months into the process, tagging along with Simon. He starts by visiting Young in Chicago, meeting his family, and seeing the new work. The big piece is a four posted platform, rooted in Korean tradition. That, and the rest of the show is on the topic of his father and his death, referenced in his street art piece. He has photographs and plans to do something with his father's shirts. Simon points out that some of it is kind of boring. The other two artists are New York based. Kymia has been busy in Manhattan, creating some large and detailed mixed media drawings, as well as some figural sculptures. Simon loves one drawing, but declares on of the sculptures to be "horrendous", something he can't imagine anyone wanting to own. (his take on art often seems colored by his job as an art auctioneer, so that he considers salability more than the pure art critic or the guest artists on the judging panels do in their evaluations) Rather than the 15 works she shows in progress, Simon recommends keeping the one drawing and making 14 new works. Sara is over in Brooklyn. Her background is mostly drawing (which helped with the street selling challenge), but she had some success with sculpture in the later weeks of the show, and had developed some 3D and video pieces for the final show. The video showed her in a giant plaster head covering, and with a giant plaster vessel with a small hole hanging over her torso. She wore this on the street and people were invited to write secrets (anonymous confessions) on pieces of paper and insert them in the hole. Besides the plaster sculptures and the video, she had the papers with the secrets, which she planned to hang up in the gallery. In addition, she had made watercolors based on the videotaped images of people on the street watching her performance. These last items were the least interesting things for Simon, and I would agree that they didn't add much to the whole presentation.

Thanks to the magic of television, another month has passed and the three contestants are back together. (with two of them residents of NYC, it's not that much of a journey). We see scenes of them leading work crews in setting up their respective shows, then the opening receptions. Many of the eliminated contestants return for the occasion, most notably the Sucklord, who presents Jerry Saltz with an action figure of himself.

All three shows contain work that is more thought out and professionally finished than what we saw during the first 9 weeks, though having time to develop it takes away some of the urgency and immediacy of the work from the challenges. Young's show includes the platform, many of his deceased father's shirts (on hangers, on clotheslines) with photos attached, large projected images of family and boyfriend, and a homemade shrine to his father, made from various artifacts that had belonged to him (candies from his pockets, lip balm, etc) Show host China is very moved, mostly because of memories of one of her own parents dying from cancer, but without that kind of experience, it's kind of a boring show. Kymia has abandoned the more problematic sculptures in favor of more drawings. Some sculpture remains- three things that could be recently filled graves, and a head covering made with pieces of overlapping metal plates. Sara's show includes the video and a hired model to wear the plaster pieces and collect more secrets from those in attendance. A large artwork involving a man sized bird cage with what appears to be thousands of paper cranes escaping looks great on tv, and echoes the hanging clusters of confession notes from the original performance. Also some watercolors and other odds and ends (hair, skin cells). Some individual pieces are nice enough, but it doesn't seem like it all goes together as the work of one artist. After the judges have their usual post exhibition debate, they declare Kymia the winner of the large cash prize and the Brooklyn Museum show. Based on what we saw, I believe she was the best choice of the three.

Some general thoughts on the completed season:

*I've said this a few times before, but the artificial conditions set up by the weekly competitions work against the creation of good art. Doubling the creation time to two days instead of one would make a big difference.

*I've been a part of hundreds of critiques, as a student, a teacher, or the ones in my Studio, and in all of them together I've never saw as much crying as in 10 episodes of this show. I guess someone decided that emotional breakdowns are the point of this program, rather than the stated goal of finding the next great artist.

*If they do another season, they should explain to all the contestants that Simon's advice is not necessarily good, and following it may actually harm their chances of making it to the next round.

Whether there will be another season remains to be seen. Unlike last year's finale, there was no call over the closing credits for people to audition for a future season. It may be that they haven't decided yet, or may just be that they got so many to come out this last time that they see no need to promote it now. That they had so many sponsors providing cash prizes all throughout the episodes should be a sign that they can make a profit with this thing. On the other hand, the people at the Bravo network might decide that even one primetime hour per week not showing housewives or chefs is too much, and cancel production of the series. I'll be watching out for news on the topic in 2012.

Christmas is Coming

2011-12-22T18:47:00.001-08:00

This time of the year is always busy, with the end of the semester and related grading, and all the usual things that need to get done around the holidays. My list always includes making my annual woodcut Christmas card. The past two years we had major snowstorms right around Christmas Day that made it difficult to get it done, mostly because I literally couldn't get to the Studio to work on them.

Although the forecasts for this week are generally favorable, I was hoping to be a bit better prepared this time around. I prepared a new piece of plywood last weekend. This past Tuesday I stopped at a Michael's near my work and picked up a couple of sheets of heavy paper suitable for the task of making cards. By yesterday morning I had narrowed my choices for the artwork to base this year's card on to two very different paintings, and last night I picked the one (which will remain secret until Sunday) and started doing the pencil sketch on the block at my kitchen table.

After work today I took care of an errand, then drove to the Studio. I fixed up the pencil sketch a bit, then started cutting. The cards are not large, about 3" x 6", so it took only about an hour to cut the whole thing. Next, I tore down one of the large sheets of paper into pieces of the right size for the cards. Then I got out some oil based ink (an emergency experiment with water based ink didn't work out last year) and printed a few. I had done 3 when I realized that I was printing them backwards- so that the image was appearing on what would normally be considered the card's back cover. I guess I'll test colors with those. Pulled a few more the right way, then cleaned up and went home. I still need to do a larger production run soon, but I have enough proofs that I'll have at least one good one to post here on the blog on Christmas.

Portraits

2011-12-18T08:19:00.001-08:00

After a longer delay than usual, my thoughts on the most recent episode of Bravo's Work of Art. Spoilers are included, but if you haven't seen it by now, you probably aren't going to.

The five remaining contestants were put on a train and went about 60 miles north of the city to a small town called Cold Spring. Each was given $200 to spend as needed in research and given the assignment to find someone local to become the subject of a portrait. They had a few hours to do whatever they could in town, then several hours back in their studio to make the actual work. On the surface it seems pretty simple, but as an artist who does occasionally work with portraits, I know that's not necessarily so.

The artists disperse on foot from the train station to see what they can find. Some literally knock on random doors, with no takers. Others wander into shops and stores. Young tries the strategy of talking to someone who he thinks would have knowledge of many people in town, but ends up wasting much of his brief time. From there he runs across an artist's studio/gallery with the painter at work, and uses his budget to commission a quick portrait of himself. While being painted, Young shoots many photos of the painter at work. Dusty meets a father and daughter, the girl reminding him a bit of his own daughter, and they agree to let him take some reference photos. Sara finds a firehouse with the firemen out front. She decided to do a piece about the senior fireman and his decades of volunteer service. Kymia discovers an antique shop and is intrigued by the couple who own and operate it. She buys a small music box that had played a role in couple's early dating history, and decides to base a painting of the pair on the box's surface decoration. Lola's choice is two men who run a coin shop, trading in antique coins and bills. She uses her budget to buy some sample of unusual old money. Then they all get back to the train and head to the studio.

The pieces done by Dusty and Kymia are probably the most literal, essentially representational images of the subjects. As the young girl mentioned a fondness for candy, Dusty decides to saturate the colors in the photo, blow it up, mount it in a box frame, and reproduce the colors in small candies (M&M's, Skittles). Even in progress he admits that it's pretty much the same process (with slightly different materials) as two pieces he's already done here. He comes up with an alternative idea, using little folded paper fortune telling devices, and Simon agrees. However, he can't get this done in time, so just finishes the candy piece. It's so last minute, that the glue isn't completely dry and candy regularly falls off the hung piece in the gallery. Kymia's painting at first looks like some cheesy cartoony double portrait, but viewers come to realize it captures the essence of the subjects in an odd way.

The the other artists get a little more complex with their pieces. Young edits the photos down to small details of his hired artist (eyes, hands, etc) and mounts dozens on thin planks of wood. After playing around with configurations, his piece is the commissioned painting of himself, with the mounted photo boards arranged near it. Sara produces a sort of diptych- an image of the fireman made by punching holes in a metal sheet, and a mass of small curled pieces of metal mounted as a wall sculpture, the tags smudged with something black, representing charred carbon from fires. Lola prints out enlargements of the fronts and backs of her old money and mounts them in sort of a tower formation. I understand her fascination with old money (it's one I share), but Simon questions how the piece is a portrait. The money ends up being half the work, which she accompanies with a long hand written letter to the men about how they are the most important historians in their community (?), and a tiny altered photo of one of them.

Something unusual is thrown into the mix- all of the subjects of the portraits are invited to come to the gallery show, where they can mix with the artists, viewers, and critics. All seem pleased with the resulting works, all positive images one way or another. And it turns out that it makes a difference in the judging. In his blog, Jerry Saltz admits that he was all set to move his darling Lola into the final round and dump Sara, but the firemen impressed him and in a befuddled state he switched his support on the two. It was in meeting Kymia's subjects that the judges realized how much sense her approach to the portrait made in relation to the subjects.

The judges uniformly decide that they like Kymia's painted portrait, despite being the most traditional piece, making her one of the final three. They all like the idea of Young commissioning a portrait and indicate that they would have preferred if he just showed that and not surrounded it with his own photos of the artist. Many online have since questioned the validity of using a piece he had no part in making as his entry in a competition about creating a portrait, but it has seemed all season that the judges have used a different set of rules for him from everyone else, and he is given the 2nd slot. The editors give us a clip of Lola complaining in the crit about the candy dropping off Dusty's piece over the course of the exhibition, but the judges actually think that adds to the piece. (I'm not sure I agree with them on that- it's not that it couldn't be part of a successful piece, it just doesn't seem relevant to the story) However, the similarity to previous work becomes the main issue and he is sent home. The judges seem to have finally lost patience with Lola doing another one of her random combination of ideas pieces. Having played the nudity card last week, all that's left for tonight is the breaking down crying during her crit routine. Despite all the regular judges still insisting she is potentially the best artist of the whole original group, she is also sent home. Although none of them particularly like the sculptural half of the piece, they like enough about the portrait half (and maybe her previous work) to give the last spot to Sara. As with last year, a long interval will have passed with the contestants working in their own studios, before next week's finale- three solo shows of new work in any medium or subject they like.

Now my story. The definition of a portrait played a factor in this episode. On the surface, any image of an individual reads as a portrait. For example, many times I have referred to my smoking figure as a portrait, but that would not be completely accurate as I often define it. The woman in the print looks a lot like the model who posed for it, but it's not about her as a person. It would have been about an aspect of the woman who inspired it, but she chose not to pose for it. Aspects of the model's experience were drawn on, but really the piece is about an archetype, which is why the piece has always been called 21st Century Employee in my mind, and not named after the depicted individual. A better example of what I consider a true portrait is shown at the top of this posting. The subject is a former co-worker who had occasionally helped me by posing for print projects. I invited her to the reception when one such piece was in a group show at the Newark Museum. She came and it was obvious that she was well along in pregnancy. Besides the opportunity to see herself on the museum wall, part of the reason she attended the reception was to inquire about having me do some kind of formal pregnancy portrait of her, inspired by something she saw on some cable show.

A few weeks later we spoke on the phone about thoughts she was having relating to the whole experience of expecting a child. The one thing that stuck out was that she mentioned having been adopted herself (if I had known that, I had forgotten that) and she had never had any contact with her birth family. Therefore, her first child would be her first opportunity to see the face of someone she was related to. Based on that I developed the idea- a double portrait, showing her in profile (emphasizing the large belly) in the foreground, while looking at her own face in the mirror (hand on belly), as if wondering about the face of the child to come. The calendar behind her shows the expected date (the baby came early, so I was lucky to get the session done in time). The frame of the mirror was based on one I saw in a local antique store. I added symbols of a patron saint for expectant mothers, and images of a chicken and an egg, based on the old riddle. Obviously mother comes before child, but she was seeking a connection back to her own parents before her. For the title of the piece I went with a Zen koan, "What did your face look like before your parents were born?" I'm sure that there are many possible Zen answers, but the one logical answer that I thought of was that it looked like your grandparents. Any of her baby's features that weren't hers or her husband's could be of her unknown ancestors. I was trying to tell a story about this one individual, considering past, present, and future in one image. She liked the idea, and was very happy with the results, so the portrait was successful to its most important audience.

Asbury Opening

2011-12-17T21:10:00.000-08:00

About quarter after 7 I bundled up against the rapidly chilling air, and made a second attempt to visit the new group show at Parlor Gallery, featuring a selection of Molly's work and work from a few other artists I know who have made occasional appearances in our Studio. The exhibition is called "Local Color", but I'm not sure why, as some of the artists are from far away, and not all the work is in color. There were a few dozen visitors at the time I arrived, the numbers maybe doubling over the next hour.

Molly's work was all located in the back corner of the gallery. On the left wall- a group of silkscreen collages and a rubbing of Molly's newest block. On the right wall- a very recently completed silkscreen (since the last crit it accidentally spent some time out in a rain storm and got a little bit burned by a space heater), a shelf full of her "robutt" characters, and small wood sculptures on the floor. Click photo to enlarge it.

A shelf full of Robutts on the march.

Arranged on the floor were some wood pieces with designs on them. The gushing oil rigs are a very recent work- I saw the painted original on the glass coffee table outside our door. The discs have pig images, finished versions of objects she showed at the last critique group.

Molly arrives late to things more often than not. Today she arrived not quite an hour into the reception, which is actually much better than the last time she showed here. We had gotten the word out to our mutual friends, so the critique group was represented during the first 90 minutes by myself, Harriet (and her husband), Sandy, Adam, and Katie. Several other local art world people also turned up while I was there. Around 8:30 pm I decided to leave and head for next location. I walked back to my car in the parking lot outside my building and drove away.

St Benno part 9- finished

2011-12-17T20:24:00.001-08:00

The semester is winding down, and Christmas is coming up fast, so I decided to use some free time this afternoon to deal with some old and new projects. I went up to the Studio in the afternoon, parked in the lot, but instead of going into the building I walked directly over to Cookman Avenue. Molly's show opens tonight and I thought I'd get some photos of her installed work before the crowds showed up. However, the gallery was locked up, so I took care of one other errand up the street and walked back to Ocean Grove.

The main thing I wanted to do today was to color the second copy of the St Benno print. Everyone seems to like the first version, as do I, so I decided to just pretty much copy what I did. It's been a few weeks since I did the first, but I was able to figure out what the colors were (it helps that it's just 5 tube colors and mixes between them) and get pretty close matches. As with the first proof, some of the colors were done by overlaying washes. Not difficult, but it did require letting the paper dry between washes. Used one break to fetch a couple of slices of pizza across the street. I used some later downtime to saw off a couple of new blocks. The smaller one was surfaced with wood filler and will be for this year's holiday card. The other will be for the next boardwalk print, but rather than surface it, I stuck it under a large pile of other boards to let the weight help flatten it out.

It took a little while, but I finished coloring the print. Maybe not an exact match in every spot, but certainly close enough, as can be seen above. I cleaned up and headed back toward Cookman and Molly's opening reception.

Another Workshop, Another Demo

2011-12-16T19:34:00.000-08:00

It seems that I just barely finished putting away all my tools and supplies from the recent woodcut workshop at the BAC, and now it's time to get them out again and prepare for another. The event in this case is called Creativity By The Sea, a weekend of art and craft workshops scattered all over Ocean Grove. It's being organized by Carol Bernard, mother of Michelle Bernard, long time friend of the Studio. Carol had first mentioned it to me in May, and distributed the forms over the summer. I delayed for a while, trying to see if I could coordinate something with Molly (who was also invited), but Molly finally officially declined for scheduling reasons. I figured it's a worthwhile opportunity, so I committed. It will be running in late March 2012, but she wants to get the advertising up now, so this week I sent her the specifics and a short bio. The last thing needed was a sample of the project, and there I had a problem. For practical reasons, I decided to go with using linoleum instead of wood. With only a one day workshop, wood just takes too long for new students to cut. Unfortunately, I've never taught it before, and I don't use the stuff, so I had no completed samples in stock. Time to make a new demonstration piece.

As with my last demonstration piece, to save time I decided to recycle an old image. This time I went back about 20 years. In the years between schools in Virginia and Illinois, I was in New Jersey working on an MA at Montclair State. During those years I regularly went to the annual River Blues festival in Philadelphia, held in an outdoor space overlooking the Delaware. It was just $10 a day, with 3 stages so there was music going most of the time, and a significant number of celebrated blues musicians in attendance. Saw some of the legends (John Lee Hooker, BB King, Buddy Guy, Gatemouth Brown) and many of the contemporary stars I was regularly playing on my radio show (most of the Alligator roster). One of my favorite performances of all those I had seen was on the acoustic stage, John Cephas (guitar) and Phil Wiggins (harmonica). A piedmont style duo reminiscent of legends Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, their Dog Days of August album was a new release when I was on the air in Williamsburg. The record was good, but live they were really good- the arrangements faithful to the recordings, just with a little extra emotion. I usually brought my camera and on that day I took several photos of them playing, as seen above. (it wasn't a high stage- we were all sitting on the paved ground to enjoy the show)

It was around that same time that I started doing woodcuts. I had by accident settled on a process of cutting the blocks, but instead of traditional inking and printing, I would place paper on top of the dry block, then roll inked brayers over the top to create something kind of like a rubbing. Using different types of brayers and viscosities of ink, and very thin Japanese papers, I was able to achieve some interesting effects. Probably around 1991 I made the above print, based on one of my photos (the middle one at the top) of John Cephas. I continued this process for about a year into my MFA, then switched to the more traditional printing method. This morning I was thinking about possibilities for a two color print and remembered the image. Luckily I had about a dozen examples in stock, and brought them, and the original photos to the Studio this afternoon.

One advantage of this older process was that the image could be very clearly seen through the back of the paper, so I used the mirrored image as the source for my new print. Years ago I had purchased a 4"x 6" piece of linoleum to use someday, and since that is the size I want to use for the workshop, it was perfect for my task today. I did a few rough pencil sketches on paper of the figure in horizontal and vertical formats and decided to go with the former. I sketched it out with pencil on the linoleum, on the right side in the above photo. I then went over the lines and shapes with a black marker to clarify what to cut, shown below.

I quickly cut out the design, mixed an indigo in water based relief ink, and pulled a proof, seen above. It looked good, so I re-inked the block and offset it onto a small piece of prepared plywood. (for the workshop all the blocks will be linoleum, but I don't have that handy right now) I used the transfer proof to break down where the second color would go, then cut the wood block. I mixed an orange color and pulled a proof of that, seen below.

I pulled 5 or 6 of that orange tone block, then mixed some more indigo and overprinted them with the key block. I didn't bother to set up a registration system, so I just eyeballed it. Below is the best proof made today. I wouldn't call it a great work of art, but it should serve the purpose of showing potential students what can be done. From the moment I picked up the pencil to the completion of the print, the process took about 3 hours. I think it's reasonable that people taking my workshop could complete a similar print in the 6 hours or so that it will run.

I sent the photos to Carol tonight. She says that they hope to have a website for the festival up by next week, with all the schedule and details. I'll post the link once I learn about it.

Selling Out

2011-12-09T21:12:00.001-08:00

My thoughts on the most recent episode of Bravo's Work of Art, spoilers included.

The challenge this week was a little different. Artists were paired up (they did the choosing), and were given just 5 hours to shop for and create works of art that could be sold on the street (specifically vendor stalls in a park) to people passing by. The one restriction- they would have to sell a product- no performance art allowed. The same work would hang in the gallery show later that night, so the art would have to be successful in both locations. The bonus- the pair which totaled the highest sales would split $30,000 and be immune from elimination after the gallery show. Previous winner Sara J was given first pick and selected Young. Very logical, since he's won all or part of almost every cash prize so far. After that it was up to remaining contestants, and Kymia grabbed Dusty, mostly to make sure she wasn't stuck with Lola. That left Lola and Sarah K as the third pair.

The challenge did point out that there can be a difference in art made specifically for quick sale, as opposed to a focus on juror/critic response. In the latter case a sale is generally desirable, but it's not necessary for the piece to be successful. On the other hand, ribbons and glowing reviews don't pay the bills. And up until about a century ago, art was thought up primarily as a job, using learned skills to turn out products in exchange for money. The experience of modernism helped change that- artists creating new work that was sometimes years or decades ahead of finding paying customers. The incredibly expanded number of exhibitions spaces and modern economics also played a role. Art made for quick sale is generally designed to appeal to a wide variety of people (including those with no knowledge of higher art), while art aimed at the critics only has to appeal to them, and as we've seen on this show, the critics' choices can baffle the tv audience. For this challenge, the contestants concentrated on the money making part, since winning the street battle would bring in cash and guarantee passage to the following week.

With such a short time to prepare, some of the contestants fell back on previous experiences. Sara J had experience making small ink and watercolor drawings and selling them on the street, and started cranking them out. Many of the others had experience making t-shirts for street sales, and got started printing on clothing. Kymia decided to do something more conceptual, selling small pieces of paper with her signature in exchange for $5 and a signature on a similar paper from the purchaser. Lola's quickly decides to take a nude photograph of herself and sell that. (oh Sucklord, you were sent home just a little too soon) She added some text across the image, sharing secrets about herself.

Very quickly they were out to the park to begin selling. Simon eventually showed up, but at this point everyone was committed to their idea so he couldn't do much meddling. Some of the ideas evolved. Sara started doing inexpensive portraits of passers-by, Lola would add unique secrets to her images for an extra fee. (some of these could start approaching performance, but no one was called on it) After the park, each got one more hour to prepare something for the gallery show, then they had that.

After the show they started with the cash tally. The winning pair was Sara J and Young, but it was her, not him, that drove the sales- she moved over $300 worth of her drawings and portraits. Still Young got to be part of another cash prize and the two were immune from possible elimination at the crits. Of the remaining four artists, the judges liked Kymia and Lola's work the best. Kymia's gallery display was grids made up of her signature cards and those from the customers. Not very visually exciting, but they appreciated it on a conceptual level. Not surprisingly, the male judges and Simon couldn't find enough nice things to say about Lola's photo piece. The photo showed her fully nude, standing and facing the camera. The show gave us many long looks at it, making this probably the most frontal nudity every seen on basic cable. Many of the secrets were obvious to anyone who has ever watched this show ("I am moody and sometimes mean", "I am envious of the success of others", "I say sorry when I don't mean it"), along with a few more personal things. The judges kept talking about how it daring and exciting it was, to reveal so much about herself. Gotta disagree here. First of all, it's nothing new- artists have been using their own nude bodies in photograph based art for several decades. And Lola is young enough to be part of the original sexting generation; even if she never had occasion to send nude photos of herself out over her cell phone, she likely has friends who have. As for the secrets, most teens and young adults have far more embarrassing stuff on their Facebook pages. The photo itself wasn't particularly exciting, but then again, just before the episode was broadcast I had spent 2 hours at a life drawing session, staring at a real live nude woman, one who seems to be a much nicer person than Lola.

That left Dusty and Sarah K. Dusty came up with an image- a map of the continental United States with a black shape in the center- a surveillance camera. At least that's what he said it was. None of the judges could figure it out. (toner cartridge and burrito were some guesses) He printed this on t-shirts and made a freestanding sign. Besides having no idea what the sign was about originally, the judges criticized him for falling back on something similar to a previous project (U.S. map with image in the center), though they had no problem with Lola combining image and text for like the 4th time in row, something that they brought up as an issue just last week. (apparently nudity will buy you some good will) Either way, it was a dull image and it would be hard to argue that it didn't deserve to be in the bottom group. Joining him there was Sarah K, who made construction paper Indian style headdresses, and stenciled stylized gender specific parts on t-shirts. The judges saw the former as grade school crafts and the latter as juvenile doodling. Perhaps because he's been more successful in some of the challenges, they kept Dusty and sent Sarah home.

Back to the idea of selling. I am part of the Outlaw Printmakers, a group that has had a wide approach to marketing. Members have sold plenty of art at the high end of the market, hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a single print. However many have also participated in low cost events, such as the series of "Prints Gone Wild" sales where everything is priced at under $50, and much is even less. (the image at the top is a detail from my Employee print, a depiction of fellow Outlaw Sean Star Wars, who is a regular at such sales) I was never a part of any of those events, but I do have a line of small inexpensive prints that sell in the range of $8 to $20, which I have sold out of print bins, galleries and holiday related sales. I don't see this as a negative. As long as you are making art that is of comparable quality to what you place on a museum wall, I don't think any artistic sins have been committed. Just because the work is selling to the public at large doesn't necessarily mean that you're selling out.

Another Long Day

2011-12-07T21:39:00.000-08:00

This is one of those weeks where I'm busy morning, noon, and night. In addition to getting up early to work intense jobs during the day, Monday night I had the critique, last night I had the woodcut class, and tonight was a drawing night in Belmar. Luckily all those evening activities are fun, so after each I had more energy than when I started, but I'm still glad that tomorrow is a much shorter work day.

The above drawing was the best of the night, taking about an hour, not including model breaks. The model liked it, although she felt that the face looked a little "severe", reminding her a little bit of my smoker print. The woman in the drawing does look a bit angry, but others have noted I have a tendency to do that. Actually her favorite part of it was the little light spot by the elbow on the right side. I'm glad that I went to the trouble to get that part right.

School's Out

2011-12-06T20:25:00.001-08:00

Tonight was the last night of my inaugural BAC woodcut workshop, this fourth meeting coming some 6 weeks after the first one. Both of my regular students were back and ready to work. Linda quickly finished the second block (started last week) of her multi block print, while Kim took on the last remaining part of her block, the figure itself.

We did a test proof of Linda's second block with a warm dark gray, overprinting it over her proof on Kinwashi from last week, and ending up with a pretty good registration despite having not planned for it originally. We decided to go a step further and print both blocks on some Rives, using the registration system. Above Linda is inking the first block with the lighter color of the pair, and below can be seen printing it.

Kim's piece was conceived from the start as black and white print, so after she finished cutting the image, she inked it and pulled two proofs on the Rives. Below are the student results from the workshop.

Above is Linda's image based on her photo of trees in a woods. She will likely play around with the ink colors in later printings, and we prepared a third block tonight to eventually add some foliage and other colors. Meanwhile, in its current state it has a real German Expressionist feel. Below is Kim's portrait print. It's a very nice print as is, but I think a second color could further strengthen the composition.

Overall I think that the woodcut class was a success. I definitely plan to talk to the BAC about trying it again in the future.

Art is a Dangerous Business

2011-12-05T21:05:00.001-08:00

As people were arriving for tonight's monthly critique group, we had to give Lisa plenty of space, as she was carrying this very dangerous looking piece, a blowfish sculpture made largely from bike helmets and golf tees. It was hung from the ceiling in the middle of the room, where Tim bumped his head on it twice- once before and once after someone gave him a hardhat to wear. The average person out there doesn't realize how dangerous art can be.

We opened tonight with Molly, who had an extra large supply of work, as she has a big group show coming up in a few weeks. Shown above are (top row) a silkscreen print, her long in process cougar block, a board cut to the cougar shape to eventually hold a rubbing (not shown) of the cougar block, a tail attachment for the cougar block, (bottom row), a lined up set of Robutts (which Jane would knock down accidentally on two occasions), a set of four silkscreen images on blocks, and two painted wood discs.

Several artists had work over by the main board. These included (left to right) Sheilagh's box assemblage/sculpture, Mary's mixed media drawing, my new woodcut, Lisa's cupcake sculpture. Up top, Edy's encaustic pieces.

Tim did his first ever oil painting (above), and figures this means he's reached a new level of status as an artist as a result. He plans to do more.

Newcomer Adam (not our regular Adam) brought a pouch filled with small treasures, small painted pieces of wood. Some are more like tiles with images, while others are dice or the equivalent. The book is not part of the piece, just a place to display them.

We then went out in the hallway to see the last couple of artists. Above are Vince's life drawings, which everyone thought were a little more realized than some of the previous ones shown. Jane's paintings on wood had also been in the hall (below) but we decided to bring them all back into the room where the light was better.

My new St Benno print was well received. Everyone thought that the color was just fine as it is, both in the choice of colors and in the application. One observation that I remember was one artist who liked the print noted the simplicity and stillness, especially relative to the intensely busy and dense boardwalk prints. The answer- the new saints are meant to fit with the older saint prints which were often simple iconic images, while the boardwalk images are purposely dense, reflecting the chaos and overstimulation of the boardwalk.

St Benno part 8

2011-12-04T19:30:00.001-08:00

With my two recently pulled proofs stable enough to color, I taped them to a drawing board this morning, and in the afternoon I started the process of coloring one of them. Over the past few days I had been looking at frog images online. One tends to think of frogs as green, and very many of them are, but they can come in many other colors as well and I needed to come up with a color scheme that would work for the whole composition. I settled on a frog that was a warm color (the image caption referred to it as bronze), with shadings toward green in some spots and a light underside.

I started pulling some premixed browns and greens out of my watercolor box, when I noticed a packaged set of 3 colors, one of the triads that Daniel Smith sells at reduced price. These are sets of three colors that can work well together as pure side by side hues and in mixes. One of them included zoisite genuine (a dark neutral verging on green) and permanent orange. I guessed that these colors could mix some greenish browns and tested a few such mixes. The results were promising, so I put them on the frog in washes. After considering a few options I chose a darker neutral as a base color for the ground around the frog, mixing it from the same two colors, and put it in everywhere. This early state is shown above.

For the background vegetation I wanted something more like a real green, and selected a few tubes from the box. However, to try to keep some relationship, I mixed some of the zoisite or orange (or both) into each of those colors, and put them in place, including a little here and there on the ground plane. The same two colors were also part of the mixes for the little critters, and there's even a little of the zoisite mixed into the pale phthalo sky. The result of today's coloring is shown below.

The color palette is a bit more refined than many in the first generation of saint prints (mid 90's), but the same can be said for many of those done in the past several years. Not sure if I completely like it, but it's good enough to show in tomorrow night's critique. If anyone makes a strong case for some changes, I'll at least consider it.

Used Cars

2011-12-02T05:22:00.001-08:00

My thoughts on the most recent episode of Bravo's Work of Art, spoilers included.

This week's challenge was this year's automobile sponsor crossover episode, where the major sponsor's product becomes part of the competition. The contestants arrived in the gallery to find a completely disassembled car, laid out in very organized arrangements, and were given 15 minutes to stuff whatever they wanted into little carts, which were then hauled up to the studio. The gang didn't look as excited as they sometimes do, as it seemed that none of them had any particular ideas at the start. Back at the studio they started going through their piles, and trying random combinations and arrangements until something clicked. Some got to that point sooner than others. For example, Sarah K had grabbed the car's front seats. Almost immediately (on the show anyway) she decided to remove the upholstery as one piece, almost like an animal's skin being pulled off a carcass. Laying them out flat, she realized they were interesting shapes, so just attached them to a white backing board. Popped in a frame, it was done. On the other hand, Sara J started playing with the cottony stuffing from another seat, and without really having a plan, starts gluing hunks of it together, long segments forming from the central core. Seeing something from these shapes, she continued the process, having them come out of the exhaust pipe (muffler still attached), forming what could be a stylized flower, flame, or crystal formation. These two ended up in the top two, with Sara J taking the top prize, which for the fourth time this season included a large wad of cash. (we need to get some kind of sponsorship deal for our critique group)

The others generally followed these two paths at the start, some quickly getting an idea, some struggling to find something good in their junk pile. Then Simon walked in for his mentoring session. At some point the judges should sit down with the contestants and make sure that they understand that Simon's advice is dubious at best and should not necessarily be taken seriously. He complained that a number of them were not making enough use of the materials, which reminded me of his rant several weeks ago during the movement theme that no one had enough parkour in their work to suit him. Michelle showed a large installation she was forming, which he shot down instantly, leading her to make something more comfortable. Her Disney-ish car front was her ticket home, while her original piece probably would have gotten her through to the next week.

Of the rest of the work, Young used a cluster of wiring to form the guts of a robot like form that probably had more presence in person than on tv. Dusty worked on an early idea for a while, but had already lost confidence in the result before Simon came around. Near the end he got an idea to cut out letters, attach them to the road surface of a tire, and use it to print a repeated message. Two perfunctory pieces, two safe artists for the week.

The elimination three included Michelle, Kymia, and Lola, two who have won some weeks, and one who inexplicably remains a favorite of the judges despite showing the least amount of skills of anyone remaining. In his blog, judge Jerry Saltz admitted to freaking out at the thought of sending one home, trying to convince the others to eliminate one of the safe guys, or to just let everyone through. Not because of the quality of the art they made this time, but because he just personally liked the women. Off camera, the producers basically had to sit him down and tell him to do his job. Lola did one of her usual strategies, combine a bad tracing, some random objects that didn't work out, and some random text. A mess, but the judges are still convinced that she's one of the top artists, so they won't send her home. Kymia's piece was a mess from the start, and broke during the gallery show, but based on her success through the first several weeks, they decided to spare her, so Michelle was eliminated.

No image from me today, because the last time that I let the materials dictate the artwork was maybe some found object sculptures from my 3D foundations class back in 1987. My art starts with an idea, and then I come up with the medium and materials to make it happen. I consider any other approach to be a compromise at best.

St Benno part 7

2011-12-01T21:15:00.001-08:00

When I finished cutting the current block a few weeks ago, I stated that I planned to print it at next session of my woodcut workshop, where it could serve as a demonstration. However, at that session a few days ago, my one student was all prepared to move on to the next step in her project and that kept me pretty busy for the next two hours.

Today I had a few hours to spare in the middle of the day, so I finally had some time to get into the Studio and proof the block. The block had a slight warp in it, making it slightly difficult to roll ink onto a few spots, but otherwise it went pretty much as expected. Below is the first proof.

I pulled a second proof as well before cleaning up. They should be dry enough to try coloring it over the weekend, which will give me something to show at next week's critique group.

Small Class

2011-11-29T21:40:00.001-08:00

Tonight was the 3rd session of my Belmar based woodcut class. (the long delay since the 2nd meeting was due to scheduling conflicts at the Boatworks and a prior commitment that I had) Only one student tonight (the 2nd had told me that she had a work related thing she had to do, and still no word from or about the one who never showed up), but she kept me plenty busy. She had started an image on the first night of some dense woods, and by tonight she had finished cutting the first block- a complex pattern of tree trunks and branches. She wants to do this as a multiple block print, so we pulled a first proof in a cool light gray (the planned color for that block) on kinwashi. She liked the results, but that was just the start. Before pulling that first proof I had prepared an identical size panel, with two identical registration holes. I mixed a darker color of ink (water based), re-inked the original block, and inserted two registration pegs. I had punched a piece of slick white paper with matching holes, slid it over the pegs, and pulled another proof. After inserting registration pegs in the 2nd block, I put the proof face down on that block and rubbed the back to offset the print onto the wood. The above photo shows the various blocks and proofs.

As things dried we discussed how to proceed from here. As of now, she's planning to use this second block to create a dark shadow color that will add shadows to the tree trunks and branches, and some variety texture to the foreground. (sections of green foliage will be added from a third, still undetermined source) If she can finish the block by our last meeting, we'll see the results here.

Whose Reality is This?

2011-11-20T18:05:00.000-08:00

My thoughts on the most recent episode of Bravo's Work of Art, spoilers included.

As this season goes on, it is becoming more apparent that there are many different games going on here, and the artists, the judges, the producers, and the viewers are rarely on the same page. This week's challenge had the remaining 8 contestants randomly paired, and working on a Street Art challenge. Each pair was given a nice big piece of wall in Brooklyn and the simple instruction to create some street art on it. Thrown into the mix- a $30,000 prize to be split by the winning team.

Dusty and Young spend quite a while hashing out what to do before coming up with the idea of making something about milestones in life related to fathers- one having just lost one, the other having just become one. Kymia and Sara J decided to make something that dealt with both being from immigrant families. Lola and Michelle get the idea to make a series of windows into the building, showing scenes of debauchery. Sarah K and the Sucklord decide to play off the formal quality of the brickwork, and design a complex maze, with simple stick projections coming out from the wall. The judges vote Dusty and Young the winners, which means that Young has won at least a share of all 3 outside prizes that have been available.

Perhaps the biggest problem here is how to define "street art." The most common association is art that has been made in spaces without permission of the owners of those spaces. The common tools are spray paint, stencils, and wheat paste. Of course, the artists were not going to be sent out to illegally deface private or public property (while being filmed, no less), so what we had here was more like public art, which is made with the blessing of the wall's owner. (for example, the mural I'm shown working on above faces the street, but it's no piece of street art) Public art usually has some kind of message and must meet some kind of community standards. Most of the artworks from the show fit this category. The fathers piece met these criteria. It dealt with universal themes (the cycle of life) in a way that was inclusive for almost everyone who walked by it, both thematically (everyone can relate some experience), and literally (space was given for people to write their own feelings on the topic). Some have noted this is not the first time that Young has created (and won with) a piece that involved the audience being invited to write on it. Visually it wasn't particularly sophisticated, and it made no statements that would likely offend anyone.

The Kymia/Sara J piece showed two uprooted tree people, dragged by ropes by an alien (ET) being. The bold oversized figures were either solid black or white with some simple contour lines within, standing out against the red painted wall. It was not clear that the piece was about immigration issues, but it had graphic power, the kind of thing that would look interesting from a block away. The vagueness of the message may be what knocked it down to 2nd place.

The maze piece definitely felt like public art. Too formal to be the product of spontaneous street artists, it felt like the kind of abstract commissioned work that became so popular for public art in the late 20th century. No image means that you likely aren't offending anyone. No risk of offending anyone means not much risk of being interesting to anyone either. The projecting sticks (Sucklord's contribution) added nothing to the experience. It was no surprise that this piece came in last, and the Sucklord was sent home.

The windows piece from Lola and Michelle was a series of views into an imaginary apartment occupied by some kind of animal like beings involved in a wild party and other activities. They also created a bunch of stickers, for the audience to add wherever they wanted. They took it a step further, by encouraging people to put the sometimes obscene stickers on the immigration mural, which got Kymia very upset. The artists said it was all about having fun, but based on their behavior (especially Lola) toward Kymia and Sara over the previous day, this felt mean and ugly. As for the work itself, what we could see of the drawing was poorly executed, and the whole thing lacked any visual appeal or impact. However, of the four murals, it was probably the one that most felt like street art in that no one would commission this for a public space- the only way this gets on a wall is when no one is looking.

Meanwhile, the judges had some very different opinions of what was going on. In his blog, Jerry Saltz says he likes Lola and Michelle's piece the best, though he concedes that it looks terrible from any distance of more than a foot. On camera it certainly looked awful, and that's all I can go by. In his blog, Bill Powers goes so far as to scold Kymia for objecting to Lola's attack on her mural, saying it's all part of street art and she should just deal with it. Perhaps, if this was street art, but it's really a contest with artists making public murals, with $30K (as well as continued participation in the show) riding on a judge's evaluation that hadn't happened yet. Kymia saw it as an act of sabotage and I don't know that she was wrong. The judges all say they expected Sucklord to do better in what they perceive as his specialty, but his medium is action figures and trading cards, not graffiti, and they basically ordered him not to ever use his sci fi vocabulary again. He tried to do something that he thought would appeal to the judges and the higher art world, it didn't, and he was done.

As I watched all this play out I realized that the show is no longer about the goal of being the next great artist. For example, Lola, who hasn't shown much success with her art so far, has positioned herself as the mean girl in this scenario. I suspect that it's part of a plan to become a reality TV star, ready to be cast as a troublemaker on some other reality show. And while the big prize of the Brooklyn Museum show is still a few weeks away, I think that the Sucklord has already won this season. He is no gallery artist and was never going to get that museum show, but he has had several weeks of national exposure to go along with his marketable name and established product line. In the contemporary art world, fame means far more than talent. He will probably have more opportunities than whoever is the ultimate winner of the museum show, and he doesn't have to live among the crazy people anymore.

St Benno part 6

2011-11-19T21:51:00.001-08:00

Today I had what has lately been a relatively rare combination of events happen- a block of free time and being in the vicinity of Ocean Grove. Not wanting to waste this opportunity, I went into the Studio and finally finished cutting the St Benno block. Took about 90 minutes, pretty much what I had predicted when I last left off.

I had briefly considered pulling a few proofs, but a few things held me back. First of all, a lot of my printing supplies were still back at my apartment, as I've been using them in classes lately. If I had to, I could have found enough stuff around the Studio to do the job, but today I didn't have to. Second, I think I'd like to save the first printing for the next meeting of my woodcut class, so it can be part of the printing demonstration, as I expect my students will be ready to print by then. That's more than a week away, meaning it's time to start thinking about starting a new project. Probably a boardwalk print.

The End of the Day

2011-11-16T21:09:00.000-08:00

Another Wednesday, another rainy day. Last winter we had a number of snowy Wednesdays, so I guess it could be worse. Sat in a lot of slow moving traffic today going up and down the parkway. Got home, checked the computer and got confirmation that we were on for tonight for figure drawing, with a good model scheduled. So, quick dinner, gather my stuff, and get there in time to join the people setting up. We did a couple of quick 5 minute sketches, then the model got into a long pose for the rest of the night. The 45 minute drawing above was my best take on that pose.

St Benno part 5

2011-11-12T21:43:00.000-08:00

It's been more than a month since the last time I had more than two minutes to devote to this current block. Other than a few demonstration gouges at my Belmar workshop, it's been untouched since I redrew the frog. I ended up spending most of the afternoon painting walls over at SICA, but I wanted to get back to work on some art, so I put in a little time at the Studio afterwards. In that time I was working on a horizontal band across the upper middle, ground behind the frog and around and in front of the background vegetation. What's remaining shouldn't take more than about 90 minutes to cut. I hope to find a time to finish it this week, so it will be printed and colored in time for the December critique, as well as the last few weeks of my workshop.

Will Work For Pizza

2011-11-12T20:31:00.000-08:00

I've been a fan of SICA (Shore Institute for Contemporary Art) and its mission to bring more adventurous art to the region since it first opened in Long Branch several years ago. Located in a huge industrial building that had housed an astounding variety of manufacturing and retail businesses over the previous 80 years, it offered a raw, but huge exhibition space, an almost equally large storage space, plus a cafe section (performances and hanging out) and artists studios. However, they made the decision a few years ago to transition from Long Branch to Asbury Park, and that day is coming soon. They recently announced their new location on Cookman Avenue (and a back door onto Lake Avenue), so much more convenient to get to (about 2 blocks from the Studio). I'm on the e-mail list and got a few notices about a request for help, a painting party to get the place ready to go for a possible event next weekend. Nothing gets my attention more than an offer of free pizza, so I decided to wander over from the Studio for a few hours and lend a hand.

The new space isn't as cavernous as the Long Branch building, divided by 8' walls into a several rooms of various sizes. (a few other dividing walls have already been taken down) The walls were mostly painted various shades of brown and greenish brown, and the mission was to make them gallery white. The photo above shows the first wall I tackled (part of a hallway) and the difference with the new paint. Below is that same wall from a different angle, and a piece of the room behind that wall, with the first coat of paint on each.

Another view of that interior room space, and the two walls of it that I painted.

While that was drying, I moved on to a small room next to it. Seems too small to be a gallery, so maybe it's destined to be an office. I got a coat on the wall next to the door opening and had worked my way partly down the adjacent wall when I was given a more important task- to go get the pizza. Just walked to the corner to order and pick up a couple of plain pies. Upon my return the crew of 6 (other jobs included more painting, spackling, cleaning floors, and some light construction) took a break to eat it.

After the break all the paint rollers and trays had been claimed by others, so I helped out by moving this large, heavy, awkward cabinet from that office room to the bathroom. I left the crew there to continue while I went to go work on some art.

SICA's new location is 608 Cookman Avenue, just off the courtyard behind the Words! book store. If they can finish the job, the plan is to have their 10th Annual Art Auction fundraiser there this coming Friday, November 18th. Check the website for details.

Updates from PCNJ

2011-11-11T18:35:00.001-08:00

Back over the summer I had a piece in the annual member exhibition at PCNJ, which travelled to Jersey City for several weeks in the fall. That show ended a few weeks ago and my piece was returned to the headquarters in Somerville. They had asked the art to be picked up last week, but the building was shut down for the whole week with the aftereffects of the Snowtober storm. I ended up with a surprise day off today, as my employer was closed for the Veterans Day holiday. (my colleges don't close for the day, so I'm used to working during it) PCNJ is about 60 miles away, so I usually try to combine a visit with some other business in the area, but off the top of my head I couldn't think of another reason that I would be in that part of the state over the next few months. Factoring in weather and lighter than normal traffic, today seemed as good a day any to get it done. Other than dodging some windblown debris, no problem getting up there and picking up my piece. I checked out the current show in the gallery, a juried show called Giving Pause Reflecting Still. I didn't submit anything (shows built around vague internal/emotional concepts are great for all the abstractionist types, but don't suit my real world images, and in my experience the jurors who propose these things generally don't like my work anyway) but I still like to see what's on the walls. Getting home was uneventful.

And speaking of the traveling show, just last night I got these photos from fellow printmaker Marissa Woodrow (her piece is at the far left of the top photo, my boardwalk print at the far right), who attended a special gallery talk that was set up at the Jersey City location. I couldn't make it to the event, but it looks like it's a nice space. It was up for several weeks, so the art students would have had plenty of time to see the show. Beginner printmakers tend to focus on learning process and effects, and give less thought to actually making an artwork. My hope is that an exhibition of quality work from established printmakers will show the students some of the possibilities of printmaking and maybe inspire them to want to make interesting prints of their own.

Headline Making Art

2011-11-09T22:00:00.000-08:00

My thoughts on tonight's episode of Bravo's Work of Art, with spoilers included.

Simon dragged the contestants out of bed very early in the morning and brought them to the New York Times building. They were shown a giant pile of newspaper sections, and told to pick a headline to base an artwork on. Simple enough. Some artists found headlines that had personal meanings for them, while some seemed like they just chose something at random. The assignment also required that the newspaper be physically part of the piece.

Most went with some kind of 3D work, including a few pieces that formed installations. It's sometimes hard to judge these things on tv, but nothing really impressed me tonight. The judges seemed a little out of touch this week. Finalist Dusty made a giant map of the U.S. out of crumpled newspaper, which included several giant black silhouettes of figures against the standard printed newsprint coloring. The figural silhouettes were pretty obvious, but at least one of the judges took a few minutes to realize they were there. Lola finally managed to be noticed, but her paper sculptures of weapons looked like something thrown together in a few minutes, not like something worthy of the top group. For the second time, top honors went to Young, for his installation about a dissident Chinese artist. It must have been the topic that impressed them, because the art itself was boring. No immunity tonight, but Young will get a $20K cash prize and his work exhibited at the Times building, to go with the two page spread in Entertainment Weekly he got a few weeks ago; even if he doesn't win this whole thing, he's really cleaned up.

While I didn't agree about the judges picks for the top artists, I did agree that the three in the bottom group weren't successful. Sucklord's piece wasn't so much bad as somehow being both too obvious and confusing at the same time. Sarah and Bayete's pieces seemed to have no relationship to the headlines that had inspired them, and were somewhat indecipherable in general. Bayete got the boot, but perhaps it was time. Being strictly a video artist, it seemed that he was often out of his element with some of the challenges. His inability to properly hang doors as part of his installation was one factor that cost him his spot tonight.

Now, my connection. Several years ago I made the above piece, called A New Year For America. One of those ideas that came to me quickly, but took quite a while to execute. This portrait of America includes a representation of a news story from each of the 50 states, plus the District of Columbia and a few national stories, all coming from a few weeks before and after New Year's Day that year. I'm sure that some of the stories came from the NY Times, with USA Today being a good source, and occasionally online versions of newspapers from other states were reviewed to finish up my list. Gathering the stories took a few weeks, but figuring how to depict them and how to fit them into the one composition was more of a challenge. If I had it to do over again, I'd cut a few items differently, but generally I was happy with how it turned out, and it's been a popular piece in whatever gallery it's been hung in. Something this complex would be out of the question for the limited time given in the challenge (1 day + an extra hour the next day), but I could make something quite nice about any one story, which is all that was being asked tonight.

Crowd In The Basement

2011-11-07T20:52:00.000-08:00

The monthly critique group passed it's fourth birthday last month and is still as popular as ever. Fourteen participants (including one new guy), and a few observers were crowded into our space, though art also was set up in three other basement spaces. Discussion of the first few people went a bit long, so it was more like 9:30 when we finally finished.

This month's work included (above, left to right) ink drawings from Dave, digital video from Adam, Michelle's box construction, Harriet's watercolor painting, and Mary's woodcut print and miniature paintings. That's just the beginning.

Pit fired ceramic vessels from Katie (above) and figure drawings from Vince (below), hung in the narrow corridor heading back toward the cafeteria.

In the cafeteria we looked at Edy's latest exploration of her cathedral images (above), then worked our way back toward the Studio, looking at pieces in our hallway (below) from Molly (woodcut block drawing) and Jane (3 panels landscape painting).

Back inside our Studio, we saw Lisa's latest scrap plastic sculpture (candy mint), Tim's abstract painting with random text, and Jill's painting of dogs.

I closed out the night. I had brought my St Benno block to show everyone that I had changed the frog from last time, but since there really wasn't much to talk about with that one, I brought out my Bosch themed board game. When I showed it last year it wasn't yet complete, and promised I'd bring it back sometime for us to play. We did that tonight, with Harriet, Tim, and I playing. Tim and I made it to heaven, while Harriet ended up in a demon's frying pan. It's not a game for everyone.

Artists Say The Darnedest Things

2011-11-04T19:10:00.000-07:00

My thoughts on this week's episode of Bravo's Work of Art, with spoilers included.

This week the contestants were each paired with a child artist and a previously created artwork by that child. Mostly drawings and paintings, though also one print piece. The challenge was to create an artwork that was based on the child's work- addressing the same theme, visual style, etc. The work from the kids lacked the polished skills of professional artists, but some of the ideas were fairly interesting and would not be out of place in a professional art gallery.

Dusty was perhaps the most at home with this challenge, since he is a full time teacher and works with kids every day. His piece wasn't the most exciting, but it was well made and did make excellent use of the work brought by his child partner. I was not surprised when he vaulted from the bottom group last week to the the top 2 this time. Although Sucklord mostly works with toys at the conceptual level, few pegged him as someone who would engage with kids on an artistic level. But he really seemed to connect with the piece he was assigned and worked hard to make something his artistic partner would like. I thought that the resulting sculpture was probably more interesting as a toy than as fine art. He ended up in the bottom group, but survived for another week.

Sara was presented a large grid format print piece, words in various styles cut as some kind of relief print and printed as colorful blocks. She took part of that idea- cutting words into small linoleum blocks and making the resulting prints part of the image, but she turned it into her own tragic life story. When she found herself in the bottom group she became an emotional wreck and spent so much time sobbing uncontrollably that it seemed the judges were a bit hesitant to criticize the art, especially when they looked so bad when the same thing happened with Kathryn a few weeks earlier. Perhaps this will be the new strategy employed by contestants in trouble- cry and the judges will be afraid to confront you about your artistic failures. Tewz inherited a still life with a few vegetables. Like Sara, he expanded this based on his own (urban) experiences, making concrete letter shaped planters spelling out "GROW", with some grass like stalks growing from them. The piece could have used a little color, but I've seen much worse on this show. Claiming it had not enough of a relationship to the original piece, Tewz was also part of the lower group, and he was the one eliminated.

Sometimes it was hard to tell whether the kids or the adults were coming up with the crazier ideas. Michelle was given three pieces of paper of different colors, each with a pair of human eyes floating in the center. From this she got the idea to make one of her paper sculptures, but one that included the long necks of geese, with bloody eye sockets from pecking each others' eyes out. Simon and her fellow contestants pointed out that this was really not a good idea in a child themed art show, and citing last week's visit to the bottom group, she decided to listen this time and got off that ledge. Her new piece ended up in the safe group. Kymia's young partner had a simple painting of a carrot on the ground. Looking for more input, she asked the girl about what would be around the carrot if we could see more, and was told there would be the body of a girl on the ground, dead from having eaten literally everything around her, with the carrot being the thing that finally did her in. Kymia responded with a detailed fine line drawing of the imagined girl, her gut exploded from all stuff she had eaten (food, animals, the house, etc). Kymia was the other artist in the top 2 and she won the challenge, and immunity for a week.

I don't make a regular habit of collaborating with children in my artwork, but I do remember one recent case where I did. About 4 years ago we painted the first of the Belmar murals, the large one on the side of the Boatworks, showing our view over the river and our fantasy of what would be found under the waters of Shark River. Every year the BAC has a big project that can involve the community, and for this one people were invited to come one day and draw and paint their ideas for the underwater part. Some BAC members (including me) made things that day, but most of the participants were kids. The images were cut out and stuck to an indoor version of our mural. Later these parts were rearranged and we used them as the basis for what we painted on the final version of the mural. For example, a child makes a white fish with bold spots in primary colors (kind of like the packaging on a loaf of Wonder Bread), and one of the adult professionals created a fish with similar colors for the far right side of our mural. In addition to helping with the watery blue background, over the course of a few weeks I painted sea plants, a piece of the lost city of Atlantis, a hammerhead shark, a sea robin, a lobster, and a sunken speedboat.

Back to Business

2011-11-02T20:32:00.000-07:00

Haven't been to the Belmar figure drawing group since August, mostly because it hasn't been meeting for most of that time. While we sought a new coordinator, it was shut down for all of September, and I had to miss the one October meeting. But the word was that it was on for tonight, so I got there by 7:00 with my easel, paper, charcoal, and musical selections for the evening. The group wanted to just have one pose for the whole session. I prefer shorter poses, since after a certain point you can't do anything more with a charcoal drawing. My solution was to just move my position and draw the model from different parts of the room. My best drawing of the night was the 45 minute one above. Not great, but the model liked it, and it's all about practice anyway.

Belmar Woodcut Class part 2

2011-11-01T20:48:00.001-07:00

Back on Saturday I had originally planned to drive up to Shrewsbury to pick up a few art supplies that might come in to play for tonight's woodcut workshop in Belmar, but I decided not to take any long drives in that weather, a rain/sleet mix with snow moving into the area. I had considered making a stop there (just a short detour off the parkway) yesterday on my way home from work, but I decided to skip it and get home a little earlier on Halloween. So today, after working here in Monmouth county, I took a trip to the store and bought an assortment of water based relief ink and heavy print papers. After that, home just long enough to eat, change clothes, and load up the car for tonight's class.

My two students arrived with mostly completed drawings on the blocks that they prepared last week. In each case I discussed with the artist what they wanted to do, and gave them advice as to how to proceed. Linda is looking to try a multiple block process to produce a color image of a woods scene, so we worked on deciding what parts of her image would appear on which block. Meanwhile Kim was going with a straight black and white self portrait woodcut, so my advice to her was mostly suggestions to make adjustments to her composition that would play to the strengths of the medium of woodcut. I left most of the print collection at home this week, but I did bring my new woodcut tools and they were put to work before long. I did a safety demonstration, as well as discussing how to best use the tools to cut the block. They were both busy after that.

No one finished tonight, or even came close, but both artists seemed pleased with the progress made. We're skipping the next few Tuesdays (other scheduled things for me and the Boatworks in those weeks), so maybe when we return the blocks will be ready for a first proofing.

Hooked

2011-10-29T22:26:00.001-07:00

A thoroughly nasty day today, with gusting winds, cold temperatures, and wet weather including snow (an odd sight when most trees are still full of green leaves). A good day to stay indoors, so my plans of more shopping for my woodcut class were postponed. I did get to the Studio for a few hours. Part of that was to grade two classes worth of charcoal drawings from this past week's college classes. The drawings were spray fixed by the students, but still I figure it's better to not risk getting charcoal dust on everything around my home.

The other thing I did was finish up some bench hooks. A bench hook is a simple construction, a flat piece of wood with narrow strips of wood attached to opposite sides and ends. It is always recommended when using gouges to cut a block to cut in the direction away from oneself. In use, the block is placed on the bench hook, with the far edge of the block right up against the raised strip on the top side of the bench hook. Meanwhile, the strip on the bottom side butts up against the edge of the table, keeping it (and the woodblock) from sliding across the table as the artist gouges the wood. It can also protect the table immediately around the block if a tool slips across the block. I never use one myself- I just hold the block with my left hand while cutting with my right, and I've never had an incident. However, a beginner might not have the control I have with my tools, so I decided to make a few to have around, just in case.

Early last week I had begun the process, cutting out a few pieces of half inch plywood, and some strips made from narrow scraps of plywood, but I ran short of time and realized that since no one would be cutting the first week, there was no hurry to finish them by then. Such things could be handy this coming week, so I continued the project today. I cut half my wood strips in half, then used the radial mitre saw to cut 45 degree angles on the end of each half. I also predrilled a bunch of holes in all the strips, resulting in what's seen above.

Later back at my apartment, as light snow was falling and dinner cooking on the stove, I put them together. I lined up the short angled strips and held them in place with C clamps while I screwed them into the top side of the wood. After that I flipped each piece and screwed the whole strips to the bottom of the other end. Two of the finished ones are shown above. The angled section isn't completely necessary (many bench hooks are just flat strips on both ends/sides), but having the notched angle pieces allows a square block to be held at an angle while cutting, which could be useful. It can also provide a more secure hold for irregularly shaped blocks (including round), or if flipped upside down, a more secure fit against the edge of a round table. I'll have three of various sizes available for my class next week.

I Need Japanese Steel

2011-10-28T20:02:00.001-07:00

I've been teaching basic woodcut technique in various settings since 1993, with the specifics of what I teach linked to the situation. The first few times it was in the 2D classes I taught as a grad student. Mindful of the economic situation of the typical college student (which I was, and only 4 years removed from my undergrad years), I showed the students how to create images in the same lauan I used, with inexpensive and easy to find x-acto blades. The same still goes for the 2D classes that I've been teaching at my colleges for the past 8 years. In 1998 I taught my first multi-day workshop at PCNJ, which had a box of inexpensive relief tools that my students could use during our sessions if they didn't have their own. I've taught that workshop maybe 3 or 4 times since then under the same conditions. Did one like that once at the Hunterdon Museum, where they had a deal in place where participants could arrange to purchase a basic 5 tool set, that would be waiting for them on the first day (a few did), and providing a small assortment of beat up relief tools for those who had nothing else.

Since the moment I took my current Studio in Ocean Grove, I had always considered the possibility of using it to teach woodcut, but a couple of things held me back. One was that there hasn't been an overwhelming demand by people looking to take such a class, and the attempts Molly and I have made to publicize such opportunities haven't brought in many people. The other thing was that for me to conduct my own class, I'd have to be able to provide everything needed- wood, paper, ink, and cutting tools. The first three I usually have anyway, but the only tools I have are my own personal set, which I value highly and I don't lend out to anybody. At any point I could have invested in a supply of woodcut tools, but that's a bit of money to put out with no guarantee that a class would follow, so I put it off.

But that all changed in recent months. Over the summer, people at the BAC asked me to consider teaching a woodcut class for them. And someone local ran across my website and contacted me to ask about classes I might be teaching in the area. Seemed like a good time to finally commit. The BAC would advertise it to a much wider group of people than I could ever reach, and the space is large, uncluttered, and climate controlled. We put it on the schedule and I started doing some tool research. There are basic five tool sets (knife, chisel, v-gouge, small and medium round gouges) available from a few sources, reasonably good tools, usually around $45. I could buy a few of those, but the knife and chisel tools don't really get used much, so it seemed a waste of money. Some of the American made tools were available individually, but they were even more expensive that way. My best tools are Japanese imports, and I found that my supplier had a wide range of individual tools available at different costs. The type that I use go for $40-$50 each these days, but they have other less expensive lines. I waited to see how many students I'd actually have (and thus how much money I could budget), and ordered 9 tools of the types I find most useful. Those tools arrived today. I gave them a quick test on a piece of scrap wood and they're super sharp. They'll get put to use next week. I ended up using a big chunk of the money that I'm making for this class to buy the tools, but I'll have tools I can use for classes for years to come.

Your Moment In History

2011-10-27T20:53:00.000-07:00

My thoughts on last night's episode of Bravo's Work of Art, spoilers included.

The show opened with the contestants following a long line of unlabeled tin cans, eventually leading to a Warhol soup can and the day's challenge- create a piece of Pop Art. It's a pretty wide open assignment, and any contemporary artist should know enough about it to produce something suitable, or so you might think. Part of the problem was in how one defines "pop art" in the first place. Show host China Chow's instructions were, "We want to know what you have to say about your moment in history", reflecting a statement that Warhol's work was about how he reacted to contemporary culture. I'm not sure if I completely agree with that. Two Warhol pieces cited during the episode were the Campbell's soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles, both products well known to Warhol's generation, but with packaging virtually unchanged since early in the 20th century (his parents' generation). His famous Marilyn Monroe portrait (also mentioned during this episode) was done after her death. A case could be made that these three very famous examples of pop art were as much about nostalgia as contemporary culture. Simon defined pop art with a series of terms- bold, brash, brave, fun, sex, life, political. A special prize was dangled- the winner (and his or her art) would be featured in a two page spread of Entertainment Weekly magazine. On the other hand, two would be eliminated. Let the fun begin.

Some of the artists went with the contemporary events/culture angle. Lola worked with the idea of how text messages played a role in the recent revolution in Egypt, though I found the shoddy looking construction of her oversized cell phones to be a big distraction. Other political issues touched on- extensive foreclosures in rust belt cities (Sarah), and California's Prop 8 (Young). Some felt more like comments on aspects of society- consumerism (Tewz, Dusty and Kymia), multiculturalism (Bayete), the internet (Sara), and celebrity (Sucklord, whose piece about Charlie Sheen's public meltdown period was amusing, but will likely lack the staying power of any of Warhol's icons).

Two artists made pieces that seemed to be more about pop art itself than anything else. Michelle updated Warhol with an image of a Coke Zero can and a grid of aluminum can tops. Like Ugo in the first week, she was repeatedly told that her piece was too derivative, but she decided she didn't have time to do anything else. Leon's grouping of roughly painted American flags screamed Jasper Johns, and the corporate logos scattered over the top were a tired cliche. Jazz-Minh was going to use some self portrait photos as a source for two Warhol style celebrity portraits, but was advised by Simon to avoid the Warhol trap and just showed the photographs themselves. She still ended up joining Michelle and Leon in the bottom four, rounded out by Dusty and his fast food style garbage bin with a message ("How Could You") on the flap. The works by Dusty and Jazz-Minh shared the common problem that their connection to Pop Art was not apparent in the objects themselves, but required an explanation. While Dusty's piece worked as conceptual art, the judges didn't like it all, but may have been swayed by the fact that it was popular with the crowd at the gallery opening. Dusty was spared for another week, as was Michelle, perhaps because of the good will she built up in the first two weeks. Jazz-Minh and Leon were shown the door.

The judges loved Kymia's close up self portrait photo of a bottle of dirty polluted water held between her bare breasts, dealing with both pollution and using sex to sell everything. Of course, such a photograph would have violated standards for what can be shown in a general interest magazine, so the top winner was Young's interactive Prop 8 piece, with simple bold graphics on the front (as I said last year, artists on this show are way too dependent on computers and laser printers to make their work) and a place on the back for people to add messages of support.

With my strong pop influences, this challenge would seem to be right in my wheelhouse...maybe. It really depends on how the judges interpret things. Based on the instructions given by China and Simon in the beginning, my recent smoker piece seems to fit the bill. It was done specifically to capture this exact moment in history (as written about here), and it addresses concepts like life, politics (smoking bans), sex (some in the critique group thought that the attractiveness of the model far outweighed the original concept of smokers forced outdoors), while being boldly graphic. But there's no reference to any specific product or known individual, and no color in the current version. So there's no connection to Warhol (or any of the other big 60's Pop artists), but then again, neither of the top two pieces this week had any connection either.

This moment in history thing got me thinking about past works, and it turns out that even before my smoking figure I was capturing views of a passing era. I'm not talking about purposely retro images done now, but what was contemporary with the art as I made it. There are quite a few examples in my Fourth of July series, which is closing in on 20 years old. Just the first half of year includes images of me mailing letters in envelopes to people back home, doing work on a typewriter, playing a first generation Nintendo game, using a VHS video camera, looking at 35 mm slides in class (ok, I still use slides in my classes, but 90% of my fellow faculty have gone digital)- all things that were perfectly normal in the early 90's but largely outside the experience of today's college students. As the years go on, that series may look more and more like a relic of the distant past.

Woodcut Class in Belmar Begins

2011-10-25T20:59:00.001-07:00

Tonight was the opening night of my new woodcut workshop at the Belmar Arts Council. I got there plenty early so that I could have everything set up. Being the first night, I brought a lot of print examples, so that the participants could see some of the options for working with the relatively simple process of woodcut. We went through a few group folios (mostly looking at the relief prints), and highlights of some of my work, along with some more experimental pieces.

Then we got down to work. First I had my new students describe what kind of print they would like to try to make- subject, process, etc. Then I helped them each prepare a woodblock. I cut two 9" x 12" boards, and we used wood filler to surface them, including sanding them smooth (see above and below) I drilled holes in one block to allow that artist the possibility of registering some form of color later. That was enough for the first night. I asked them to have a drawing worked out by next week, at least on paper if not the block itself. I should have some new cutting tools for them by then. They left, I cleaned up, packed the car, shut the building, and went home.

On a side note, this post marks a milestone for the blog- the 1000th entry on this blog. Took not quite 5 years to reach this point. I probably have more than a 1000 more on my various other blogs. A good chunk of that is work related, but obviously I have spent way too much time on the computer.

Hitting the Road

2011-10-22T20:51:00.000-07:00

Coming into this week there had been a few inquiries about my Belmar woodcut class, but no one had signed up. Not sure if it was even going to run, I was hesitant to invest in a lot of materials and tools. A few days later I had 3 paid up students, and with registration closed now, 3 is where it will stay. I've done this with 3 students before, and that's a decent number to have. Enough students to allow for some interaction between them, and a small enough number that everyone should get as much attention as they need.

Three students means that I'll have more than enough money to cover the cost of supplies for the class, but now I have to go out and get those supplies. I'll be ordering some cutting tools from my preferred source out west, but the rest may or may not be available locally. Today I was working on that process. Started on the computer, taking notes as to what was available from some catalog sources, as well as their prices. With that in hand, I started on my way around the county.

First stop was the Studio. One of my college classes has started their woodcut projects, and the other one will begin this week. They actually won't get their wood blocks until the following week, but I wanted to get them taken care of now. So those are done (cut, sanded) and set aside. The rest of that sheet of plywood, plus one other that I bought recently, will be made available to my workshop students.

Next was the largest art supply store (that I'm aware of) in the region, up in Shrewsbury. Even a huge art store like Pearl had a very limited printmaking section, so I had no idea what I'd find at this place. They did have a small selection of water based relief inks (small tubes only), but that's about it. They had a limited selection of loose papers, some of which could work for us, though the prices are a bit high. I can probably do better for both, but it's good to know I have options in an emergency.

After that, I worked my way back to my local home center to get some wood related stuff. My college students get pieces of luaun as is, but for my workshop classes I do demonstrate how I use wood filler to make a much nicer surface on the relatively inexpensive wood, and make it available for them to use. I have some that's pretty dried out (with water and a bit of effort I can make it workable), so I splurged for a new pail of the stuff. Also a few plastic putty knives to apply it, and some 220 grit sandpaper to sand it down afterwards. Since on the first night we aren't likely to get beyond the beginnings of the block sketch, these purchases were the most important things I needed to buy today. I'll deal with the rest early next week.

A Great Reality Show...For Me to Poop On

2011-10-20T22:01:00.000-07:00

My response to last night's new episode of Bravo's Work of Art, including spoilers.

The episode began with the group being dragged early in the morning to a little courtyard, and waiting around until a group of parkour practitioners popped up and started bouncing off walls, doing backflips, etc. The contestants were told that they were to use this, along with the walk back to the studio, as inspiration for this week's art challenge- movement. I'm not sure exactly how this combination was put together- parkour had its moment of mainstream popularity like 7 or 8 years ago. Before anything else happened, the artists were divided into two groups based on where they happened to be standing, and told that each group was to put together a unified show of individual works within the theme. Last year the collaborative challenges did not work out well, so I had a lot of doubts at this point.

One group decided that they would interpret movement as migration, and picked up junk from the streets on their journey back, with plans to use it for their artworks. As for the other group, last week's winner Michelle announced that she would like to do a "pooping piece" (a type of movement I suppose, and a subject/material that has been part of art for as long as people have been making it, such as the George Grosz detail shown above), which led to a plan to have the artists in her group do works representing different parts of the body during digestion. Back at the studio, each group started work. Simon came by to see how they were doing. He seemed a little wary of the digestion group, and was completely baffled by the plans of the migration group, so he called everyone together to complain that none of this had anything to do with the parkour demonstration and that they all needed to start over. The poop group decided to go with a playground theme, while the migration group decided to simplify the idea of movement to a loop, and that all works would have a circle in their design. Kathryn saw no reason to change her idea (more of her patented photographed simulated guts), although producing it as a looping time lapse video would be her nod to the circular theme.

The playground group's show was definitely the more successful of the two. I didn't see any great art, but many of the pieces were interactive and had a sense of humor. The judges chose Michelle's park pervert sculpture and Bayete' first person spinning video as the two favorites, and gave to top spot to Bayete. They considered the whole circle group to be a failure in terms of interpretation of the theme, as well as a lot of uninspired art. The bottom group included Lola's giant ball of shredded paper held together with hot glue, Tewz's hose and bucket readymade, and Kathryn's blood and guts video. When the judges pointed out that her piece was pretty much the same thing she made last week, Kathryn burst into tears and had a sobbing breakdown, a clip of which has been featured prominently in all the ads for the season. The judges decided it was time for her to go, because of the art and for her own well being. This wasn't a case like last season, where a collaborative group threw team member Erik under the bus, but more like last season's book cover challenge, where Judith decided to ignore the assignment and do her usual art. Kathryn is so locked into her process and product, that it looked like she was not prepared to do anything else. By contrast, Michelle went away from her much admired cut paper sculptures this week and ended up with a successful piece anyway. There are a lot of things about the way this show is put together that I disagree with, but it is the producer's game, and those who don't want to play along can't expect to hang around for very long.

For Love Not Money Comes Home

2011-10-20T20:56:00.001-07:00

Back when the For Love Not Money project finished its run in Estonia, we were told that they were working on some additional international locations to present it. That may yet happen, but meanwhile it's getting a quick presentation here in New Jersey. Got word the other day from project organizer Eileen Foti that the postcard set will be shown at the New Jersey Book Arts Symposium, held at Rutgers University-Newark on November 4, 2011. As far as I can tell, it's just for the one day. The cards will be on display at the Paul Robeson Galleries, inside the Robeson Campus Center at 350 Dr Martin Luther King Jr Blvd. I won't be able to make it that day, but if you find yourself in the vicinity of Newark on November 4th, go check out the collection of small print based artworks from around the world.

Blatantly Kitsch

2011-10-14T20:54:00.000-07:00

Last year I watched the complete run of the Bravo network's art based reality show Work of Art, and blogged about each episode. Like a lot of artists, I had a love/hate relationship with the show. I loved that there was a show on tv that showed some of what goes on in the creation of visual art, but I hated what the game show structure forces on the creative process. Plus the show shares the problem of all reality contest shows (even those on PBS!), that contestants seem to be chosen who specifically lack the skills or mindset to meet the challenges, and possess enough personality disorders to guarantee that there will be group conflicts. Although the network gave it very little promotion and only one primetime airing per week, enough people watched it that they renewed it for a second season, which premiered a few days ago. I don't know if I will be blogging each episode again, and it probably won't happen on the same day that the episode airs, like this post. Anyway, here goes.

The season premier includes 14 contestants, all but a few from New York City. Unlike the first season, even the oldest contestant is younger than me. And I'm pretty sure that I have no connection to any of them. The producers stocked the cast with some typical art world characters, including one who goes by the name, "The Sucklord." The episode was titled "Kitsch Me If You Can", and the challenge was to choose a piece from a room full of bad art- the kind of stuff that you might find at a garage sale or flea market and isn't good enough to sell even at those prices- and transform it into something good. Some of the contestants went along with the instructions to make use of the original piece in the final version more than others. It appeared that most of them just did the same thing they always did with previous art. Eight were sent to safety, and the others kept for the winners and losers crits. First night winner Michelle's piece may have been the best, but it was hard to tell because all the producers gave us was about 3 seconds of the camera panning over it. I would have preferred a much longer view, but that would have taken away from all the time showing young attractive Lola moping around with no clue as to what to do for the assignment. (somehow the thing she threw together at the last minute got her into the top 3) The Sucklord ended up in the bottom three, along with two other men. I would agree that Bayete's piece about racism was unfocused and he should have been able to explain better what he wanted from the work, but it seemed that the judges' critique was a bit harsh. (some of that may be the editing- judge Jerry Saltz said in his blog that these sessions can go on for up to 45 minutes per artist) In the end, Ugo, the tall handsome Frenchman with an accent, was sent home, with him still not understanding why so many people thought his Keith Haring derivative art lacked originality. I get the impression that Ugo's career may owe a bit to gallery people just like having him around to look at.

Last year I generally had a relatable story to the theme of the week, and that continues for this episode. Several years ago I was invited by Cassandra Simon to be part of a group folio called "Blatantly Kitsch". I met Cassandra at the SGC conference at Rutgers, where she was part of a pack of Wash U. print kids out there with Tom Huck and other St Louis printmakers. Some of those students had memories of my earlier visit to St Louis, and bringing them some St Joseph's pastries on March 19th cemented my reputation with them. The idea behind the portfolio was to create art that made use of materials more associated with crafts than fine art. There can be a lot of kitsch value in older objects, and so I looked to the past to come up with my concept, a fake vintage ad for TV dinners, which themselves have a kitsch quality. The mule meat reference came from a dog food label of that era, found in the basement. I had to rely on memories of the classic aluminum foil compartment tray that was still common in my youth, since Swanson and the others switched to microwavable plastic years earlier. The little girl logo borrows from some 50 year old advertising graphics without directly copying anything. The pattern of stripes in upper half is a piece of scrapbook paper overprinted with the block, and the wood grain table is actually some contact paper. (Martha Stewart brand) The stated price was the cost of the original TV dinners (invented to use up some surplus turkey that the company didn't want to pay to freeze anymore), remarkably a price I also found on sale priced frozen dinners five decades later. Getting everything to line up took a little planning, but I think it was worth it.

It's That Time of Year Again

2011-10-10T20:08:00.001-07:00

Off from work today for the holiday, which felt more like a summer day than days should this time of year. (trees in my complex are already changing colors and dropping leaves) And yet the calendar tells me that it's already woodcut time for one of my 2D classes. A few days ago I had purchased a 2' x 4' lauan panel, and given it a quick cutting test back at the Studio. It cut cleanly with both gouges and the x-acto knife, so it should be fine for my students. This afternoon I cut the panel into twenty-four 6" x 8" blocks, more than enough for this week's class, but I'll need more for later in the semester.

Wood comes from the manufacturers (trees are natural, but plywood isn't) in batches, so I figured I should get back to my local home center quickly and snag a few more identical panels. I took a small piece of the wood and the label that had been attached to my panel, and found 2 more of the same brand, same code, and looking and feeling exactly the same as my first piece. Dropped those back at the Studio. I'll use part of one for my other 2D class, and if my Belmar woodcut workshop runs, I'll probably need part of the third. Since I had not done it yet, I sanded the edges of the small pieces of wood I had cut up today, cleaned up all the sawdust, and headed home.

St Benno part 4

2011-10-08T21:23:00.001-07:00

I had noted earlier in the week that the one thing brought up in the critique toward my piece was drawing issues with the frog. One person specifically mentioned the legs, saying that they didn't feel attached to the frog. I didn't disagree with this observation. The original drawing was done with some haste, as I had the immediate deadline of having to show block cutting at my presentation in Westfield. Trying to give frog features to my toad was only semi-successful, and I purposely chose not to cut any of the frog part of the block that day, should I want to fix it later. Today was that day.

The problem that I had with the legs was that I couldn't find a good reference of a frog from that eye level side view, and my attempt to make it up based on other views of frog legs didn't work. I decided that the simplest solution would be just to find a better frog reference than my old toad drawing, and just redraw the whole thing. So that's what I did, along with moving the saint's name down a little. This changes a bit the area around the frog, so I decided to hold off on more cutting until I decide if I want to add anything else (including additional frogs) to the composition.

The Lost Critique Group

2011-10-03T20:34:00.001-07:00

Tonight's critique group got off to a kind of confusing start. As I drove up route 71 I looked over at the back of our building and saw no lights on in the basement, meaning Molly hadn't arrived yet to open up. As I reached the corner of Main and Main, I could see a lot of cars in the parking lot. Entering the parking lot itself, I saw it was as crowded with cars as I have ever seen, but with no sign of anyone leaving. I managed to pull up by the front door, where I saw Jane and a friend of hers. With no parking available, Jane said she'd hold down the fort and I drove a few blocks up Main Street to look for parking. As I was walking back toward our building, Molly called to say she was on the way and to start without her. I found my way to the basement, opened up the Studio, and dropped off my stuff. No sign of Jane or her friend waiting outside our door in the basement or on the 1st floor. Went to check the parking lot, and saw a few cars finally leaving. Decided to go get my car and move it back to our lot. With that done, went back downstairs and found the Studio still empty of people, but with a few of Guido's paintings there. Where was everybody? Checked the first floor again, used the restroom while I was up there, went back down. Finally some people- Molly had arrived and was talking to one of the regulars. It turned out everyone else was in the cafeteria, where they had decided to start without us. (I was later told that Jane was worried about me because our door was open and she had no idea where I had disappeared to as I was running around everywhere.) I retrieved the group and we set up in our usual way.

Molly didn't have anything to show, and Lisa was also present just as an observer, but several other brought art. In the above photo, we have a large painting from Jen (Jane's friend), three medium small works from Harriet (just returned to our group after a few years living out west), a colorful painting in progress from Jill, two landscapes from Guido, and my little St Benno block. The photo below shows two pieces from Jane, a painting and a clay sculpture destined for a wood firing, both in progress. Not shown- Katie's drawings (viewed earlier in the cafeteria), an early state of a new painting from Edy, and Tim's sketchbook.

The St Benno print isn't nearly as complicated as most of my work over the past few years, but I did pass the block around, tell the frog story, and explain the idea behind the whole Everyman series for those who were unfamiliar with it. People generally liked the image, though a few thought the frog sketch could use more refining. That part was rushed to get it ready in time for my demo in Westfield, so they may have a point.

St Benno part 3

2011-09-29T20:44:00.001-07:00

My day's errands took me in the vicinity of the Studio, and decided that I could spare about 30 minutes to do some more block cutting. (that critique night comes up again this Monday had something to do with the decision) All of today's work was in the area of the grass above and behind the frog. I still have a few decisions to make in the space immediately around the frog, but that will have to wait until next time.

Woodcut Class at the Shore

2011-09-28T20:52:00.001-07:00

It's been a long time coming, but I will be teaching my first ever shore area woodcut class. I had expected that I would be doing these regularly once I moved into the Studio, but there has been the minor detail of how to find interested students. We don't exactly get a lot of walk-in foot traffic down in the basement, and Molly and I haven't had much luck with promotional campaigns. However, it looks like I've found a solution to that problem- I'll be holding this class just a few miles to the south at the Belmar Arts Council.

The BAC had shown an interest in such a thing in recent months, and I decided there were advantages of going through them. First, the class would be advertised on their website and the newsletters that go out to the whole mailing list every week. Second, the Boatworks has lots of work tables and uncluttered space, unlike my own place. Third, the Boatworks has very good air conditioning and heating, while my Studio is hot and humid in the summer, and a bit drafty in the winter. On the down side, I will have to bring all my supplies there for each meeting, and the BAC will take a percentage of all the class fees, but that should be offset by the larger class size that is possible. Now that it's on the schedule, I will have to start gathering supplies (wood, paper, and ink) and purchase some woodcut tools for everyone to use during our meetings.

Meanwhile, if you would like to sign up, it's all done through the BAC. A page on their main website has the details and registration can be done right there on the computer. The class starts on October 25th, but registration will likely close several days before then, so if you're interested, take care of it soon.

St Benno part 2

2011-09-27T20:33:00.000-07:00

For the past week or so I've been using my old studio chair as a prop in my classes, and in between I kept it in my apartment. But that part of the semester is over, so I left it in the car after the last class. After work today I dropped by the Studio to bring the chair back. And as long as I was there, I figured I should finally continue work on the block begun at my presentation a week ago.

As I typically do, I cut the outer margin first, then moved on to the date at the top of the block. Very quickly I ran into a little problem. With plywood there is always the possibility that there are flaws or variations in one of the layers under the surface that can affect cutting and printing. Usually it's a small area, but I ran into a big one today- a long strip of empty space in the core wood, about 3/4" wide, running the whole vertical length of the block and under some visual elements that can't be moved. In the photo to the left, it's the light colored strip that starts above the 6 and goes down to past the bottom of the image. One thing that can vary from board to board is the thickness of the veneer over that core wood. Luckily in this case the veneer was thick. So at least I was able to still cut those areas above the flaw- instead of cutting all the way down to the inner core (the reddish wood), I just cut down as far as halfway through the veneer. Deep enough that it should be easy enough to ink, but with enough left that it shouldn't cave in. So far it worked for the date section, so I'm hoping it holds together for the rest of the block.

Jersey Shore Opening Reception

2011-09-24T18:31:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the opening reception for the exhibition JERSEY SHORE: Images from Sandy Hook to Atlantic City, at Heaven Art and Antiques. Actually it was a big art night there on Cookman Avenue, with multiple gallery openings on the first few blocks. But of course I made my show the first stop.

The ground floor of the building is an antique shop, but there is a long narrow upstairs room that has been used as an art gallery for a few years now. The show included 63 framed works, with several of those in the landing by the stairs, and the rest in the main room. My three pieces were grouped together in the back corner, near the doorway that led to the refreshments table. My works stood out, if for no other reason that they were among the few that weren't photographs, which made up 84% of the show. There was some confusion leading into the opening, as we were all asked to state the original location for the image- easy for all those photographers, but my boardwalks are mostly products of my imagination, sometimes combining bits of several locations. I e-mailed this to the curator, who liked my answer so much that he put the little explanation of each inspiration right on the gallery list.

As for the work itself, the response from those I talked to was the usual mix of bewilderment that anyone actually still does woodcuts (all those photo based artists would be lost without their computers) and what seemed to be a real appreciation for the resulting images.

The room got really crowded at times, so I took time to check out a few other shows on the street, running into a some people I knew. (artists, gallery visitors) I made one more pass through my show, then called it a night.

The JERSEY SHORE exhibition is at Heaven Art and Antiques, 721 Cookman Avenue in Asbury Park (one block from Main). The show remains up through October 30th.

Lecture and Demo in Westfield

2011-09-19T20:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was in Westfield as a guest of the Westfield Art Association. I had been asked to appear as the guest artist of the month, to present my art and process to the group. Every few years I get invited to do one of these, so I have a set routine. I told my contact that I would do a slide presentation, and then demonstrate some block cutting and printing. They had never had slides before at one of these, but they were open to the idea and had the room set up for them (above) when I arrived.

The meeting opened with the members (close to 20 in attendance) dealing with some organizational business. Then they turned to floor over to me. I had some small framed works set up at the front on some small table easels, as a supplement to the slides. I showed slides of a dozen or so examples of historical printmaking, to explain the evolution of the medium and process behind each type of printmaking. Then a few examples of some prints by members of the Outlaw Printmakers. Then I gave an overview of my history as an artist, showing some slides of early student paintings, the first woodcuts, the highlights of my grad school years, and then some representative examples of my professional New Jersey work.

The group took a break for refreshments (a long table with nice variety of foods and beverages) and to move the chairs over to a set of tables on the side of the room, with tilted mirror mounted behind it. I showed a few more examples of actual prints, such as a few unframed supermarket prints, some of the boardwalk prints, and the first proof of my smoker image.

I had brought the new St Benno block with me, discussed the different kinds of cutting tools I have, and demonstrated how each is used to do different kinds of cutting. I didn't get very far in the process, but at least people could see the resulting cut sections. After that I did a demonstration of printing, using an old block. Then it was time to clean up my ink and pack up to leave. I put out an assortment of old postcards from shows, many of which were taken.

I believe that the two hour event was successful. Some in attendance were very interested and asked many questions- about my art, the process, and the materials. The art itself received many compliments and a few people told me specifically how much they enjoyed my presentation. I'm glad it all went off as planned and am always happy to spread the knowledge of printmaking to an appreciative crowd.

Art on the Edge Reception

2011-09-17T22:43:00.001-07:00

After a hurricane caused delay of a few weeks, we finally had the reception for the Art on the Edge show at the Boatworks. We had a good crowd, some cool live music, tasty food, etc. I received a lot of compliments for my piece. Though woodcut is an ancient and simple process, it is still a mystery to the uninitiated, and therefore very impressive in itself. And people are also liking the image as well. I used the occasion to talk up my proposed woodcut class at the BAC. I plan to settle all the details this week, so it can be announced soon and start by the end of October.

St Benno

2011-09-17T22:23:00.001-07:00

Another thing that I dealt with today was starting the block for my next print, which will be part of my Everyman series. I had no immediate demand for any new saint print, but with more than 75 of these under my belt, it's not too difficult to get one going on short notice. Looking at my whole list of saint prints, I had noticed that the fewest came from the months of May and June, mostly because these were the last months I got to originally and I hit the deadline for my MFA show, which had 61 of the first 66 in the series. So I chose a day in June and started reading. For this particular day I found a few workable options, but decided to go with St Benno. His life itself is typical, but I noted a story told about him, when he was upset at the croaking of frogs (which he saw as an insult to his love of fine music) and silenced them by command. After a few minutes thought he decided that animals praise God in their own ways, and took back his order of silence to the frogs.

I like the story, but what clinched it for me was that I had done an image of a toad several years ago for a group folio, an image that I could adapt quickly for a new print. I made a few anatomical changes to make the bumpy toad look more like a smooth skinned frog, but the close up grass and weeds are pretty much directly from the earlier print. However, unlike my toad image, this one will be color, so I'll be making some other changes as I go. If I have any time I may make some adjustments to the sketch before I start cutting it tomorrow at my presentation in Westfield.

Heaven's Boardwalk

2011-09-17T21:57:00.000-07:00

This morning I got back to work on getting ready for an upcoming show in Asbury Park. The theme of the exhibition is scenes from the Jersey Shore, and if that doesn't sound like an occasion for my boardwalk prints, I don't know what is. Actually I had the first print from the series hanging in this location a few years ago as part of the Tri City Arts festival, so I chose 3 other prints from the series that were very specifically boardwalk scenes. (the tattoo studio, arcade, and shower room are all based on the boardwalk experience, but could also be found elsewhere) I already had the food scene in a frame, but I had to frame the miniature golf print and of course the night scene that I had just finished copying yesterday.

In the early afternoon I brought the framed pieces and paperwork up to the gallery. I was hoping to park close to the gallery, but there was some kind of festival going on, and the closest spot I found was a few blocks up Lake Avenue, probably not that much closer than if I had just walked from the parking lot at the Studio. Still, no problems carrying the three framed pieces there, which I turned over to the gallery owner and got on my way.

The show is in the upstairs gallery at Heaven Art and Antiques, 721 Cookman Avenue in Asbury Park. There is an opening reception on Saturday, September 24th from 7 to 10 pm.

Cross This Off The List

2011-09-16T16:24:00.001-07:00

After work today I dropped by the Studio to try to finish the coloring of the 3rd proof of the edition for this boardwalk night scene print. About an hour later I was pretty much done. The clouds around the fireworks need another layer of deeper color, but I can do that later based on what is there and my memory (and photos if I need to). I hung the new one up to finish drying, and packed my sample copy to take home to frame.

I also grabbed some of my print demo stuff, all the materials related to printing. This will be for my presentation in a few days. Left the cutting stuff behind, since I am hoping to cut out the margins on the new block at some point tomorrow.

A Day in The Studio

2011-09-15T13:10:00.000-07:00

Today was my first weekday off in a while, so I took advantage of it to get some urgent work done in the Studio. The first thing I did was find a spare piece of lauan, cut it down to a smaller panel, and prepared the surface with wood filler. That process looked kind of like this. The block is for this weekend, since I am doing a demonstration of woodcut technique and need something to cut. Set that aside to dry.

Next I got the recent proof of the boardwalk after sunset print down from the wall and started coloring it. Since I have to turn in (to a show) the only completed copy I have this weekend, I want to have a backup colored proof ready to go before then. Having a completed one available to look at helps the process go quickly. In a few hours I completed just about all the warm colors, which is the majority of the color in the image. Another hour or so should be enough time to finish the job, which I can do tomorrow or early Saturday.

Before leaving I sanded down the block I had started, and drew on the panel boarders in pencil. Over the next 2 days I need to sketch in the design. I have an idea about what it will be, but I'll talk about that after it gets started.

Back From Vacation

2011-09-12T19:42:00.001-07:00

In confirming her plans to be at tonight's critique, one of our regulars wrote that it felt like forever since our last one. Maybe not that long, but with 5 Mondays in August and last week's holiday, it has been 6 weeks since our last group meeting, and a lot can happen in 6 weeks. A good group of the regulars and a few of Molly's students turned up for our usual fun and productive evening. Above from left to right- paintings from Sheilagh, Tim, and Jane, an ink drawing from Ginny, and a painting and collage from Jill. At top, a series of drawings from Molly. Below (clockwise from top) my woodcut, and two commissions from Molly (wood carving and custom decorated boots)

Out in our hallway gallery annex, we had charcoal figure drawings from Vince (above), and Edy (below) continued to explore architecturally influenced compositions with paint and collaged material. Don't have a photo of Adele's late arriving piece, a mixed media commissioned poster.

This was the first time that anyone in the group except Molly has seen my new print (and for this proof from yesterday it was everyone's first time). Generally very positive reaction, with specific praise for the overall presence of the figure, the scale, the pose, and the expressiveness. The variations in the window reflections and the brick textures were also singled out. A few people mentioned a mark or two that they might like to see lightened or removed, and I'll consider those when I have some time, but one has to be pleased with the reaction the piece has gotten.

Prints in Jersey City

2011-09-12T12:57:00.000-07:00

The 36th Annual PCNJ Member exhibition, most recently seen at the PCNJ headquarters in North Branch Station, is about to open in a new location. The show is traveling to the Harold B Lemmerman Gallery at New Jersey City University. There will be an opening reception from 4:30 to 7:30 pm on Thursday, September 15th, and remain on display through October 26th. The show includes 45 prints and related artworks, selected from over 200 submissions. The piece shown above is my contribution to the exhibition.

Artist on Display

2011-09-12T12:45:00.000-07:00

I will be making a public appearance this weekend to discuss my work and my process, along with printmaking in general. The occasion is the September meeting of the Westfield Art Association, as part of their ongoing series of artist presentations. In addition to discussing historical and contemporary printmaking, I'll be demonstrating the basics of cutting and printing a block. I've been told that the meeting is open to the general public and as far as I know there is no admission free.

The meeting and artist presentation will be Sunday, September 18th, from 2 to 4 pm. The Westfield Art Association meets at the Westfield Community Room, in the town's municipal building, 425 E. Broad. Directions are available on the organization's website.

More Old Business

2011-09-11T15:19:00.000-07:00

Another task on my list for a while now was to pull a full size properly inked proof of my smoking block. The hurricane set everything back a bit, and I don't need this for any immediate upcoming show, but I did want to have it to show at our next critique group, and that will be tomorrow. I had bought some large heavy western print paper (don't remember what exactly what type, but about 50"x 38") about a year ago specifically for this purpose and have stored it in the Studio ever since.

I was there for about 5 hours overall, though that time included bringing back some of my mat cutting supplies, eating lunch, and an investigation into a burning smell (microwave popcorn in the ceramics studio) that had filled the building. I cleared my table and put out the block, long dry from the last printing. I made a few minor trims along the shoulder/neck area, to help the value separate a little better from the window behind her. Basic inking took about an hour, and a little more time for taping. Since I didn't have a lot of margin for error in placing the paper (only 2 inches longer than the block itself), I used tape marks to measure paper placement. I rolled the page out over the inked block- not perfect, but good enough. Printing was a bit more difficult. Heavy stiff papers have the advantage that they don't pick up as many stray marks in the rubbing process, but they do require more ink and more physical exertion. Just about all of it need some re-inking, but there was enough ink on the block to begin with that the paper stayed in place as I lifted one side or corner after another, over and over. Just as the Giants game was about to begin, I pulled the proof off the block.

I had to fix a few flaws related to the block itself, and did some minor touch up, but otherwise the print looked just as it should. There's a little bit of grain mark showing in the solid black areas, but I don't mind that in these large figure pieces- this is a woodcut after all.

I hung it up on the tack wall to dry, which is also a good place to display it for the purposes of tomorrow's critique group. After that I cleaned up and headed home.

Using My Time Wisely

2011-09-10T17:44:00.000-07:00

Was a busy week, with the start of school and all that. I had a bunch of art related things on the agenda today, but only got to some of them.

This morning I learned that my cousin Todd and some of his family were coming up into the area this afternoon for a cookout. Beyond the usual family stuff, this interested me because I had printed and colored a single panel version of the boardwalk miniature golf print for him several months ago. This was because that particular golf course was a favorite place in our childhood. I had shown him an early version of the whole print and had told him that I was making one for him, and this seemed like a good time to get it to him. I suppose that I could have just given him the print, but with the print being so delicate, I decide I'd go ahead and mat it for him.

So I went down to the basement in my former house (which still has a lot of my stuff) and brought up all my mat and backing boards. If I had more time today I would have set up in the Studio as I did a few weeks ago, but I also had a commitment to gallery sit in Belmar, so my visit to the Studio today was just long enough to pick up my mat cutting stuff, and I hauled it all to the Boatworks. With no visitors around, I grabbed a folding table from the closet and set up my work station. In my bags of mat boards I found two smaller pieces that would be perfect for a window and backing board for a 16" x 20" mat. (a common ready made frame size) I cut the window while it was still quiet, but we had surprisingly large number of people start coming by to see the show, which required my attention. Still, but the end of my shift I had assembled the hinged window mat, with the print mounted in place.

Moments later I was at the cookout. I left the artwork safe in the car until the end, but got it for them as they were leaving. They were very pleased, as it's not only a nice print, but I used images of some of the family in my print, plus there's the giant fish. Still a bunch of other things to get done, but they'll have to wait for another day.

Back in Business

2011-09-06T13:26:00.001-07:00

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.

Batten Down the Hatches-UPDATE

2011-08-24T17:24:00.000-07:00

Got some good news today- my just barely completed entry for the upcoming Art on the Edge show at the Boatworks was accepted by the jurors. They ended up being fairly selective, accepting a bit less than half of all the entries. The big challenge will be how to hang all this very diverse art in the two rooms we have to host the show. Not everything can go next to everything else.

Now the bad news- With the expected arrival of Hurricane Irene this weekend and a statewide state of emergency already declared by the governor, the planned reception for the show, with guest appearance by DriveByPress, for this Saturday, August 27th has been cancelled. Actually it's more accurate to say that it is postponed, because there is an intention to reschedule it in the near future. Check back here and at the main BAC site for details.

Smoking in Public

2011-08-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

A few people who have been in the Studio this week had seen the finished smoking print, but one goal with all my art is to get it into public view, and that moment may be at hand. Since there were on and off thunderstorms all Thursday evening, I left my matted print on the table where I had cut it. With better weather yesterday, I picked it up on my way home from work and dropped it off at my new apartment, along with the frame and plexiglass. Last night I got back there and put it all together, laying it out on my mostly empty floor. In the above photo you can see that I had stamped it with my chopmark in red ink (lower left of print), and also signed it along the bottom right edge in pencil.

Above is the matted print, showing how the cropped image looks. (it's a little dark, because of the relatively dim light in my apartment until I get some more lamps) Generally I frame prints in a more traditional way, with a little bit of paper margin between the print image (almost always surrounded by a black line border in my work) and the window mat, but I didn't want my black line border to show on just the two vertical sides, so I let the image go all the way to under the mat itself. Even though there has been a lot of disagreement about the interpretation of the figure, for now I gave it the title I had always intended, 21st Century Employee. Maybe the title will be enough for viewers to accept my intentions for the image.

The last stage in all this effort was to submit this to the next exhibition at the Belmar Arts Council, a show called Art on the Edge, which is intended to gather art showing low brow influences and techniques. The print wasn't created just for this show (the idea has been in development for more than 4 years, and the block started over a year ago), but when this was announced at the beginning of the summer, I figured the finished piece would be the best thing I'd have available to fit the theme and worked hard to meet the deadline. I volunteered to help with the intake last night and today, and brought the framed piece in this morning before the crowds arrived. Everyone who saw it come in the door was impressed with the detail and the strength of the image, but it's now in the hands of the jurors. I've known Jenn and Sarah for years and they both have claimed to like my work, but I don't know if they will see this print as fitting the theme and/or going with the rest of the works chosen for the show. (over 150 pieces were submitted) Juror results will be announced this coming Wednesday. Regardless of whether or not it's a part of this show, the piece will be one I submit to other juried shows, and choose for invitationals and solo shows, for years to come.

New Frame Shop

2011-08-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

Spent the day doing some stuff related to my move to a new residence, but did some art related tasks in the evening. In the afternoon I had picked up the newly cut plexiglass for the smoking print, getting a considerable discount. (the price I had been quoted yesterday turned out to have been based on the wrong set of numbers, but they decided to stand by it anyway) For the past several years I had been setting up my mat cutting machine on the dining room table where I have been living, but since I won't have a big table like that in my new place, I decided this was a good a time as any to shift that operation up to the Studio. So I brought the frame and all my mat cutting tools and supplies up there tonight, in between rainstorms. The proofs that I had printed the other day seemed dry, so I clamped my mat cutter to my work table and cut a window mat. (I didn't get around to taking any photos of all this, but there are photos of my homemade mat cutter in a few places on this blog, such as here if you want to see it) I also took a few minutes to test the new watercolors I got in the mail this week, on a scrap of print paper. Marissa, a fellow printmaker that I met recently, had told me that she would be in the area, so I had invited her to drop by during my expected stay. She showed up as expected to see the place, look at a few recent prints, and discuss some of our common acquaintances in the printmaking world. Before leaving, I assembled the matted print (the shorter second proof on Okawara) except for the plexi, which I'll insert on the day I submit it for the show.

Wrapping Up A Long Day

2011-08-17T21:12:00.001-07:00

Another very long and tiring day, including ordering plexiglass for this weekend, school business for the coming semester, securing some fresh mozzarella, hours of driving, and hauling bunches of boxes and pieces of furniture up and down stairs, in and out of homes. I considered skipping tonight's figure drawing group, but I figured I could use the relaxation. It worked out well that I did, as some of the regulars couldn't make it tonight and they would have been way short of money needed to pay the model. Of course, fewer people means more spots to pick from for my easel, so I was able to get good locations to work from the model. My first take on the first pose didn't work out well, but in the last 15 minutes of it I drew the piece above, which ended up being my favorite drawing of the night.

Smoking Figure part 38

2011-08-15T19:43:00.001-07:00

A big day today, time to print this block that I started a year ago, based on an idea that I had been working on for years before then. As I mentioned yesterday, I had a little cutting to do, mostly in the piece of brick wall on the left side of the block. Took about 15 minutes. Then before I took out any ink I prepared my paper. At 48" tall, the block is too big to be printed on any of the papers I have been using for my larger pieces of the last decade. However, in my supply at home I had a few options. I had brought back a roll of Kinwashi from Carbondale (bequeathed to me by a fellow grad who decided to leave the program), a translucent Japanese paper with short bits of fiber within. More for decorative purposes than printing, but I have several yards of it and it would suffice for a first proof. I tore off a 5 foot piece, rolled it up, and set it aside. Also at home I had 4 sheets of professional grade Okawara, purchased at Pearl at a special sale price years ago (currently lists at over $25 per sheet) and set aside until such time as I might want to print a really large block. Each sheet is about 36" x 72" and a little thicker than the student grade version that I've used for my recent boardwalk series of prints. Still haven't created anything quite that big, and with no plans to do so, I decided to use a bit of it today.

I inked the whole block with my little brayers, a very long process. I carefully rolled my big piece of Kinwashi over the block, patted it down with my hands to get it to adhere a little, then started the rubbing process. As with all Japanese papers, the ink comes through quickly (see above), so it's easy to see what areas have been printed and how well. And as with all first printings on wood, it's very hard to get it fully inked. I did the usual peel back and re-ink routine in some obvious areas, but since I didn't need this to be a perfect print, I got it to the point where I could see how the block turned out and pulled it off the block.

Above is that first proof. It is definitely under inked in spots, but the results were good enough to provide the evidence that this is a successful print. Molly stopped by just as I was finishing it and was very excited by the finished print. She also took the photo below of me and my new print.

In real life, the model for this piece is about my height, so this shows that the scale of the figure in my print is a bit larger than life.

Time for the second proof on Okawara. One of my goals was to get this print ready in time to submit to a show this weekend, but there is a size limit that would prevent me from showing the full size print. The simple solution is to make a smaller image. I have some frames that can handle a 36" tall print, so I had cut a 38" piece from one of the oversize sheets. I re-inked most of the block, and then rolled out the paper starting an inch or so from the top, and finishing down near the top of the A on the cornerstone, as can be seen in the above photo. Despite taking my time with the second inking, this one still required some re-inking in progress, but the results are more what would be expected.

If you compare this to the first proof, the black areas are more solid black, and value differences in bricks on the left side of the print are clearer. And the cropped image may be compositionally stronger, though I do also like the full size version as well. Because of its poor quality as a print, I may try some color experiments on the large one. Meanwhile I still have a couple of oversized sheets of white western print paper, and when I have a some spare time in the coming weeks (and maybe after a few minor adjustments) I'll pull a clean proof of the whole block.

Smoking Figure part 37

2011-08-14T22:53:00.001-07:00

After a couple of days devoted to other aspects of life, I was able to get into the Studio for a few hours late this afternoon, with the goal of finishing the cutting of the block. Most of that time was spent cutting out the remaining bricks (left side), shown below. Because this area is meant to be a little darker than the bricks on the other side, I cut all of them with the same small dot pattern, instead of the variety of marks found on the right. However, even as I was cutting it, I had my doubts about how this would look. Then I moved onto a few other things. At the top of the block (see above) I added a few vertical lines into the solid dark head reflection to break that up a bit, and decided to cut a gray tone in the irises of the eyes.

Toward the bottom of the block, I trimmed a little of the gray tone to the left of the figure, just making it a tiny bit lighter. After that I was tempted to try printing a proof, but at this size it might take hours, so I decided to do a rubbing of the whole block instead, using 3 sheets from newsprint pad.

You only get so much information from a rubbing, at best just seeing some basic light and dark compositional breakdown, and the photo above shows even less than can be seen in person. The pattern of the newly cut bricks looked to be simple polka dots, very different from the other bricks- it would be darker as intended, but I'm not comfortable with the difference in texture. So tomorrow I'll spend a few minutes to cut them out a little more, using just the small tool I used tonight, but making marks more like the other bricks. Then I'll pull a proof and either make a few corrections, or if I like it as it is, pull a second proof.

Smoking Figure part 36

2011-08-11T20:26:00.000-07:00

Another day of running around getting things done. Item #12 on the list was getting into the Studio to do a little more cutting. Since there were plenty more things to follow, I couldn't stay as long as I might have liked, but I did finish the bricks on the right side of the figure. I didn't bother to ink that section this time- maybe when I finish the bricks on the left side.

Smoking Figure part 35

2011-08-10T19:56:00.001-07:00

In between various errands today I visited the Studio for a few hours to continue work on the new block. The only thing untouched to this point was the bricks, so that was today's task. I started in the top corner and worked my way down 9 levels of bricks. I used three different size round gouges to make the patterning, usually one per brick to give some variety between bricks. Before cleaning up, I inked the area I cut to make the results more visible. (see above) Some of the bricks show dark patches, purposely left to indicate variations in the brick surfaces, but they may change a little before I'm done. Based on the time spent on this today, it looks like I have at least 4 more hours of cutting ahead of me to finish the bricks, plus whatever time it will take to make adjustments in all the other areas.

When I got home today I found a present on my front steps- the oversize frame that I ordered to frame this piece, in plenty of time for the show I'm hoping to submit it to. The bad news is that I looked at the recently posted exhibition rules and found that framed as such it would exceed the maximum size. So assuming I finish cutting the block in time, I'd have to submit a shortened version- a proof missing the bottom foot or so of the block, which would allow it to fit into frames I have. But that's an issue for next week. As for my new frame, it won't go to waste because somewhere down the line there will be a exhibition that won't mind including such a large print.

Smoking Figure part 34

2011-08-08T20:05:00.001-07:00

I got up to the Studio for a few hours today. I decided to continue cutting out white stuff today, so I started with the cornerstone area in the bottom right part of the block. No problem with knotty wood this time, but around the black letters and numbers was an area of bad wood, with nothing to support the veneer on the surface. With some careful cutting and the application of of some glue I was able to keep all the text intact. The rest cleared from the block pretty quickly. As for the angled piece of the stone, I did more diagonal striping (like I did on the left side last week), but cut about half of it away to lighten the value. The results are shown above.

I went ahead and finished one other thing, cutting out all the lines of mortar between the bricks on both sides. Above you can see the whole block and how the values are balancing so far. That leaves only one visual element that hasn't been cut at all- the bricks themselves. You know what I'll be working on next time I'm there.

Smoking Figure part 33

2011-08-07T19:03:00.001-07:00

Only had time for a short visit to the Studio today, so I decided to deal with the large white area to right of the face. Taking out broad areas like this is relatively easy, mostly done by outlining the section first with a gouge and then with a knife, and using a broad chisel to clear out big chunks of it. Most of it just popped off the inner core wood. The one difficulty was that this area included several bits of knot wood, very hard and very brittle. The gouges aren't as effective with these, so it's all knife. The other little bit cut today was the cigarette. Above is the results of today's cutting. Next time may be the broad white cornerstone area or starting on the bricks at the top. I'll decide when I see the block itself.

Smoking Figure part 32

2011-08-06T18:39:00.001-07:00

Cutting the value/texture into all those bricks will be tedious, but it's pretty simple. The large white areas to the right of the window and by the cornerstone will be even easier- just cutting out everything but the black line shapes. The last complex area to start cutting was the window, and that's what I decided to work on today.

The large letters were cut out completely- they'll be white in the final version. All the other shapes represent either reflections seen on the glass or architecture seen through the glass, and are derived from the ink wash block drawing, which in turn was based on various location sketches and observations. (the identity of those items isn't important, just wanting an interesting and plausible combination of value shapes) For this part of the block I'm going to stick with the vertical shading and so I spaced my lines based on the values from the wash drawing. As with other recent cutting days, I rolled a tiny bit of black ink on afterwards so that I can get a better idea of how this will all look. The results of today's work can be seen above.

Like with the other days of cutting value, I know I will go back in later and remove some more. That large black shape (behind the big R) is far too bold, standing out too much for something that I want to act as background. (it was a bit more subtle with the ink wash) I'll keep it a dark shape, just break it up with a few key lines here and there. And I will likely lighten some of other shapes to push the value range just a little wider, but that will wait until I've had a first pass at cutting the bricks. The current state of the whole block can be seen below.

My goal is to finish the whole thing by next weekend, so that I'll have a shot of getting an acceptable print to submit to the upcoming BAC Art on the Edge show. I ordered an appropriately large frame, and have big paper and matting materials in the Studio. I'll hold off on ordering the plexiglass until I see how things turn out and if I stay on schedule.

So Where Is Everybody?

2011-08-04T21:30:00.000-07:00

After talking to some people at the BAC last week about putting together a woodcut class for the fall, it was suggested that I do an art presentation at this month's member meeting. Usually they like to have these close to the scheduled class to build interest, but the meeting tonight is the last one I can make for a while. Today was a typically busy day, but I managed to get up to the Studio in the early evening with enough time to quickly cut off those textures I was experimenting with by the face, gather all my demonstration cutting and printing stuff, and get down to Belmar just in time for the 7:00 pm meeting. I brought along the current block, and everyone was suitably impressed, with the size, the drawing, and the level of detail in some of the carved areas. (that rose arm tattoo has gotten a lot of positive comments over the last week) I answered the occasional question. So a good night, right? Not so much. The two other people in the photos with me and the person holding the camera were the only people there, making it the least attended BAC meeting that I've ever been a part of. And two of the three people have been in my Studio before, so it's not like they weren't already familiar with the process. The only reason that I did the cutting shown above is that there have been requests for photos of me at work on a block to promote some fall events. So tonight's event didn't do much to promote my potential class among the members of the BAC, but at least I got the requested photos.

Countdown

2011-08-03T22:03:00.001-07:00

Another Wednesday night figure drawing session, but they may be ending soon for me, as my fall semester schedule may not let me make it to these. So I want to take advantage of them while I can. A new model (new to me anyway) tonight, but I usually adapt to new faces quickly. The model seemed impressed by the strong graphic qualities of this 45 minute drawing. I don't know what she thought about the likeness, but the drawing is not without flaws, including a major one I cropped out of photo. I told her that my charcoal drawing are influenced by my woodcuts and it turns out that she is also a printmaker, and in fact we currently have work in the same show. The art world can be surprisingly small at times.

Smoking Figure part 31

2011-08-03T21:34:00.001-07:00

Today's time in the Studio was devoted to trying out some value/texture concepts. The most important one was how to handle the bricks. I had done a little test a few weeks ago, but now I wanted to try such textures on a larger scale and adjacent to other cut areas. The area to the right of the face will eventually be cut out into a large blank area, so there was no harm in using it to test some marks and see how it would look next to the vertical striping. The results are seen above. Each section was made using a different size gouge. Molly particularly liked the lowest section because it seemed more random. I could see using different tools on different bricks to give some variety to the wall.

I moved on to two light areas along the left side of the block. In the drawing these look white, but in looking at my photo of the model in the pose, that part of the wall behind her is darker (her body blocking some light hitting the wall) while the area to the right was lighter. A similar treatment would make sense for this print, as it would put a darker background against the light edge of the figure (left side) and light against the dark edge (right side). So I used my V gouge to cut some very thin lines into the horizontal stone ledge under the window, next to her shoulder (above), using diagonal and vertical lines to show the plane change. I did the same thing on the slightly projecting stone base of the wall, next to her skirt (below).

Below is the current state of the whole block. That dark area by the face will be removed tomorrow. As for the stone areas, the one by the shoulder sits back nicely. I may remove just a little more, to make sure that it's lighter than the bricks will be. The lower one is definitely too dark, so I will need to thin or remove a bunch of the thin black lines. All those things can wait for another day when the ink is dry.

As of now, I'm planning to bring the block to Belmar tomorrow night for my woodcut demo. I need to show some examples of how I use the various tools to cut a block, and while I could do that with some scrap wood, this block will be a bit more impressive.

Smoking Figure part 30

2011-08-02T21:57:00.001-07:00

In the early evening I went up to the Studio with 3 purposes in mind. First was to bring back all the stuff I had brought to last night's porch critique, which I had then brought back to my house afterwards. That I did. The second was to meet with a potential woodcut student, someone who found me through my website and is interested in learning the process. She showed up on time and I spent about 45 minutes showing her a few sample pieces (blocks and prints), and discussing the tools and other materials that would be involved. I'm looking into setting up a woodcut class at the Belmar Arts Council this fall, so it was definitely worth the time to get her input on what she'd like to learn. The third purpose was to advance the block a little more. Thanks to the long conversation, I didn't get very far, just starting to cut the light mortar lines between the bricks in the upper right corner. I'll be back tomorrow to finish those and move on to something else.

As for that class, once I have some concrete information to share, I'll post it here.

Good Old Fashioned Front Porch Critique

2011-08-01T19:58:00.000-07:00

For the past two years, Mary (one of our regulars) has invited the group to have one of our summer critiques at her home, right beside the pool. And we've enjoyed those times, so when she offered to do it again this year, we quickly agreed. Unfortunately, forecasts had mentioned a significant chance of rain, but it was decided to go there no matter what, and if we had to we'd find a dry spot for our group. It was sunny when I began my drive up there, but a few drops hit my windshield as I pulled up. I quickly moved my tack board and block to the covered front porch, just in time as it started to rain for real when I got back to the car to get the rest of my stuff. I found the rest of the group down by the pool, in the process of moving stuff back toward the house. They had decided to see if we could use that porch for the event itself. If we had as many people as last month it wouldn't have worked, but we had only 7 artists and 2 observers tonight. As it turned out, the shower ended quickly, but now that we were on the porch, we stayed.

Six of the artists set up on the porch. Above (top row) are Edy's architecturally influenced painting, and a figure piece from Vince, (bottom row) my woodblock, Lisa's nest sculpture, Tim's drawing, and another figure painting from Vince. Below are two later arriving works (mixed media and linocut) from Jess.

Molly brought the finished Monocle Bear backdrop painting, created for a dance piece (and used that way once already). She hung it on the back deck, so we marched around the house to check it out.

We were hoping that Jane (who missed last month to get married) would be joining us, but she was unable to attend. However, Mary had gotten a cake for the occasion, with a congratulatory message for the newlyweds. And she thought it would be exciting to put sparklers on it and send a photo to Jane. Unfortunately she decided to do this inside her kitchen. Excitement did indeed follow.

Turns out that the sparklers create quite a bit of ash and even more smoke, which rapidly filled the room. And that was the end of the great sparkler cake experiment. We managed to clear the smoke without bringing the fire department or burning the house down, but it seemed like a close call. And after scraping the ash off the top of the cake, it was pretty tasty.

As for my piece, it got a generally good reaction. I explained my remaining plans for the figure. I showed an example of the speckled pattern I am leaning toward using for the bricks, and other than a concern over how long it would take to cut, people seemed to think it will work. Molly noted that the face seemed a little happier in the cut version than she remembered from the ink wash drawing. I brought a hand mirror with me so that people could see how it will look printed, and people liked the face even better in the reflection. That's good, because the next time they see it, I'll be showing the print and not the block.

Smoking Figure part 29

2011-08-01T19:29:00.001-07:00

Got up to the Studio around mid day, with two goals. The first was to finish cutting the figure on the block. That meant finally settling on the tattoo. At my day job, the most common upper arm tattoos among the employees are name tattoos, usually in a fancy script, and I found many more examples on the web. I didn't want to do just that, since I had a text only tattoo (in Chinese) on the other wrist, so I decided to incorporate it into the previous design. I felt that the rose idea was fine, just needing a better drawing. So I erased what I had and redrew it, moving it a little further back on the arm. Those name tattoos tend to be significant others or children. I don't know what name would mean anything to my model, so I put in "Summer" which is not her actual name, but her professional model name. My thinking is that her choosing that name is a symbol of her love of the season and all that goes with it, less common than a personal name, but not unheard of in a tattoo.

I drew the new version in pencil (above), decided it was acceptable, and then cut it into the block. Afterwards, I inked it just enough to make it visible, like I had done with the rest of the figure. Results are below.

The only thing left on the figure to deal with is the eyes. I'm leaning toward cutting out the irises, indicating a light colored eye. Leaving it solid black would make the eyes too intense, and the stripe thing might draw too much attention.

The second reason for my visit was to pick up a bunch of stuff for tonight's critique on location. We had decided to go to Mary's house, and it's just easier to get there from my house. So I got the portable tack wall, the smoker block, our timer, and a few odds and ends.

Smoking Figure part 28

2011-07-31T20:54:00.001-07:00

Went back to the block this afternoon, and after consulting my various reference photos, finished cutting the skirt and a small visible piece of the leg on the right, as shown above. Once again I put off cutting the tattoo. I'm thinking lately that I want something smaller and less obtrusive. I want to finish everything involving the figure before tomorrow's critique group, so I'm going to try to make a decision on the tattoo by early tomorrow, and cut it in the afternoon.

Also in preparation for the crit, I decided to roll a touch of black onto the figure parts of the block. Thanks to bold applications of drawing ink and wash used to sketch the clothing, when those areas were cut, you got a good sense of how it will eventually look when printed. On areas of skin (especially the face) I had used a lighter touch with the ink wash, so after the first round of cutting, tone areas were still also light in value. Knowing that would change when the block is inked, I figured it was a good time to see what is actually there. Using just enough water based black ink to coat the brayer, I carefully rolled ink onto all parts of the block that included the smoker's body. The results are below.

The only part that looks really different now is the face, where all the shadowed areas are now much darker in value than they were with just the diluted india ink. I plan to remove some of this soon, to bring the values a little closer to what I saw, but not too much. The whole composition has to balance, so the facial shadows may not seem as dark when the window and bricks are cut and inked.

Smoking Figure part 27

2011-07-30T18:19:00.001-07:00

Got to the Studio a little later than I might have expected, but I still got in a few hours of work. First I pulled a small proof, part of a side project to be discussed later. Then I got out the current block to cut. I discovered that I had left my sketchbook at home, which contains some full page photos of an early state of the block drawing. With all the adjustments I've made to the ink drawing, it can be helpful to see the original drawing to determine what some of the marks on the block might have been. So without that reference, I just cut out a big section that I was relatively sure of, the big patch of white on the left side leg and an area near the top of the skirt. Next time I'll have my sketchbook with me and maybe finish off the rest of the figure.

Smoking Figure part 26

2011-07-27T21:01:00.001-07:00

Another two hour session in the Studio today, another big piece of the block cut. This time it was the blouse. Once again, cut out the white sections, then the gray tones. I also finished a piece of the arm on the right side (near the elbow) that I had missed last time, but put off the rose tattoo until another time. Above is the current state of the block. Over the weekend I'll try to finish the rest of the figure (the skirt) so that I'll have at least that much ready for the critique.

Smoking Figure part 25

2011-07-25T19:31:00.000-07:00

The weather finally started to cool down today. Not to say that it was actually cool- still in the mid 80's most of the day. Warm enough to sweat, but not so much that it drips on everything I'm doing, which means I could work.

One thing that I had thought about since the last time I was in the Studio was how to cut the bricks. My most common way of cutting values into woodcuts is sections of parallel vertical stripes, with the frequency and spacing determining the value. I've made use of this technique in the parts of the figure that I've already cut. My feeling is that if I use the same striping in the bricks they won't separate enough from the figure. When I've done other large format black and white woodcuts in the past, I usually mix in some other ways of achieving grays- to help with space, clarity, etc. For the bricks I think something more like a speckled pattern makes more sense. So before doing anything, I chose a piece of the block that was destined to be cut away, and tried making such a pattern- mostly a middle gray with parts lighter and darker (the effect of chips and other imperfections in observed bricks). I inked it with a little water based black and pulled a quick proof. Above are the section of block and the resulting print. I think that should work.

With that settled, I continued cutting out the figure. First, I cut out the little piece I had just inked, then continued to cut the white parts of the rest of that arm (left side), then did the same with the other arm. Then I went back and cut the gray tones. The one thing that I skipped for now was the area with the rose tattoo, because I may want to make a few slight adjustments before I cut it, but I did cut the Chinese characters tattoo on the other arm. The state of the block at the end of the two hour session is shown below.

Next time I'll either finish that rose tattoo, or start on her blouse, or maybe both. I'd like to get the whole figure finished before next week's critique group.

One Dies as Well as the Other

2011-07-24T20:55:00.000-07:00

It's not unusual to have two or three famous individuals die on the same day or within a few days of each other. I don't know if there's a statistical formula to explain it, or if we sometimes just perceive patterns that aren't there. What I do know is that when it happens, news of one often crowds the other out of the press, and often it seems the forgotten one is the one I am more interested in. For example, about a decade ago the legendary blues musician John Lee Hooker died of old age. A little sad for me (my favorite of all bluesmen past and present), but at least I had the opportunity to see him perform live well before then. However, many news sources didn't publicize it because television actor Carroll O'Connor died on the same day, and that was the story. I've got nothing against O'Connor and it's likely that more people watched his groundbreaking show in any one week than ever bought one of Hooker's records in their whole lifetimes, but that's no excuse to ignore the passing of an American musical icon.

This week the same thing happened again. It was announced a few days ago that British figurative painter Lucien Freud had died. I found this out yesterday, looking at a copy of the previous day's NY Times, which contained a fairly comprehensive article toward the back of the B section. However, if I hadn't run across that abandoned paper, I might still not know, as none of the online news pages that come up in typical web surfing (at least those I was on) had a single mention of it.

I realize that Lucien Freud is not a household name, but he's been an influence on my art going back to my undergrad years, where my painting professor often showed slides of Freud's work to the painting classes. Like the earlier Egon Schiele, Freud is best known for his unidealized nudes, seeking every bit of visual information from his subjects, capturing every wrinkle and bulge of flesh. (maybe it's an Austrian thing- Lucien was the grandson of Sigmund) However, Schiele's work is typically expressionistic- energetic and exaggerated, and emphasizes contours and edges. Freud's paintings aim for realism and could take hundreds or thousands of hours to complete (all with the model in the pose) and emphasize volumes. The painting above is a classic example of his technique, finding every bit of sagging flesh, every wrinkle, and showing every plane change with hunks of color. I show examples of his work to my students every semester, as a demonstration of the effects of line, of value, and of color in representing a complex 3D surface. My charcoal drawings sit somewhere between Schiele and Freud, done with the speed of the former, but attempting a type of realism derived from face and body details as seen in the latter. A woodcut portrait starts the same way, except the pose is a bit longer, and I spend a lot more time refining the resulting drawing, but the level of detail ends up being about the same.

A few days after Freud's death, news broke everywhere about the death of (also British) singer/celebrity Amy Winehouse. No missing this story- those online news services have posted dozens of articles about it over the past couple of days. No official cause of death has been determined, but the universal assumption is one of the many substances she regularly abused must have finally caught up to her, adding her to a long list of musicians and singers dead at age 27. If anything, many are surprised she lived this long. She leaves behind a few hit records (though they may owe their success to the musical backing of the Dap-Kings as much as her vocals) and a long trail of documented bad behavior. This behavior was a staple of the celebrity tabloid shows for years, so there a lot more people around here who know who she is than know about the painter whose work appeared in prestigious galleries and museums for the past 50 years. A decade from now she will largely be forgotten (the current pop music world has a very short memory) and he will likely still be hanging in the museums and being shown to young art students, but for now the attention given seems all out of proportion.

She does have at least one connection to fine art that I know of, and that's in my work. Three years ago I included a few images based on her in the first boardwalk print. The full story can be seen here, but the short version is that I decided to let her represent a category of typical game prizes. Several dolls in her image can be seen in the print detail above, just over the shoulder of the girl running the game. When I created this print I thought of it as one of the present day scenes, but her passing will now cause me to think of this as a moment from a specific past.

Called on Account of Sun

2011-07-23T20:07:00.001-07:00

These past few days the east coast has caught up to the triple digit temperatures that had blanketed much of the country. It's been making me think of some past experiences in art. My grad school studio was in the upper floor of an old factory building, and in the summer it would get hot. As day turned into night it got worse, measuring well over 100 degrees inside. Trying to finish work in time for my summer MFA show became a challenge (not easy to hand print when you're dripping sweat on the paper), so I had to abandon my more natural late night hours and get to the studio by around 7:00 am. By early morning things had cooled down to about 80 degrees in there, and with two fans on me I could get in a few hours of work before things got too hot again.

Under normal circumstances today I would have put in a few hours at my current Studio, continuing the cutting of my current block, but even being in the relatively cool basement is no help on days like today. Things are expected to cool in the next few days and I'll get back to it then. However, I did get in some morning art work, meeting up with project leader Kat and a few of our regular volunteers to finish the mud mural project that has been going on for the past month in Belmar. Temperatures were already around 90 degrees at 10:00 am when we started, and I was dripping sweat, even with the partial shade provided by the canopy. (at least I wasn't being attacked by flies the way some of the women were) But thanks to ample help, we got everything done in about two hours. And then I went home to sit in air conditioned comfort.

Beating the Heat

2011-07-21T20:19:00.000-07:00

The usual Wednesday night drawing session that would have been last night was preempted by an event at the Boatworks, but we were able to reschedule it for tonight. The news said that we reached 100 degrees or very near it all around the state today. Luckily our building has a couple of air conditioners and they work. Sometimes the models, unencumbered by clothing, request that we cut back on air conditioning on these summer nights, but tonight's model was happy to be right it in the path of the cold air. The above 45 minute charcoal has issues (her arms and hand look bizarre, but partly obscured by her face and the blanket, that's what they looked like) but it was the better of my two drawings tonight.

Smoking Figure part 24

2011-07-21T19:34:00.000-07:00

Each day hotter than the last around here, so once again I made my visit to the Studio earlier than usual today. I aimed both standing fans in my direction and it was tolerable. Went straight into cutting, with the goal of finishing the head and neck. Cut out the white shapes first, since they are the most obvious. The above photo shows how it looked at that point. Then I went back and started cutting gray tones into some of the remaining dark shapes, based on the different values of ink wash in the block drawing. The photo below is from after the second step, and some slight differences are visible.

I didn't decide what to do about the eyes yet, but otherwise I accomplished what I wanted to do in about 2 hours. I won't know how well the various value tones work until I ink the block, and that's not going to happen until the whole thing is cut and that's at least weeks away. If all goes well, only minor adjustments will be needed between the first inking and the final print.

Smoking Figure part 23

2011-07-20T20:23:00.001-07:00

I got up to the Studio relatively early today in an effort to beat the expected heat. Once again Molly was already there, printing part of a massive t-shirt commission. My original thinking was that I might start cutting today, but I decided to take care of some other things first. I figured it would be good to go ahead and remove all the masking tape that I had used to make changes to contour lines all throughout the figure. I peeled each piece carefully, using a marker to redraw the lines under the tape. Luckily, no splinters came up with the tape. Tape was removed from the face, shoulders, and skirt. Besides changed lines, some of the tape had covered areas that had value tones (bricks, etc), so I used brush and ink to fill in some of these new blank spaces. I also redrew the Chinese characters one more time, making them smaller (but still legible) and put some light ink wash over the rose tattoo. The above photo shows the current state of the block. The line drawing still looks pretty much the same, just without the lighter color patches of tape. I didn't get to any cutting today, but before I left I did take the time to sharpen a few of most commonly used tools, so they will be ready to use the next time I'm in there.

Smoking Figure part 22

2011-07-18T19:06:00.001-07:00

The dog days of August seem to have arrived early in a lot of places, including the Jersey Shore. It was so hot that when I arrived at the Studio today, Molly was working in there with the window closed. Usually she loves the fresh air, but days like this, our un-air conditioned basement space is still more comfortable than the hot air that would pour in the window.

Minor adjustments today. I redrew the Chinese characters on the right side wrist (above), making them a little larger. On the left side shoulder (below), I decided to go with a two flower design. It's based on one seen in a magazine photo, but the roses themselves were originally sketched from living specimens in my back yard.

Molly liked the roses tattoo the most, agreeing that it definitely adds to the character. She thought that the wrist tattoo didn't work as well, saying it might be an unnecessary distraction. I like that it adds some interesting lines in that area, but I may try to make it smaller again if I can keep it readable. In the end I will have some kinds of tattoos in those spots, and if I decide in the final version that they don't work, I can just cut them off the block. No harm there, since those two spots would otherwise just have been blank. Below is the current state of the whole block.

I'll head back to the Studio in a few days, and unless I have some different thoughts before then, I'm going to start cutting the block.

Smoking Figure part 21

2011-07-16T19:24:00.000-07:00

This morning I was walking around town and took advantage of my location to study more bricks. The building that most inspired my background has relatively clean neat brick in front, but the back side bricks are pretty old- cracked, missing chips, occasionally misaligned, things I may add to my brick wall. Thought about that when I got to the Studio today, but erasing all that ink will be a pain, so I'll just deal with that as I'm cutting each brick. So instead I thought about tattoos. Although some who attend our critique seemed horrified by the thought, I have always intended to give the figure at least one tattoo- nothing as elaborate as my original model, but enough to make it clear that this is a contemporary image. I'm thinking something relatively commonplace, so today I did a few pencil sketches of flower images on her upper arm, as in the photos above and below. Just some ideas I'm playing around with.

Another idea I'm considering is a wrist tattoo. (actually a recent suggestion from the model, though she doesn't have one there herself) For this one I'm thinking a few Chinese characters, something that you see here and there. Again, this is just some sketching- if I decided to go with this it will be completely redrawn.

Leaves of Mud

2011-07-15T18:32:00.001-07:00

I was back working on the Belmar mud mural briefly this afternoon. Saw Kat at my day job and she said she was ready to work today, so I joined her at the site by 4:00. At that point she had added another bamboo stalk on the left side (see above) and was ready to add some leaf shapes, also based on bamboo plants. We debated as to what size to make them, rejecting the small size that would be accurate to the actual plants, in favor of larger leaves that worked better compositionally. Kat had me sketch the leaves, using the water brush to mark and soften the exterior contours, then the brush handle to scratch the lines into the wall. I then brushed more water into the shape, and left it to Kat to apply and shape the mud. However, she wasn't satisfied after the first one, feeling that having the leaves projecting from the wall surface in the same way as the bamboo killed any sense of space.

She suggested an alternative- just marking the leaf shapes on the wall, but leaving them flat, and then using color to make the leaves during the painting part of the process. So that's what we're doing. She did apply a little new mud to the leaf areas to provide a smoother painting surface, especially on the left side where the straw was more prominent on the wall's surface. I then redrew the exterior contour of all four leaves, wetting with the water brush and lightly scratching the edges into the wall. Unless Kat decides to do some touch-up work, this should mark the end of using the mud on the wall. Tentative plans are to have one more group event in about a week, and invite people to come apply paint to our letters and other decorative reliefs. After that the canopy will be removed and we'll let nature run its course.

Drawing With Mud

2011-07-14T19:03:00.000-07:00

About a month ago we started a community art project on the grounds of the Boatworks, a mud mural. I've helped on it a little bit here and there, alongside one or more other people. We're in the phase of adding three dimensional elements to the wall. Kat and I decided to use bamboo inspired designs, reflecting the material that formed the structure of the wall itself. I have volunteered to help her with this, but so far our free time schedules have not matched up, plus we've had a few rainouts. So over the past week she's molded a few bamboo stalk shapes to the wall- verticals on the outer edges and one curving in on the left side. Today she was busy and I wasn't, so I decided to put in some work by myself and advance the project a little. Our mud pool had all dried up, so I had to add water to make more mud, then mix in the sand to get the right consistency. I didn't want it to be completely symmetrical with the other side, so to her two vertical stalks on the far right I added two more, one curved, one angled, the dark brown shapes above. Below is the whole wall as it looked at the end of the afternoon, though by tomorrow my additions should dry to the lighter color of the rest of the wall.

I believe the plan is to add some bamboo leaf shapes next. If I am involved in that I'll post the results here.

Smoking Figure part 20

2011-07-13T20:21:00.001-07:00

Had a 2 part agenda for art today. First, in the early afternoon go up to the Studio to continue work on the current block. Spent about an hour there, adding ink washes to the window area, darkening some shapes and clarifying the divisions of value in that part of the block. The version shown above is probably about as far as I can go with india ink on that window. The trick will be interpreting this with the cutting process. The whole block as it stands today can be seen below.

Getting close to the end. I'm still considering giving her a tattoo, and I may sketch in details in the bricks to give them a little more individual character. With luck, I'll be able to start cutting sometime next week.

The second part of my plan today was to stop in Belmar on the way home and add a bit to the mud mural we have going there, but Kat called me while I was still inking to tell me she had to postpone her participation, so I decided to also skip it for today.

Big Crowds in a Small Rooms

2011-07-11T21:53:00.001-07:00

Like a lot of days, it seems I spent this one running around from one place to another. I got up to the Studio around 6:15 pm, a little later than I had hoped. Normally this would be very early, but I was planning to drop by a new arts group meeting a block away in Asbury, as well as to do a little more work on my block before our critique group at 7:00. Molly was already there in the building, working on something down the hall. Since she would be there for any early arrivals, I did take that quick walk over to Lake Avenue to check out the new group. There was a pretty good crowd in their small space- no organized activities, just a bunch of artists noisily chatting, including a few people I know. Eventually they would get a formal meeting going, but I had to get back to work.

Before the crit I wanted to fill in some ink in the window area of the block, based on the paper ink sketch I did a few days ago. I only had about 20 minutes, so I could only do one layer of ink wash. I did my best to follow the pencil sketch, at least as far as not going too dark in any of the areas. What I did can be seen above. I'll go back into it again before it's done.

Gradually the people started arriving- mostly veterans, but also a few new faces who were invited by regulars. A few more came just to watch, and by the end we had almost 20 people crowded into our space. Molly's occasional collaborator Kristin was in attendance, so she requested to go first, and showed us the start of something in the hallway- using the transparency of her monocle bear image to paint a blown up version on a large sheet. It is intended for use in one of Kristin's dance pieces.

We returned to the Studio for the rest of the crit. Some of the work we looked at included (above) Tim's mixed media splatter drawing, two of Michelle's carnival influenced objects, a new painting (for an album cover) by Jill, three dimensional paintings (with bits of plastic) from Edy, and a graphite drawing from Katie. Below are more of Molly's pieces, cast plaster sculptures by Adam, and figure paintings from Vince.

Toward the end of the evening Lisa showed a star shaped hanging sculpture made of straws and the pieces below, shoes used as planters for a variety of dirt, rocks and small succulents. (ants and a stink bug were also present, but I wasn't sure if they were intended to be part of the piece)

My piece was reviewed toward the end of the evening. Some loved it as it is, some people wanting changes. Of those suggestions, I do intend to include some textural variety in the backing wall (not every brick will be the same) and I will likely experiment with some of the proofs that come off it after it's done (adding color, mixed media elements, etc). The figure itself and the basic composition should remain as is. As always, everyone seemed to have a good time, including some first time visitors who seem likely to come again in the future.

Reflections of Belmar

2011-07-10T19:03:00.000-07:00

Summer is a busy time in Belmar. Over by the Boatworks we've got the new mud mural in progress, and near the corner of Main Street and 16th Ave we have a more traditional painted mural going. A steady stream of cars poured into town this morning to enjoy another day of this sunny summer weekend, so the sounds of automobile engines and honking horns were all around us as began painting. The basic design had been sketched out with markers on the wall last week, so it was just a matter of filling in colors based on a digital rendering. Unlike the last one I worked on, no scaffolding will be set up, so we were all up on ladders for at least part of the session. I'm the one in the red shirt in the above photo, one of a crew of four working today.

I was asked to work on various blue hues today, all representing water. The areas that I completed can be seen above and below- the deep blue ("Blue By You") and the aqua blue ("Aquarium").

By early afternoon we were ready to clean up and call it a day. The above photo (click on it to enlarge) shows our progress from today- pretty good for about 4 hours work. More scenes of the painting can be seen at the BAC blog. I'll post more here on any days that I am part of the process.

Portraits

2011-07-09T20:42:00.001-07:00

Spent the morning doing errands and yard work, and in the afternoon I watched Derek Jeter get his 3000th hit (and then some). Art became part of the day late in the afternoon. My town was hosting an art and music fair up and down Main Street and I decided to check it out. One of the advertised events was a portrait painting demonstration by local artist and gallery owner Lea Colie Wight. The subject of the painting would be my uncle George, who also happens to be the mayor of our town.

Some chairs were set up and in those seats were a couple of women I know from the Belmar Arts Council, who both happen to be regulars at the critique group that meets there. The oil study was completed in a single three hour session, and turned out to be a pretty good likeness.

During and after this I was involved in a few discussions on the topic of drawing and/or painting portraits from life, involving the artist, the subject, and the audience. I don't consider the portrait to be the focus of my art, but it's something that has always interested me and is part of my work. My uncle came in with the least experience with this process, and was surprised that the artist was able to complete the painting so quickly, and that she still had energy to spare when she was done. This didn't surprise me, as I know that speed and facility with representing people comes with repetition, and when an artist gets involved with a project, the hours can fly by. (it's not unusual for me to have to tell my students that we've come to the end of class and they have to leave)

There was some discussion of the different feel between a quick study and a fully realized portrait. While the latter will typically have more resemblance to the subject, the former can have a liveliness that can be appealing. Work of mine from this past week can demonstrate this. The model I drew from this past Wednesday really liked this 30 minute charcoal sketch, even though it was not completely accurate to her appearance- she was reacting to the energy of the mark making and the expressiveness of the face and hair. The smoking piece involved the model posing for two hours and a more careful study of her face and body, as well as a few hours of careful adjustments after that. It's a pretty good resemblance to the subject, and the face and body are logically proportioned. To keep the whole thing from feeling too stiff (more still life than life) I use a brush and ink as I fill in value, which I think gives it the more gestural feel of my quick charcoal drawings. It seems to work- whatever issues that some people have had with the piece in progress, everyone who has commented has seen attitude and emotion in her face and pose. That should carry through to the final piece.