What's Next?

 My latest piece is in process.  I don't want to touch either the block or the proof for a few more days, which leaves me wondering what I will do today.  It should not be surprising that I am already thinking about the next print.  I started doing some serious thinking about it as soon as I finished cutting the last print.  Plus, something I see on the way to and on the way home from the Studio also makes me think about future prints.

It makes sense to produce something that would be part of a current series.  Some of my series are essentially done.  Good examples of these include Birds and Seeds, Ecclesiastes,  and The Fourth of July.  These were all print series, with each print being the same size and format, each an individual print that was part of a larger whole.  I enjoyed all of these, but the plan is complete and I don't anticipate making any more prints in any of these series.

On the other hand, I do have a few series that are more open.  For example, there's the Everyman series, my saints, and the second largest series I ever did.  Right now I have no plans to make any more prints in the series, but that doesn't mean I won't someday.   If the right opportunity comes, I'll take it.  Earlier this year I did the latest in my supermarket series, Scenes from the Grand Opening, after a break of a few years.  The delay was because I didn't have any ideas, but then suddenly I saw something and had another idea for a print.  At this point I have no other ideas, but that could change the next time I am in a supermarket.  I'll leave this series open for now.  My current project, a print in my Floating World series about boardwalk life, probably has more to go.  I have ideas for at least two more diptychs from my original list of ideas, so this series is definitely open.  It's just a matter of deciding when I will do the next one.  It may be the next print, or I may do something else.

One possibility I have considered recently is something to add to a relatively small series so far, So Soon No More, which is about local landmarks that no longer exist.  Bars and restaurants and stores come and go around here quite frequently, and I pay no mind to such things.  However, when a place has been around for more than 50 years and then is suddenly gone, I will take notice.   What brought this to mind was the recent demolition of a large piece of land, next to route 35 and between 8th and 10th Avenues in Belmar.  What came down was an old motel (the Belmar Motor Lodge), and two banquet halls.  The funny things is that one of those banquet halls replaced a diner that I had been to.  Pat's Diner had been in the middle of that property up until 20 or 25 years ago, when it was demolished to make room for a second banquet hall.  I can only remember being there once- it was okay, but didn't leave any special impression.  Some recent internet research shows that originally it had been across the road, closer to the river, but had been moved to what turned out to be its last location.  But now it's gone, as is the building that replaced it.  A photo of how that lot looks right now can be seen below:

As of now, I have no plans to do anything about Pat's Diner.  Like I said, my one time there didn't leave much of an impression, and I had taken no photos of it when it existed.  (the internet has some photos of the interior and exterior, but I didn't take any of those, so I won't use them for art)  However, there are some other places around the area that have gone in recent years, places I (and my father) patronized, had been around for more than 50 years, and I got photos of before they were torn down.  For example, this series includes my take on the interior of Vesuvio, an Italian restaurant with deep roots in the area. The exterior is still there, but it was bought out by a rival years ago and the interior gutted as part of a new plan.   The Circus Drive-In is another place I have made art about, but the original owners sold it, new owners probably realized how much work went into running it, and sold the whole property to developers, who eventually put up a plaza of stores and small restaurants.  So far these are the only two in the series, but I think it may be time for a third.  There are other examples I can think of, of places I have gone to and remembered, now just gone to make room for something else.

Towards that end, I spent some time today sawing wood, making a new board that may be the next print in this series about local landmarks that have been eliminated to make room for something that someone thinks is a good idea.  I got my jig saw from the back of my car. and cut off a proper sized hunk of birch plywood.  I put this aside for now, as I want to finish my current piece first.   

For music today I had brought two home burned discs from my friend Doug from the storage box. I had started with The Marvelous 3, and their album Math and Other Problems, which seemed appropriate as it was in a math class that Doug and I met.  (he did better than I did, eventually getting his PhD in Math, while I became an artist)  And the first song was pretty marvelous, but the player switched off during that song and refused to play anymore.  I went to the other disc, Graham Parker's 2005 album (backed with the Figgs) Songs of No Consequence.  I don't know if it had anything to do with the typed (probably via a computer as real typewriters are hard to find these days) song list, as opposed to the hand written list on the first disc, but all 13 tracks on the Parker album played just fine, from start to finish.  Kind of reminded me a bit of Bob Dylan,  even though Parker is British, and his main influences are seen as The Beatles and pub rock.  In any case, I enjoyed it, and will listen to it again.  

Decoration Day Blues, 2026

 As usual, I have some blues on this Decoration Day, commonly known these days as Memorial Day.  The bank and post office were closed today, but I planned ahead and these didn't bother me too much.  The Studio was probably closed today (or at least it always was for the big national holidays when Herb ran the place), but I didn't need to be there anyway.  I don't like the fact that my town was filled up with tourists for the past week or so, which means I was pretty much trapped in my house the past week.   On the other hand, we had a rainy weekend, so all the people who came to the beach for the occasion couldn't really enjoy it. 

No need to write about the history of Decoration Day in Carbondale or its renaming- those are covered in previous blog posts.  (go to May of recent years and you'll find them)  However, I will talk about the blues.  As mentioned previously, on this day I always think about the Howling' Wolf song called "Decoration Day Blues", which I had on one of the first blues albums I bought.  That vinyl right now is in storage, so I don't get to listen to it at the moment.  And not burned to CD either, as I had a four disc boxed set of Howling' Wolf on my shelf, and never had the immediate need to make more discs of his work.  Luckily, everything can be found on the internet if you know where to look, and I do, so I was at least able to hear his version today.  

The image above isn't of the Wolf, who was more a force of nature than a singer and guitarist, though he could do those things as well.   I've never done any images of the man or art about his songs, though he was very much like a later version of Robert Johnson, except for much bigger and even a little meaner.  What you see above is a print I made of John Cephas, performing as part of a duo at Philadelphia's River Blues festival in 1990, based on a photo I took myself.  I did the print as a two color  linoleum demonstration piece I did for a workshop a long time ago, but it is a good bluesy piece of art to put up today.

Boardwalk Bar part 18

 I decided that the next logical step would be to ink up this block and see what I had.  I knew I had enough paper and ink to do the job, so getting those ready was my first step, once I got to the Studio.  Got out my printing tools, and started the process.  It wasn't easy.  First proofs are always the most difficult, and the slight curvature of the block proved to be more a problem than expected.  This now has me reconsidering the use of other pieces of lauan for making more prints.  Although my clamps and such have improved the situation of this wood some, some areas of the block were just hard to ink.  

For the purposes of printing, I used a sheet of newspaper on top of the Japanese okawara I printed this boardwalk print on.  However, I decided that I wasn't getting the best results, so I ended up removing the newsprint and just rubbing the paper directly.  This turned out not to be a problem, and I had no tears of the paper occur.  I ended up re-inking a lot, which may be because it was the first proof, or maybe because of the slight curve, or maybe both.  I wouldn't say the resulting proof is perfect, but it is good enough for practicing colors.  Results are below:

My plan right now is to go back to the block when it dries and cut a little more.  Most of this is details that filled in as part of the inking, though some of this is some minor changes I may make.  Although I blotted the block before I left, I probably won't try to cut anymore until a week has passed, to give it a little more time to dry.  Same for the proof- probably want to wait at least a week before I try coloring it, so I put that in the rack to dry.  

For music today I planned to go with all Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, what with two albums worth of material in my storage box.  In both cases, the desired album was the second one on the disc, so I had to skip to the later section each time.  The first disc I tried started with 100 Days, 100 Nights, an album I know well as I actually have an official copy of my own (see June of 2019 on the blog to find out more).  However, it came with a bonus track I didn't know, so I started listening to it there.  All well and good, but the next song stopped and I couldn't get the disc to play after that.  Remembering what happened last time, I put in one of Molly's discs (Doolittle, from the Pixies, written about back in June of 2023), let that play, then put in my Sharon Jones disc, and listened to Dap-Dippin, With Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, their first album from 2002.  No problems.  When that ended I advanced to the 13th song of a second disc to listen to the 2014 album Give the People What They Want (a title I believe was used by the Kinks for an album they put out in the 80's, but you can't copyright a title).  Both albums sounded like typical Dap Kings albums, but I like that so it wasn't a problem.  I guess I slightly preferred the second album, but I'd listen to both as music to make art to.  

Boardwalk Bar part 17

 Taking my car to the shop again yesterday got the warning light off.  There may be a problem down the road, but that's a problem for another day.  Meanwhile, it runs just fine, it didn't cost me anything, and the warning light is off.  So that meant put a little gas in it and get up to the Studio this morning.

My memories of bar taps weren't too far away from reality, at least when I looked online for some images.  I sketched what I found of the taps themselves on scrap paper, and figured I'd make up the rest when I got there.  And that's what I did.  I erased everything I had drawn the last time I was up there, and redrew in my new bar tap station, partly from my internet sketches, and partly just made up out of my head.  I then cut it out, using my small gouge.  That seemed fine, so I cut out everything else that remained in that part of the scene- the space behind the bar (including bottles) and one last head and figure.  And that was pretty much all I had left.  Results of this area can be seen in the detail shown below:

I then went back over the whole thing.  I found a few more details to cut, but not many.  I spent some time looking at the whole thing.  In general I like what I see.  Seems a good mix of black and white, an effective composition that way (both as individual panels and the whole diptych), so it should work even better when I add the color.  Next time I will ink it up, and if I like how it looks, pull a proof.  If I like that proof, pull another one.  Current state of the fully cut block can be seen below:

For music today I had planned two more discs from my storage box, but I couldn't get the first one to play.  After the first song it tended to have problems, and eventually stopped completely.  Then I remembered that sometimes this particular disc player has a hard time with home burned discs, but seems to work again on those after playing an official label produced disc. So today I did that, popping in one of Molly's discs, the original version of 1977's My Aim is True from Elvis Costello, which I wrote about back on September of 2024 if you want to know more about it.  After that I put in the home burned disc that wouldn't play before and it was fine and played all the way through.  Coincidence?  No idea, but it worked.  The second disc I played was the 2001 album Summer Of A Thousand Years by the Grip Weeds.   I don't know much about them, except that they came from here in New Jersey, and I have occasionally heard songs by them on the local radio station.  As far as this album goes, my initial reaction was that it reminded me a lot of the Shazam, which is not surprising, as both bands have a lot of the same influences.  (so does Elvis Costello for that matter)  Since I am also a fan of the Shazam, it's not surprising that I enjoyed the album, though only a few songs had the kind of hooks that make me want to listen to it a lot.  It's acceptable background music, but I won't be in a hurry to grab it again.  Never got to play the other disc I had brought with me.  Maybe next time. 

Boardwalk Bar part 16

 Got up to the Studio building in the late morning, and didn't bother to look for anyone, as I have all the information I need.  No, today was just about working, so that's what I did.  I started by doing some new drawing, the glass and ashtray in the foreground, and something new in the mid ground.  I had been thinking about it, and realized that there was one thing missing from my scene, and that was the station with all the beer taps.  It seems like every bar has one.  I couldn't put it any place I had already cut, so that eliminated some locations.  I settled on a space not far from the one bartender, and where some uncut areas were.  I went ahead and cut out most of the remaining figures, and my redrawn section of the bar with the glass and ashtray.  For now I didn't touch the area with the beer taps and the person nearest it, in case I want to make some changes and I probably will.  Everything I cut was on the right panel today, so I am giving you a close up of that:

And also a view of the whole composition, both sides, where it's at now.  Right now my car is acting up again, and I may have to take it in for repairs, which means I may not be able to get back to the Studio this week.  Everything is taken care of, so if I have to miss any time it won't affect me.  Rent is paid, framed images from the recent show are in a safe place, no immediate deadlines for the next image, etc.

For music today I brought two more albums from the storage box, though things I wouldn't necessarily put together.  I started with Saturns Pattern by Paul Weller.  Weller may be best known as the leader of the Jam, a band that was still active in the early days of MTV, but not for much longer.  I have a few records by the band on both vinyl and CD.  I remember liking this particular album when Doug first sent it, but today it didn't do much for me.  It may have to do with certain songs just not playing there in the Studio, but that may be the player more than the disc.  I'll have to listen to it again on my home player.  In any case, when that ended I put on another album by Old 97's, Most Messed Up.  Again, one song wouldn't play, so I didn't get a proper view of the album.  In general the sound is about the same as the other album I have, but the songs are not quite as interesting.  I can see myself listening to it again paired with the other album I have from the same band, and it might make more sense that way.  

Digital Fun

 

All over the news this morning was the story about the hacking of Canvas, an online educational system used by some 8000 institutions, both colleges and grade schools.  From what I gathered, an outside group hacked in and demanded a ransom, and the whole system was shut down by the company as a precaution. The problem is that some 8000 institutions are very much relying on this system, and this being a week when a lot of finals happen, this was a big problem.  The system has since been restored, and the company claims nothing of significance was stolen, but I'm sure there will be more to this story as time goes by.

This doesn't affect me much.  My process hasn't changed much the past 500 years.  I cut wood with iron, so I'm really barely out of the stone age.  And on the eve of Y2K, I even made a woodcut from a log using stone tools (see above), just to see if I could continue to make woodcuts if civilization collapsed, as some predicted it would.  (as it turned out, we didn't even lose cable)

However, once upon a time I was a college professor, and Canvas would have been relevant. I believe my community college took it on around the time I was let go there.  (full timers were entitled to all the classes and wanted them and were paid for them, even if the classes didn't happen because the students couldn't stand them)  Meanwhile, my state supported four year school was freaked out by Covid, and this accelerated their plan to shift as much as possible to an all online system.  I was still on staff during the start of the pandemic, and we had to scramble.  At least with my class we could.  I felt bad for students and teachers with things like furniture making, or ceramics, where access to classroom  equipment was vital to the process.  On very short notice I shifted as much as I could to an online process, posting everything to my own site, and doing the rest with e-mail.  That, and allowing students to substitute whatever materials they could find for what we had asked for at the beginning of what we thought would be a normal semester.  Somehow it worked.  The school thanked us for what we did, and in the same e-mail said we could never do it again, for now they were arranging an online system of their control.  That turned out to be Blackboard, a system that was already failing across the country, but it had been decided far above my department.  As a special bonus, the class I had been teaching the past 15 years (always with weekly syllabus approval each semester) was completely changed to something new- new projects, and only done in the order they had decided.  I still was willing to teach the class, and was originally listed as the assigned faculty, but the computer system decided I wasn't fit and I was let go.  

As it turned out, Blackboard was let go after two years (no surprise to me) and replaced with Canvas.  And that is what the school still has.  (I don't know if it's still at the community college, but that they did go through 2 or 3 other online systems before adopting Canvas)  What I was thinking about today was that for the past few semesters, I always taught on Fridays.  I didn't mind- I thought there was less traffic on the Parkway on Fridays, I never had a problem with parking (other days may have been worse), and one day is the same as another as far as work goes.  Even the last classes that I temporarily had were on a Friday.   I have no idea if I was still there if I would still have Friday classes, but if so, this would have been a terrible day to have classes, with the whole computer system down for hours.  No final exams in art classes, but final projects and papers were due.  

All I will say now is that there was never any hacking my grade book or my paper syllabi, or my personal website.  And everyone learned something.  It was a fine system.

Boardwalk Bar part 15

 Last night I went through my storage box, and found I had the equivalent of 16 more albums of material that hadn't been listened to yet in the Studio.  All seemed to be things from my college friend Doug (not to be confused with Chicago printmaker Doug, mentioned in the last post) all on CD.  That stuff should take me through the end of the month.  I set them aside.

In the morning I decided to make a couple of stops on the way to the Studio, things I had to deal with sooner or later.  As a result, I didn't get there until almost 11:00.  Not that it makes any difference.  A few more artworks were up on the walls. and if I read it correctly, art from some the current instructors there.  Perhaps I should look into doing another woodcut class there.  A few people asked me about it at the Open Studio.  

Today's work was to move over again to the right panel, and take on some of the figures around the bar.  I started with the three in the lower left corner of the panel, then moved over and dealt with some of the figures on the far right.  I did part of the bar top- around the first three figures and the far corner.  I left the middle front alone, as I currently have a glass and ashtray there, and I may want to redraw those before I cut them.  The rest of the figures and the area within the bar I also left alone for now, but I may take them on next week.   There just isn't that much more to cut.  All my work today was on the right side panel (left side of the eventual print) so that is all I photographed today:

For music I selected two discs that seemed to go well together- a couple of pieces of Americana.  I started with Just Add Ice from the V-Roys.  Once upon a time, the band was known as the Viceroys, but for legal reasons had to change it, so the album name is an inside joke- adding the letters "ICE" would change the band's name back to the original.  The band was out of Knoxville, and led by fellow William and Mary grad Scott Miller.  (I don't remember if Doug knew him or just knew of him, but his time at the school overlapped with ours) Mostly acoustic, leaning more toward traditional country.  Not bad at all, but not particularly exciting either.  I have read online that the live shows moved more toward punk, but this album is not that.  When that ended I put on Satellite Rides by Dallas band Old 97's.  A bit more electric and I actually knew two of the songs, probably from local radio.  Despite the college connection, I think I liked the latter album better, which is good, as I have another Old 97's album in my pile of discs.  I am now looking forward to it a bit more now.  

Boardwalk Bar part 14

My car is working again, so I was up to the Studio this morning.  The first thing I did was check out the wall where my work had been, and it was not there, as expected.  In fact, none of the work that had been up in that part of the lobby was up.  There was art up on the wall in the other half of the lobby, what looked like kid's art.  I continued to my space downstairs.  In that space I found Molly's three works, and two of mine.  Where was the third?  Made a stop by the office to see if it was there.  Jeanne had just stepped out I was told, but my missing third work might be in the back.  Actually I found it on a table in the side room.  I took it and headed for my space.

I cleared my table, got out the current block, and got to work.  I had spent a few minutes at home looking at my photo that included the ceiling of the Headliner bar, and took some quick notes of what I saw.  I brought those notes with me today, so I took that out and set it aside.  My plan was to finish the left side of the image.  First I designated and cut two little pieces out between the first and second band member, something I had noticed in my photo from last time that needed to be done.  Next I moved up top and took out all that needed to be removed from the ceiling, such as the shadow of the palm tree and some of the supports holding up the roof.  I also did a few thin cuts near the overhead tower, just clarify what was there a little more.  This all done, it was still early, so I moved over and did the right side ceiling- the tree, the supports, etc.  That took me up to about noon, and I decided to halt things there.  I cleaned up, documented today's work, and put the returned framed prints up on top of my table.   Results of today's work can be seen below:

For music today I went to my storage box one more time and one last home burned disc, called ZOCK!--AAAY!.  What is that?  It's a home burned copy of a mix tape, complete with cartoony cover, from Doug Huston.  Doug was a visiting artist, a printmaker from Chicago Art Institute, there in Carbondale as part of a four session joint State of Illinois-State of Jalisco, Mexico print collaborative project.  One of the sessions took place in Carbondale, with artists from all locations.  (that session also included Audrey Niffenegger, then a printmaker from Chicago, later a novelist with a best seller that was turned into an HBO miniseries)  On a later trip to Chicago, Joel Feldman (our printmaker in Carbondale) brought back tapes Doug had made for all the grad students.  Mine was this ZOCK thing.  It's an odd mix of music, a combination of novelty songs, classic r&b, country, pop songs that sound like they are from the 40's, and lots of western stuff.  Once my NJ printmaker (who set me up with Carbondale) Bob Sennhauser, put down (what I think was) Doug Huston, complaining of a print artist in Chicago who would rather be a dj than an artist.  Maybe so, but what I think he really wanted to be was a cowboy, based on the high number of western theme songs on this tape, plus his later novel, "VAST" which was made entirely from excerpts (all footnoted) from western pulp novels. Whatever his outside interest were, at that session Doug was there to work as an artist, and he turned out a number of multiscreen prints, some of which are in my personal collection.  (I later adapted his screen printing registration system to woodcut for my own multiple block prints)  Later Doug sent me another tape, with two complete albums, one from Reverend Horton Heat on one side (used for the tape cover as well, along with the words "this is not for Sunday" and Shadowy Men from a Shadowy Planet on the other side.  No album titles or song listings, but I later learned the former was "The Full Custom Gospel Sounds of the Reverend Horton Heat".  I know because I later bought the official album from the label, and a copy of it was in the Studio.   This disc I listened to today was pretty strange, but as always, good music to make art to.  Doug may have been on to something.  

It's Over

 Yes, the recent exhibition of art by building tenants at the JSAC is over.  Kind of a short show, only a few weeks really.   In the past these things have stayed up for months.  However I was told that this one had to come down today, no options to leave it up another day.  I wasn't actually there today, but this is what I was told- the work would come down today and be placed in my Studio.  My car has been repaired, so I expect to be there tomorrow to see all this for myself.  But what I can tell you now is that I have been told the show was coming down today.  If you didn't see it, you have no chance now.  It's too bad, as there was some nice work up there.  I assume something else will be replacing it soon, thus the reason it had to come down today with no delays.  

I still haven't heard anything about how the show went, or how it was received.  I spent the whole five hours of the Open Studio in my space, and it was a successful event, but as a result I didn't get to attend the show or talk to many viewers.  A few people who came down to my space mentioned having seen my prints upstairs, at least once with enough detail that I knew they had really looked at them.  Jeanne, who was upstairs during the show, has been on vacation for the past few weeks and I haven't been able to get her reaction to the whole thing.  Perhaps this week.

Boardwalk Bar part 13

 Today's plan seemed obvious- continue on the left panel, all those people around the band or the bar.  And so that's what I did.  I had started the people near the band last time, and this time I finished all the dancers and did all the people around the bar.  Did the bar top as well.  Some things were intentionally left black, but mostly I cut out everything.  I still haven't done the final cutting inside the bar, or on the ceiling of the space, and I don't know yet if I am going to do those next or start doing the people in the right side panel.  I'll figure that out next time I am there.  Because I just worked on the one side today, that is the only thing I photographed.  That can be seen below.  If you want to see the right side panel or the whole thing, go back to the last post about this piece.

Jeanne was still on vacation, so word about the end of the show and how it went will still have to wait.  Luckily I don't need her to keep working on this block.

For music today I went back to the storage box and ended up doing things with an 80's theme.  I started with a copied disc, Singles- 45's and Under by Squeeze.  This is a compilation album, essentially a collection of early singles up to the initial end of the group, and one of the most popular albums of the era.  That may be the reason I didn't own a copy myself- no need, since I heard the songs constantly on the radio or coming from other rooms on my freshman hall.  (Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits is another album in this category; it seemed that everyone around me owned a copy so I never bothered to get one)  The Squeeze album did quite well, going platinum both in the US and the UK.  All I know is that it has just about every song by the band that I know, and came out in the early 80's, so that I tend to associate the album with the 80's.  (technically, a few of the earliest songs date back to the 70's, but the album came out when I was in high school, and was hugely popular when I was in college, all in the 80's)  I had room on the disc after the Squeeze ended, so I ended up putting a bunch of songs from the Grosse Point Blank soundtrack.  That 90's film was set at a 10 year high school reunion, and the female lead was a DJ doing an 80's themed radio show for the occasion (it was the 10 year reunion for the DJ as well), so the soundtrack is heavy with 80's songs.  To be fair, the producers got a few things wrong, and some of the songs are from the 90's, including a few songs I copied for my disc, but the sentiment was there.  Besides, I followed it up with another 80's album, a six song Live disc from the Smithereens.  This short live collection dates from a performance at the Ritz in 1986 and was part of the Restless Performance Series, the only other thing from which I have ever seen in the live one disc Dream Syndicate album I have and have written about on this blog back in April of 2020 if you want to go looking for it.  I'm not sure why this Smithereens disc ended up in this box, and not on the shelf with other Smithereens albums, but it worked out well in this case, as I had it to listen to today.  I have a lot of music from before the 80's, and a lot of more recent music as well, so that decade is just another long ago time that I lived through.  Still, it was all good music to work to.

By the way, I did see Squeeze live years later up in Fairfield, CT.  My brother was going to school there, and working spotlights at the campus arena.  He arranged for tickets and had me drive our friend Jimmy Brown up there for the occasion.  Whenever the band played one of their "new" songs, everyone ignored them. When they played something from the Singles album, everyone got up, danced, cheered, and sang along.  I told you it was a popular album.

Portraits Again

 

I wrote on the topic of portraits previously, but today I felt the need to do it again.  The reason was a story on the CBS Sunday Morning show about Jenny Saville.  She's a fairly famous artist (I've heard of her) who seems to specialize in very large scale head and figure pieces of a somewhat expressionist nature.  Realistic, but not.  (there are plenty of examples of her work on the web if you want to go looking for it)  I like it well enough, but it's not something I would do.  Yet when she named her inspirations, a lot of them were the same artists who I have looked at and inspired me.  Also, I showed five pieces in my Studio at last week's Open Studio event.  Two of them were pieces with small figures, my large America piece and the latest completed boardwalk print (some from models, some from photographs, and some right out of my head), and three were life sized head and figure pieces, in black and white.  One was the image at the top of this post.  One was the image shown on the previous post about portraits, and one was an image of my friend Kathy, much better than the previous one I had tried to do of her.  By this selection, it is obvious that I like portrait pieces. 

As I said last time, I don't necessarily consider all head and figure pieces to be portraits.  The piece at the top of this post for instance I don't consider a portrait, because it is not about the person who posed for it.  I think it looks a bit like her, as was intended. (see the photo below for the posed model)

But the piece is not about her.  It's about the concept of a person with a job of some kind taking a smoke break outside, a common sight in that time period.  The model was just someone I knew and hired to pose for the piece.  I knew she was a capable model, and had enough experience of smoking to pull it off.  (the original person who inspired it declined to pose for it)  On the other hand, the other two pieces I showed last week were very much about the people who posed for them, and I do consider these to be portraits.  In both cases the original blocks were destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, so these framed copies are the only ones I have, and not for sale.

So how do Jenny Saville and I have a lot of the same inspirations and very different types of work?  I think what it comes down to is what you take from the previous artist, and what your goals are.  One thing I said often the other day was that the process of woodcut hasn't changed much in the last 500 years, so it really comes down to the drawing.  And this is true.  There is a big difference between my work, and the work of contemporary woodcut artist Tom Huck, and renaissance artist Albrect Durer, yet we all use the same process to produce our work- draw something, remove that which we wish to be white, leave behind what we wish to be black, and then ink it and print it.  In Durer's case it was likely others who did the actual cutting and printing, but the process is the same one.  Saville looked at Lucien Freud and seems to have taken a little of his painting style, his interest in sometimes telling stories, his use of head and figure, and his willingness to sometimes work with models who are not necessarily what is considered attractive by society, but interesting to art.  I look at Lucien Freud and took from him his approach to realism, an interest in telling stories, and his use of head and figure.  It all seems to have worked out.

Boardwalk Bar part 12

 The plan for today was to start with the band, and then see how far I got.  So that's what I did.  I arrived in the late morning and went directly to my space.  I cleared the table and got started.   First I did the three band members, moving from left to right.  I had more time left, so I went ahead and started working on cutting the figures adjacent to the band.   I did at least some of everyone who was bordering the band, considering the amount of black left behind as I went.  When I got done with all those, I decided I had enough, and cleaned up and packed up for home.  I left the block there as I had for the last few weeks, though this time I added another layer to the boards on either side, before setting the clamp.  My goal is to get these boards to give up their slight bends.  All my work was on one side today, so I'm giving you a photo of that panel:

I am also posting a photo of the whole block, so you can see the progress of the whole thing.  That is below:

For music today I went back to the alphabetical discs in my storage box one last time, for the last two Beatles albums I have there that haven't been listened to yet, which happen to be their first and what might have been their last, though the two have some things in common.  I started with their first album, Please Please Me, recorded in a single day in 1963.  The album includes four songs already recorded (A and B sides of the first two singles), but they were only given a day to do the rest of it.  So the rest of their first album is a mix of originals and covers, but songs they knew well and had probably played hundreds or thousands of times, ideal for straight recordings of the band playing live in the studio.  Most songs were done in two takes, the best used for the album.  By 1969, things had changed for the band, but it was decided to do an album the old fashioned way, filming them writing and recording it, again the band recorded live straight to the record.  This time they gave themselves a month to get it done, and all this was done on a film set instead of a recording studio.  The project was called "Get Back" and was almost the end of the band.  Sometimes they were playing together in the studio, or on the roof of their building in London, and it was like old times.  However, often there was a lot of tension.  The band members had grown apart, and doing dozens of takes of each song trying to get it perfect live didn't help.  When it was all ended, the band was ready to never see each other again.   Maybe it was just pride, but they decided to get together one more time, record an album the way they wanted, and let George Martin produce it.  That album, Abbey Road, (named for their studio) came out in late 1969, and they called it quits after that.  All the "Get Back" footage was later edited into the movie "Let It Be" and that and an album of the same name came out in 1970.  Both had some great music, but the film was edited in a way that emphasized the problems the band was going through.  My second disc of the day was that Let It Be album, which like their first, was essentially recordings of the band playing live (except the new version of "Across the Universe" a resurrected song first recorded in 1967), and produced (some say overproduced) by Phil Spector.  So two albums the same and yet very different from each other, and both excellent music to work to.

Boardwalk Bar part 11

 The Open Studio is all done, so now it's just time to get back to work.  I went directly up to the building, and then directly to my space. After clearing off my table I got to work on the current block.  Today's task was to cut out the deep background, under the chain link fence, and around the tiny faces and figures in the deep background.  As noted here previously, these characters are based somewhat on similar characters in issues of Mister X, drawn by Jaime Hernandez, though none copied directly from the originals.  They are meant to show deep background. What I did was cut out the faces and (occasionally) figures, then cut all the space around them, leaving just the parts that will stand out, surrounded by little black lines.  And I cut out everything between the fence and the next layer of figures, dancing, standing, or sitting around the bar, smaller than the ones closer, but that is part of the idea of showing space.  I have a plan here, but I have never done anything like this before in woodcut, so I really don't know how it will turn out.  Results of today's cutting can be seen below:

One thing I was asked a bunch of times during the Open Studio was how long it would take me to do a print, specifically the boardwalk prints, and they had the examples of this one in progress, and the completed The Floating World: Boardwalk Days print (Asbury Park).  I told them that I didn't know, except that they would take as long as they take.  I have no deadlines for getting these done.   What I did say was that the last boardwalk print took over 50 sessions from start to finish.  With the current one, I have to finish cutting it, taking some proofs, coloring one as an experiment, then coloring a second one (either the same colors if I like them, or different ones if I want to try something else), and only then deciding if I am done.  I just can't predict how long that will take.

For music today I pulled two discs from the storage box (probably from my friend Doug) just labeled "BOB DYLAN LIVE 1966" and DISC 1 and DISC 2.  The first disc was acoustic, the second one electric, and each 40+ minutes, so I assumed it was from a two disc set.  I wanted to know more, and the internet had it of course.  What I was listening to today was The Bootleg Series Vol 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966 The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert.  It was actually recorded at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, but the other name became associated with it and stuck.  As stated previously, the first disc is him solo and acoustic, while in the second he is electric and backed with the Hawks, who with a change in drummer would become known as The Band.  I can't say I was very excited by it.  I like Dylan okay, but I'm not a huge fan, and I had it on low as background, so the words weren't as clear as they could be, and the key to Dylan was always his lyrics.  Still, it was good music to work to, and I wouldn't be surprised to find myself listening to it again.  

Open Studio Day

 The Open Studio event was scheduled for noon to 5 pm.  I decided to leave around 10:30 am, get there around 11:00 am, or about an hour before.  This would allow me time to move things inside (weather permitting) and get the room straightened out, before the people started arriving.  Weather was cloudy, but no rain, so I moved a few large framed pieces up from the basement and loaded them in my car.  I left as planned, got up to Ocean Grove a little before 11.  So far, so good.

The rain was still holding off, so I moved the framed prints and recently colored saints into the building.  A few other people were around, but I wouldn't say crowded.  It took me three trips to get everything to my space, but no rain fell, so I was happy.  Got the space straightened up, including a quick sweep of my area.  My plan was to walk across the street, leaving around 11:30, and grab a slice of pizza for lunch.  Left a few minutes late, but I figured I was still ok on time.  However, I saw no pizzas at the counters and the place was still locked up.  Not open for lunch at 11:40 am?  Well, no pizza for me.  I walked back to the JSAC.  My room was all set.

I was ready for the noon start.  No one there yet, but I had a block to work on, so I didn't mind.  Eventually I had my first visitors.  Over the course of the five hour event, I had somewhere between 35 and 40 people wander through, a fairly good number.  There were two people who I had invited, and one other person I knew.  Some had some printmaking knowledge and experience, and some knew nothing about it.  Some visitors mentioned having seen the prints upstairs in the show.  A few asked about getting studios of their own, but I have nothing to do with that.  Many admired the large space we have, and it is larger than some people have, but smaller than some have.  A few asked about me teaching classes, and I told them it wasn't up to me.  A few were there specifically to see Molly; they were disappointed.   

One thing I was asked a few times (and I don't remember this question at previous Open Studios) was how I got started in woodcut.  That's a fair question; it's not a common medium.  I gave them them a short but true version:  I saw some woodcuts in a book, decided that I liked them and that I could do it, tried one, then another, liked them, then spoke to the print professor at Montclair State (which I was attending at the time) and asked him if I took his class, could I do woodcuts?  He told me if I took his class I could do anything I wanted.  The rest is history.  Now the longer version for the record.   For a class at Montclair I was required to do a book report, I selected a book of German Expressionism (a style my paintings had been compared to), saw all the woodcuts, decided I could probably do that, and tried it.  I didn't have any cutting tools yet, so I used a carpet knife, a drypoint needle (from my etching class) and a screwdriver, plus a scrap of pine plank.  I did one, then another, then spoke to the print professor.  I took his class, then he eventually hooked me up with the program in Carbondale, I went out there and learned some more, then came back to New Jersey.  Thirty years later, I'm at where I am now.

As a result of all the visitors and the many questions I got, not much time to work on any new cutting (people did admire the works I had on display- see the photos above- often remarking how much patience I must have to create such large works), but I did complete the most complex area of the block, the chain link fence in the deep background, the clips that join it to the roof, and a little background around the band.  What I did can be seen below:

I didn't get to see any of the show, so I don't know how it went, other than visitors to my Studio mentioning that they had seen it.  Perhaps I'll ask about it next time I am there.  I left the colored saints there (the collectors never showed), loaded everything else in my car, and drove home.