How did I get marked for the poor terrorist list

This article was recently brought to my attention, I got a laugh out of it anyway.

Goya's Ghosts

For Goya fans out there this movie is a must see. It really serves to put his work into the context of the times in which he was living. Although if I am not mistaken in real life he had quite a large family, in this there is no mention of it.

Exchanges and Calls for Entry

Any and all who are looking for print exchanges or shows to participate in should check out these two websites.

http://www.printmakingstudio.com/printexchanges.html

http://www.printmakers.info/listings.php

As I am sure many of the print makers out there are aware Print Zero studios runs a very large print exchange. I participated in it this year, the only requirement was that the paper size be 5x7. I just received the prints from this exchange, unfortunately the hand writing is not always easy to read on them, so I opted to not butcher their names horribly. According to the card they sent with the prints 291 print makers from 17 different countries participated this year, and the prints are also part of touring show. The dates and locations are as follows:

August 2007 - Sev Shoon/ Ballard Works
Seattle, WA

October 2007 - Print Walls Gallery
Madison, WI

October 2007 - Rainbow Building Gallery
University of Miami, Florida

March 2008 - Pratt Fine Gallery at Tashiro Kaplan
Seattle, WA

TBA - Pacific Northwest College of Arts
Portland, Oregon

Sesame Street Live

Unless you work for the theater group Sesame Street Live or have worked at a concert hall where they have performed you will never see this side of it, backstage. The Big Bird costume is the most complicated one that they have, so when it is not in use they hang him. Hanging it also makes it easier for dancer to get it on and off as it just has to be lowered or raised. Between Big Bird scenes in the show you will often see the top part of the costume hanging like this, but with the addition of a sweaty hyperventilating dancer sitting underneath it wearing Big Bird pants.

Dumbass

Decided to do some quick lithos of my LCC days, just because I saw and did things there that is unlikely to experience anywhere else. This one is setting up the portable basketball floor, which was one of the most onerous tasks we had. The panels weigh around 200 pounds each.

Cheese

Alright just bought some sharp cheddar from "Wisconsin", and its as crappy as the rest of the cheddar here, think tofu gone bad. So either they are lying, or they're buying from a lousy dairy. Just wanted to say that for the sake of those non Wisconsin people out there, the WI cheese in these out of state stores cannot even be said to be a paltry imitation of the sublime wonder that is a WI sharp cheddar.

Alright this is my first oil painting, a little bit got shaved off the sides as it was a tad bit wider than the scanner.

Paper making

Any and all who are interested in paper and paper making should visit this site:

http://aic.stanford.edu/sg/bpg/annual/v15/bp15-21.html

It has all kinds of good information about the history of papermaking and how our technical advancements have impacted the end product (pretty much for the worse)

Oh yeah for any paper makers who might read this, if you want to make a paper you can actually write on with pencil try adding chalk into the pulp mix.

Michelangelo

We've also been discussing Michelangelo in Aesthetics, and he's been giving us some interesting information. One trivia fact that Michelangelo was present and watching the unearthing of the Farnese Bull, which is a Roman copy of a massive, carved from a single block, Hellenistic sculpture. This sculpture is evidently a compositional marvel because it looks good from any angle. Also we have been discussing how he combined the restfullness of classicism with the turbulence of Hellenistic art. Wolflin when doing a formal analysis of the Sistine Chapel was the first to notice that all of figures have restful contours on one side, and then are turbulent on the other.

Mavericks and Miscreants of Art History

Caravaggio one of the greatest artists in history was also a bit of a miscreant. Reportedly when he mysteriously appeared in Rome he was "naked and extremely needy." Thanks to his skill as painter he was quickly able to gain work as a successful artist. Unfortunately the man liked to fight, and ended up accidently killing someone. Not even his painting could save him then, and he had to flee Rome. He went to Naples for awhile and then bounced over to Malta where he was inducted in as a knight of Malta. Yet again he got in trouble for fighting, this time he injured another knight, and was kicked out of the oder for being "a foul and rotten member." He ended up returning to Naples convinced that people were pursuing him, and he wasn't wrong about that. An attempt was made on his life, and for awhile people believed him to be dead until he opted to reveal himself; his face had been horribly disfigured. Friends he had in Rome were able to procure a pardon for him from the pope, but he died of a fever in 1610 en route to Rome.

Color litho

This one was destined for having color from the start, instead of using a litho pencil I drew this using a green prismacolor pencil. It was actually a pretty stable etch. The whole thing was done using only one stone.

2 Lithos one drawing

For whatever reason lithography has been feeling really good to me right now. On this one after finishing with printing it I started to grinding, but stopped after a couple passes of the levigator because the image was being modified in a rather beautiful way, so I stopped and etched it. It pretty much worked.

Can't forget about the elephants

These paintings were done by elephants in Thailand, evidently if you go there you can buy one for $15.

Humans are so egotistical

We so often forget that we are not the only ones who paint. Chimpanzees enjoy painting. In fact due to the construction of their arms and their massive strength they are capable of producing brush strokes that a human just physically cannot duplicate. These two paintings are by Congo, who produced over 400 drawings and paintings in his lifetime.

Emil Nolde

Prior to New York and abstract expressionism, the hot bed of the art world was in Germany in its own expressionism. There were a few different groups going on at this point in time, die Brucke, die blaue Reiter, and Bauhaus ( actually more based on Dadaism). The members of die Brucke through experimentation made several breakthroughs in printmaking technique. Emil Nolde was one of those members. He made lithographs, woodcuts, and is perhaps better known for his paintings, but by far his intaglio prints are what stand out. Out of the entire die Brucke group he was the only one with prior experience in intaglio, and he kept his secrets to himself. It is known though that starting in around 1907 he switched from using copper plates to iron. Reputedly because he liked the shine of the iron plates.

This is based off of a story I had heard the last time I went home. Evidently in times of war our military has the policy of paying people who bring in the fingers' of the enemy. Usually it is not our soldiers who get it though, after they do the work mercenary types who are sitting by watching everything come through and collect the fingers.

Bookbinding

Alright, well decided to try bookbinding. This is my first book I made it under the guidance of Aldren A. Watson's Bookbinding: A Manual of Instruction. He's a stickler, but his writing style and instructions are very concise. The paper used is all paper that I made last semester. The gray paper is made out of lint processed in a blender, the other is cotton rag with some silk thrown in. I kind of like the lint paper its got all kinds crap in it from hair to bits of yarn.

Revolutionary Buttons

Well here is a rather obscure fact about color intaglio. Shortly after LeBlon's invention of multiplate, after Newton's discoveries about optics, miniature multiplate images became quite popular in France in the form of men's buttons. The prints was bezel set under glass, and frequently they depicted scenes from the French revolution or more lascivious activities. The top button is an example of one of these print buttons.

Print Zero Print

Just playing around with color layering on this one, this is done with one plate (errr... two, top and bottom). I would like to do some more runs on it and am still considering trying it, but my paper was getting ripped apart. I ended up cutting the printed areas out and chine coleing them onto a different support. I learned some stuff on this one. Hopefully the Print Zero people won't mind if it's a little rough around the edges.

Well I finally actually had a serious conversation about my art here with one of the painting profs. He had some interesting things to say, most notably that most students he sees view art as being illustrative, but when he looks at my stuff he sees the opposite he sees illustration being viewed as art. He says those other people need to look at classical art history and looking more externally, but he thought in my case I need to be looking at modern art and much more internally. These were some of the artists he recomended that I look at. The top two are by Klee, the other two are by Guston.

Patron Saint of Printing Presses

St. Brigid of Ireland is the patron saint of printing presses, I am not quite sure why, it really didn't seem to fit into her story at all.

Snowing Again

We had another snow day today, it was snowing when I got up this morning at 8:00 am, and it is still going strong, very low visibility.

City Lights

Well last week was the day of the semester trip to New York, and my first time in NYC. I went off with my friend Amy (MFA ceramics) we ran through the Met, through the Natural History Museum. From there we took the subway to Greenwhich Village to meet up with her Aunt Ginie, we had a very good dinner at a small little restaurant. Then we took a taxi through rush hour traffic to only just barely make the bus back.

While at the Met we saw the Horse Fair by Rosa Bonheur, which was kind of exciting as we had just discussed that painting in history. Evidently Bonheur dressed like a man, and in fact had to have a special liscence to be a transvestite issued to her. Currently there is a theory out that her paintings were more than just horses, and that the unbearded youth in her paintings were in fact her (ie the figure that is almost dead center and is looking out at you)

Let it Snow, let it snow, let it snow

Piranesi

I have this sinking suspision that no one will show up

10 of Hearts

Ten of Hearts this one reminds me of circuses, but at any rate I tried taping some lace into my paper stencil to see if it would work to give a textural soft ground effect. I got some pretty good results with it.

Thoughts

Today Dr. Partridge had me going through the questionaires/surveys from a guest lecture that she had sponsored. At first I was rather amused to find a survey from one of the Marywood proffs that read "It actually felt like a university for a day." I shared this with another MFA and we got a laugh out of it, but as the day progressed I started to become more and more bothered by this. After all the faculty are kind of like the DNA of the university, they are the ones who determine the character of the university and the students success is a direct mirror of the proff's abilities. This proffs statement raised the question that since this individual is such an integral part of the university then why aren't they doing something about it? Then I started to think about some of my own passive aggressive behavior, negativity, and about my work. Some of these thoughts centered back to the fact that the MFA's outside of their semester reviews do not really have group critiques. One of the adjunct profs had assigned us the task of trying to organize our own critique where we set the parameters last semester. The idea was met with tremendous negativity by a few people, it ended up lasting for six hours and was really a bit of a dud as far as critiques go, but rather than looking at what went wrong and learning and trying it again, the idea was dropped and ridiculed. Well I started thinking about something the Hoff had told me after looking at my work, that I'm a risk taker. I started thinking about that and I'm thinking about trying to set up another open critique thing.

Well some anonymous commentator suggested that I look at the work of Demetri Bolaski. This is not him, in the course of the search I came accross this guy, Sergey Tyukanov, and I quite liked his stuff.

Resolution and Compromise

My weekly review with the Hoff went quite well today, he was happy with the king of clubs. And I was also able to present him with a compromise on a difference of opinion between us. Next semester I had wanted to start work on a very large multiplate dealing with some of the metaphors involved with Genesis. He had some serious issues about the size and the amount of time such a project would take. At anyrate I stumbled across the work of Louis-Marin Bonnet in Colorful Impressions: The Printmaking Revolution in 18th Century France. Marin was so proud of the color that he had achieved that he also made prints of each stage in printing, and gave a little bit of a written account for what he did for each print. As can be seen he did this print using only a la poupe techniques, and only one plate. The Hoff finds this method more acceptable, and he seemed pretty interested when I showed him the book.

Cards

These are two of my silk screened cards. Peter wasn't overly crazy about the three of hearts, for technical printing reasons. My registration is a bit off in the king of clubs I don't know how acceptable that is to the rest of the world. The hearts is a four color registration print, and the king is a six color registration. Both were done using a combination of paper and photo stencils

Joel! You didn't show us the right way to handle a dust box!

"With the shelf out and the flap closed, the resin is shaken into suspension by swinging the whole box over one's head from side to side and then bringing the box down to the floor with a slight thump to prevent any granules from clinging to the sides. This action looks to the bystander like a herculean task...Besides, it is good exercise-which even artists need."
B.F. Morrow
The Art of Aquatint

I dare say my temper is improving here

So I'm working on my silk screen stencils for my cards, and decided that some of my light weight chine cole paper could possible give an interesting effect in a paper stencil. So I go to my clearly labeled with my name drawer in the printshop expecting to be greeted by a bursting abundance of specialty paper, only to find my paper gone and nowhere to be seen in the room, in the grad studio, or even in the garbage cans, and somebody else's project in there, so I promptly threw it across the room. I might add the piece consisted of a masonite board with many half dollars glued on it, so there was a rather pretty shower of silver coins as it flew across the room. I imagine that I shall probably be hearing from the Hoff about this.

Guild Print

This is my guild print, every year the Hoff puts together a print guild, basically a big printswap that also includes a small show. This is mandatory for the MFA printmakers and also costs us $10. We pretty much have to give up the full edition, the university auctions off the extras and pockets the money. I might also add that the $10 is going to Marywood envelopes, which he can get for free, and $5 frames that he purchased years ago, and keeps reusing from show to show.

Ferric Chloride

Alright, I've been doing some research to try to find a way to refine the course bite of the ferric chloride. I may have found it. Ferric Chloride is also known as Edinburgh Etch, and research done in 1997 to try to eliminate the sediment created in the etching process also reputedly found a way to refine the quality of the etch to razorsharp exactness. And ba..ba..bum the magical mystery ingrediant is citric acid. I have yet to try it yet, but I plan on doing so shortly. The title should link up to the webpage where I found this info and much more, but if it doesn't this info can be found at: www.polymetaal.nl/beguin/mape/edinburgh_etch.htm

I think I was sleeping in History Class

Evidently I wasn't paying very much in history, this morning I caught the Planet of the Apes on the History Chanel.

Card Project

Alright, among my project is designing playing cards based off the historical views of the rulers represented by the suits. Traditionally the king of hearts was seen as being Charlemagne, the king of spades Julius Caesar, king of Clubs Alexander the Great, the king of diamonds was David, and the queen of hearts was Anne Boleyn. As you can see who the rest of the queens were has been lost to history as well as the identities of the Jacks.
I am thinking of doing Elizabeth I as queen of clubs, Boadicea as queen of spades, and Salome Alexandra as queen of diamonds. The jacks I am having a little bit more trouble with, so if anyone has any sugestions they will be welcome.