SGC Conference

This past week I was at the annual Southern Graphics Council Printmaking Conference in Richmond, VA. A good time was had by all and we were dropping more rhymes.... than Detroit has crimes. I participated in a few exhibitions. The etching pictured above is titled "blue song plaid" and was included in the: Artspace National Juried Printmaking & Photography Exhibition 2008 Juror: Brooks Johnson Curator of Photography and 21st-Century Art, Chrysler Museum of Art.
http://www.artspacegallery.org/anjppe08/index.htm
My printed plane was also in the "No Danger" Exhibition curated by Ed Bernstein which was exhibited in the Richmond International Airport and from there will be traveling to Indiana University, Purdue University, and Australia, I have already posted images of the plane on this blog as well as details 'bout the show. The show looked good it was interesting to see everybody's interpretation of a paper pane ranging from the insanity of a an origami folded structure to the more solid built or constructed structures and all of simple yet evocative cut planes. Thanks Ed for organizing-- impressive.

RESCINDIA installed in Durham

The work is up at Fort Grunt Aquarium. Here is a pic-- it will be up through March.
http://www.fgaquarium.com/

Julie Mehretu Lecture at the University of Michigan

Yesterday I went to listen to the artist: painter/ draw-er Julie Mehretu lecture in Ann Arbor as part of the University of Michigan's Visiting Lecture Series. Mehretu is an Ethiopian born and Michigan raised artist whose work focuses on mark-making, place, and the accumulation of people en masse. It was interesting to hear her ideas about using an abstract visual vocabulary to directly address subject matter of humanity, architecture, and space. She is interested in "the multifaceted layers of place, space, and time that impact the formation of personal and communal identity." Her work is great and it was nice hearing her talk about the visual resources she draws on including historical paintings, crowd photographs, and architectural drawings. She has an interesting background coming from parents who were Africanist and of Montessori belief and her work draws on that sort of Utopian ideal and the dissolving potential of human experience in situations of war, violence, and political upheaval. Her work has a great vocabulary of mark-making and ambiguous space. It appears to breathe. It is always nice to be back in Ann Arbor and my Alma mater of UofM where I earned my BFa in Printmaking. It was nice to bump into one of my former professors after the talk-- Jim Cogswell painter professor at Michigan he was always great to work with back in the day, he is refreshingly optimistic, inspiring, and an encouraging artist.

No Danger: Printed Plane

Here is my contribution to the "No Danger" Printmaking Plane Exhibition curated by Edward Bernstein Printmaking Professor at Indiana University and Italian installation artist Franco Vecchiet. The exhibition will include 100 artists from the US and Europe and will be displayed at the Richmond International Airport in Virginia in connection with the Southern Graphics Council Annual Print Conference. Artists were invited to create an original printed plane that could be assembled and displayed without the benefit of a kit. This piece is a mixed media reductive woodcut mounted on foam core and is approx 12"x10"x6". It is in "flight" now to Bloomington and will "land" to be installed in Richmond in time for the SGC conference March 26-29th.

FORT GRUNT Aquarium

So here it is the finished mixed media quasi stencil printed painting and off it is sent to Durham North Carolina for my installation "rescindia" for the Aquarium space at Fort Grunt. 6'x10' of madness-- sixty square feet I suppose of blood, sweat, and tears. Mostly tears. To the fine folks at FT Grunt thanks for the support. I apologize for the lack of photographs-- techinically and aesthetically they did not work out as part of the final image. Thanks also to my students who helped tremendously this past week move this large "piece" around and thanks for all of the critical support. Here is the link for those interested in the aquarium and for future projects at fort grunt: www.fgaquarium.com/ and www.fortgrunt.com.

FORT GRUNT Aquarium

I have an upcoming project for an exibition opportunity in Durham, North Carolina with the people at Fort Grunt (www.fortgrunt.com). The project space is called "the aquarium" an alternative gallery venue. This space is a 24 hour viewable window run by Ben Fisher and Lou Joseph as part of their studio. According to their website... KunstOffice in Berlin, Germany provided the initial idea for being creative with thinking about exhibition spaces and their possibilities. For my proposal I requested photographs of what one would see 360 degrees in front of the window. Lou shot and sent a bunch. These two are sure to appear in the finished work. The space is a large 6'x10' window. Visit www.fgaquarium.com/ to see past projects and for submitting proposals. I am incorporating the photographs and mixed media painting to plaid-ify the full window. The finished piece will be titled "rescindia" and is going to be up March 2008.

Enrique Martinez Celaya

Since I namedropped Celaya in one of my most recent posts I feel obliged to show an image of his work (related to my student's face print from etching) and a link to his website: www.martinezcelaya.com/
The image is titled "Man and Dog (Lonliness)" and features a ghost like silhouette which is there but not yet there. His work has a poetic and ethereal symbolic quality. I enjoy the odd combination of traditional and nontraditional materials and processes in his work that become strengthened when used together (he will often exhibit a juxtoposition of objects like a sculpture in front of a painting). Interestingly, he began his career in Physics before earning an MFA in art. He is currently teaching at the University of Nebraska and is pretty hip. Check out his website for his blog where he posts his thoughts on his work, recent projects, and conversations with other artists. I like the title of a symposium he took part in "Stumbling Towards an Artwork that is not as Terrible at it Could Be". Could have been my mantra had I thought of it first.

"In the Raw" from Etching Class

Two more prints here from Etching class. First Portfolio second Project. I assigned the theme of "in the raw" and here are two examples of food variations. First is Angela Hetherwick's "Raw" (above) a sharp contrasting use of aquatint etching to document her recent trip to a local Toledo Sushi establishment. Angela photographed the entire dining process to integrate them in her various changes/ states of this plate. This has a Wayne Thiebaud feel in the pop sense of arranged food-- the fuzzy rice looks incredibly edible. Below is Julie Cikra's "Dead and Dying" another variation on food-- here is state one from an on going series she is working on to track the progress of rotting fruit through multiple states. Great value structure through succesfully stage biting in aquatint. Click on the image to see up close the combination of textural line and value.

Another etching from etching class

This is an inadvertant, yet dynamic, printing discovery made by Sasha Hulisz for her "untitled" series of abstract images. What happened was the plate was not fully run through the press and as a result the image did not completely print. Sasha extending the print with hand drawing and watercolor beyond the interupted plate mark. This created a new more interesting composition breaking out of the standard rectangular plate impression. This is one section of a larger sheet that has multiple individual plates printed on it. Interesting use of abstract mark-making and decorative motifs in this series. She is continuing this technique now more intentionally. In printmaking you have to be able to take advantage of the potential happenstance. You never know when they will happen and how they might affect the process. Usually it is bad news, but occasionally you can use it to the advantage of your imagery.

Recent prints from my Etching Class First 2 Projects

As I promised to my class... Here are few examples from our first project in Etching. For this assignment students inherited a plate leftover from a former student from a previous etching class. The project requires a conceptual and compositional overhaul of the appropriated plate to the point where students can claim the work as their own. It is a good beginning exercise in getting over the hesitation in investing oneself into scraping and burnishing on the zinc. It is a requirement to have half the image developed through erasure and the other half in new additive techniques. Sara Huger's "Internalized" (above) appropriated the silhouette of a face and she added the subtle lighting and violent scraping to the eyes. It ended up having this poetic resonance similar to Enrique Martinez Celaya's work or an Arnulf Rainer drawing on photograph.

Below is Mike Chorey's "Herman Pt. 2" a nice AR Penck-esque creepy image of a guy who haunts dreams. Printing in color was not an option, but since this ended up monochromatic and hand worked it is a sucessfully acceptable "breaking of the rules".

Jim Lee-- Altamont

Jim Lee dazzles with the use of evocative yet simplistic forms flatly enhancing in an offbeat manner the physicality of detritus materials in his recent work "altamont". The splitting and reconfiguring of space and form is reminiscint of the use of architecture by Gordon Matta-Clark and Lee is redefining how three dimensional painting can be like the methods of Jessica Stockholder. His poetic use of subtle color and refined shapes echoes artists like Victor Pasmore and Miro-- but stretches it out from piece to piece.

Kangaroo Press

Check out my buddy Ryan Nole's website for kangaroo press (www.kangaroopress.com)-- cool stuff to buy. Ryan Nole makes hand printed screenprint posters for awesome bands like my morning jacket, built to spill, magnolia electric co, bright eyes et. als. In addition to great hand printed posters he also has t-shirts and artist's books for sale. Great Stuff. I ordered the built to spill poster and a kangaroo press t-shirt. Kangaroo Press is proof of a talented artist putting his skills and interests to commercial use, you gotta love the slogan "we love to make happy". Ryan is making a move soon to Nashville Tennessee and will be working with a letterpress/ design company (iseleof printing.com)best of luck Ryan. Thanks for all the goodies-- Keep me updated.

Georgia Russell-- Cut up Book art

The Scotish artist Georgia Russell manipulates found books through cutting them up. Love the idea of killing an object in order to give it new life as an art object. Beautiful work, interesting ideas. She works with a scapel to cut into a book in order to transform the physicality-- like the connection with literature and symbolism.

Recent Etchings

I will soon post a few works from my etching class just as soon as we have the first crit of the semester (next week). Until then I thought I would post a few of my recent etchings. These prints come from a series of images I am working on in color etching. I have a number of plates that I can interchange-- half have vertical lines etched into them and half have horizontal lines etched and when layered combine to create a pattern similar to (yes) plaid. I love the experimental possibilities in layering different plates and color combinations. I use a more acidic palette and look to create a sort of history in mark-making similar to reclamation (reusing/ recycling).

Also, I posted to the (L/D/L/S) blog dedicated to the group project I am working collaboratively on. The project themed "Love Death Life Soul" Involves 7 International members who will be participating in a three week printmaking residency in August 2008 in Belgium at the Frans Masereel Centrum. It is a great group of artists and I feel lucky (and perhaps out of my league) to be among them. You can click on the links at left to find out more or go to the blog at: http://lovedeathlifesoul.wordpress.com/

Phantom

Check out Richard Dupont's etching "Untitled (phantom)". An impressively large, haunting, and achingly beautiful etching from a copperplate. The tight system of tiny hatching of lines creates and intense "ghost-like" presence and absence simlultaneously. This intricate sprawling work is a monumental achievement at 40"x64"! According to the Jan 2008 issue of Art in America the biggest of its kind. Ironically, the "DuPont Phantom" is a state of the art mammography machine used to show variation through line contrasts on x-ray film.

Photographer Lecture

Last night, the photographer Todd Hido spoke at the UT: CVA as the juror for the Toledo Friends of Photography's National Annual Juried Photography Exhibition. The show is up now at the CVA gallery and is a top-notch selection of contemporary practices and trends in digital and traditional photographs. As a juror he had the daunting task of editing down from 1650 entries to 83 images--- it is a wonder that as artists we ever get into juried exhibitions. Hido is best known for his house images-- haunting exterior views of anonymous yet personal homes-- minimal compositions with odd acidic colors. He talked (at length) about his images, his background, subject matter, process, and his influences including photographers Robert Adams, Stephen Shore, Becher, and Walker Evans and painters like Edward Hopper, Gerhard Richter, and Mark Rothko. His work has a minimalist feel and a definite painterly quality. It is refreshing to see an artist take on admittedly "cliched" subject matters like interior lit houses, landscapes, and seedy portraits but do it in a daring and convincingly bold manner. He talked about being consistent but not repetitive, which he felt was a fine line to walk. He indirectly knocked photographers like Gregory Crewdson, by mentioning he does not create his work with a crew of sixty or stage his photographs in any way, amazing (he said that word quite a bit) as his photographs are formally similar to Crewdson's. It was a good presentation of his ideas and a range of his works-- check out his website for examples: http://www.toddhido.com/ and seesaw online photo mag for an interview:http://seesawmagazine.com/roaming_pages/roaming_interview.html. Inspiring and good stuff. As always I daydreamed about making new work.

the mark of the beast

I am inaugurating the enacting of my personal blog blog bloggity blog. What a way to start. An introduction: I teach full time as a Lecturer at the University of Toledo: Center for the Visual Arts (Toledo, OH) in Foundations and in Printmaking (hence the name). The purpose of this blog will be to keep interested people interested in my doings in art and to post happenings from my classes at UT. First off "beast of print" (the title of this blog) came from a suggestion from a University of Toledo BFA printmaking student-- thanks Helen Grubb. Either she mumbled "vista print" or my bad hearing picked it up wrong as "beast of print". Either way we agreed the inadvertent title was gold and I decided to sign up ASAP to use it as a blog so nobody else could claim it.

I plan on using this blog to document my Etching class this semester and the amazing printmaking work that they will do. We are planning on having two special events this semester in our course. First, an all day "Print O Rama" where students alternate from artist to artist's assistant/ print technician in shifts at the press, with the expectation of a high print quota. Watch out! Secondly, I am requiring all Etching students to enter into a juried show. So we will use this as a venue for our research and the results.

I also will include related links and postings on art projects I am working on.