the studio

I’ve just come back from paradise: 3 days on Galiano Island making art, listening to music, enjoying fantastic and insightful company, boating around with a nearly fritzed Mercury motor to catch a Westcoast sunset, delicious home cooked meals, wood stove fires, walks, wildlife.  Simply amazing.

I learned a lot of new things – well, some of these techniques I recall from high school art class, by far my favourite subject, but quite unfortunately and for no good reason I’ve strayed from the area since then – which have sparked a lot of new ideas and directions, both personally/creatively and how this might subsequently feed into my line.  Luckily there’s an amazing, patient and talented teacher in Jeremy Crowle, who put me up for these restful and creative days.

Project #1: Pressed Alpaca

I began by knitting a swatch with larry. alpaca yarn:

I inked up one side with black water-based printing ink and ran off 4 prints through the 1,600lb press, two of which turned out great:

Next I moved on to red ink – both of these prints turned out really well, so with the two great black prints and two great red prints I now have an edition of 4.

Project #2: Acetate Etchings

I spent hours etching out a portion of the print of the alpaca swatch (seen above, sitting on the press) onto acetate film.  A tracing of a print of a swatch; one project feeding another.  This was a painstaking process and by the end of it I had claw hands from gripping this little etching tool, applying pressure to the acetate and hunching over in concentration – but working waterfront during the golden hours of sunset somehow kept me going.  And lots of wine breaks.

Applying the oil-based ink to the acetate and rubbing off the excess was another tedious step; it took a few tries to get a decent consistency, where the plate tone wasn’t too strong and the etching relief not too light.  Somewhere in the middle I got it just about right:

Project #3: Battleship Linoleum Prints

This was a collaborative project.  Jer and I took turns carving 11 lines each, to a total of 44 lines.  No rhyme or reason.

Printed black on yellow through the monster press, and after one artist proof we each kept two prints.

Here’s a final closeup of ’22 Lines Apiece’ taken by Jer:

Destined to be cherished within the protective frames of memory and glass, all of it.