thelmasmith

Dinnerware Artspace is beginning a new mural located at
Arizona Alley at (the 200 block of) E. Congress Street.

Young and older latino artists are invited to participate.

This mural is being created in conjunction with the
National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) Regional Conference,  April 25-26, 2008, and the Tucson/Pima Arts Council.

Check the NALAC.org  website for more information on attending the workshop.

The mural title is “Tucson Colectivo”.
Bring your own paints and brushes.
The mural format is two giant spirals on a 40ft long mural.
Latino and latina artists can claim a section to paint on.

Tell your latino/latina artist friends about this project.

Contact me at Dinnerware Artspace for more details.

David Aguirre
Dinnerware Artspace
520 792-4503

Register now for the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture Workshops, hosted by the Tucson Pima Arts Council, April 24, 25, and 26, at the Hotel Arizona in downtown Tucson. NALAC’s Regional Arts Training Workshops are convened throughout the nation to assist in strengthening local networks of Latino artists and arts and cultural organizations. All are welcome! Workshops will provide professional development opportunities and foster theoretical and aesthetic discussion. For more info contact Reuben Tomas Roqueni at 624-0595 x18 or reuben@tucsonpimaartscouncil.org   To register, visit the NALAC website at: www.nalac.org To view the just released NALAC Conference Agenda visit: www.tucsonpimaartscouncil.org/about/AboutWordDocs/NALACAgenda.pdf

It’s time to get Published. J. Mercury & Maxed Art present: The Plume Zine: [bicycle] Conversations. The new theme is: anything relating to Bicycles or Conversations. All submissions must touch on this theme. Submit written work (poems, prose, micro fiction). Must be under two pages, double spaced. All written work is subject to a selection process. Submit images (drawing, collage, photography) no larger than 8×10. If emailing your image, it must be saved at 300dpi. Artwork will be proportionally formatted to fit the ‘zine. Submit all work by April 3. The Plume Zine is: art for people. Our debut zine, God & Love, a hand-bound, double pamphlet stitch, in an edition of 50, was distributed at select locations in Tucson and just about flew off the shelves. God & Love had 11 contributors and debuted with a reading at Dinnerware Artspace gallery. [bicycle] Conversations will have a special debut party TBA — don’t miss out! (view blog for images) Email submissions to MaxedArt@gmail.com or call 245-2681. The future awaits you at maxedart.blogspot.com

National Endowment for the Arts to Manage Design Competition forRosa Parks Statue in US Capitol
The National Endowment for the Arts today announced a design competition, in partnership with the Joint Committee on the Library and the Office of the Architect of the Capitol, for a statue of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks. Commissioned by the U.S. Congress, the sculpture will be permanently installed in National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol Building. The Rosa Parks statue represents the first commission of a full-sized statue authorized and funded by the U.S. Congress since the 1870s. The Chrysler Foundation has provided $100,000 to support the administration of the competition.

http:www.nea.gov/news/news08/RosaParks.html

Mutterings of anger and frustration around here. Sam has spent days looking and looking. At first I didn’t believe him and then I did. Now, I’m helping him search for holes too small to be an escape route. Fat chance! She’s gone exploring again. This has become the pattern for two or three weeks.

Do click on the image. She is quite beautiful. Speak to her, in the ozone, please. Tell her it’s time to come home and stay home.

Gamblin was the color man when the Smithsonian set out to recreate the renaissance, earth, colors of the old masters. He gives a twenty minute tutorial on thinking about color.

I received this DVD as a gift at a recent art’s materials exposition. Check with your supplier of art supplies and see if you can obtain a copy of this.  OOPS,  go to the Gamblin website, linked above.  You can view it online.   It addresses color in several ways including the historic time frame and the colors produced and used.

I was at the University of Arizona Museum of Art today. This is from a new installation by
El Anatsui.

These works are copyright of the artist and are shown here under the doctrine of fair use for educational purposes. The work above uses the rims of screw on caps of cheap liquor that the anglo world has exported to Africa for the last several centuries. It references that societal problem, the problem of garbage, and also the West African textile tradition.

Not to mention that it is lusciously gorgeous and cries out to be carressed.

More societal commentary. Aluminum printing plates used in their most maleable form to comment on waste and waste paper in particular.

If you are traveling or happen to be around Tucson, Arizona, do yourself a favor and go to the University of Arizona. There is the Museum, two galleries, the Center for Creative Photography, the Flanrau Observatory, the Arizona Historical museum and much more.

This is one of the first semi-successful prints from one of the linoleum blocks I’ve carved. My husband stole the print of the cat laying in front of the full moon. The old cedar tree taught me that it is much more sensible to carve the object. Carving away the background even when you leave a border to support the brayer requires much more skill than I have right now. I’ll have to actually get my printing done on good paper instead of just testing on typing sheet sorts of samples.

Last Wednesday I struggled with intaglio wiping the large, multi color, chard collagraph. I failed miserably. Then printed it again after more wiping. It was only a minor failure.

I cleaned the plate. Printed a blind emboss from it Wednesday and it is only a minor failure. The blind emboss, done Thursday, from the bamboo was good with only minor creasing. These are a couple of details from the blind emboss from that plate.

However, the real success on Thursday is a bunch of small square and rectangular offcuts from the big bamboo plate. I did one and then rearranged the modules.

I did five consecutively with increasing pressure. The last one was two half inch foam blankets and then thin, thick, and medium regular blankets. The blind emboss combined with the half sheet (smaller) of paper meant that I could put on gonzo pressure and still not break the paper.

Pretty rewarding to see the progression of the five. I forgot to take the camera with me on Thursday. Now I’ve got my confidence up just a bit I think I will ink each module with a different color, wipe, and print. I’ve also taxed my body mightily even though the gearing on the big press is pretty good. My shoulders and my back are telling me I ran a LOT through that press last week.

I have fallen way behind the pace of the work and the assignments. I don’t know how the kids who are taking twelve to sixteen credits are handling the volume of work.

The big plates are beautiful but a real headache. The press is thirty years old and has experienced all that teen aged students can imagine in it’s life. The bed will take a fifty inch long piece of paper; the roller is about thirty inches long.

I guess I should spend the weekend reading the text books. However, the two women, with great experience, who come in and work on lab days are very kind and teach me a lot. I’ve been delivering pomegranites for rewards.

I like the multi cultural and multi generational aspects of the class a lot. I guess it is time for me to become a bit more social person again.

My dear, Scots friend, Marion, has tagged me with these instructions:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself: some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

So, seven facts about myself.

• Frank Herbert lived in Port Townsend.
  As he aged he worked with a colleague. They picked my maiden name,
  Scudi, out of the phone book. The character, Scudi Wang, in the novel
  The Lazurus Effect so spooked me for years (1983). Many years later I
  went and got the autographed copy he had left at the local bookstore
  for me.
• I was born in Indiana and grew up on a farm.
• I came from a very non standard family.
• I love to drive. I use “doing miles” to air out my mind and my spirit.
• I love the surf of the Pacific Ocean; I miss it very much. Like “doing miles” I miss that help.
• One spring when I was a child we had nineteen kittens; five of them were pure white.

• I’m much more restrained now. I have only six cats.

Now, who shall I tag?

1. lauralyn sciretta
2. rayna gillman
3. pam rubert
4. susie monday
5. sabrina zarco
6. natalia aikens
7. denise aumick

Whew! That was an unexpected amount of work. All those tagged are artists who’s work and thoughts I admire.

I still have not printed my linoleum cut. I’ve another to cut and I want to add some lines to it before I do. The class moves on. I’m being dragged along without enough hours in the day or energy in my body.

I do come home from the end of class with my enthusiasm renewed. We have begun working on collagraph. I had ordered Collagraphs (Printmaking Handbook) by Hartill & Clarke. Their shipping policies are more kind than those of US companies.

Yesterday I got a look at Collagraph Printmaking by Mary Anne Wenniger. Looking at other people’s books always costs me money.

Anyway, here’s a look at the plates I’m working on.

Bamboo underlaid with tissue paper and gauze. The sidebar is heated tyvek, ironed to flatten. All these plates need more acrylic medium and a lot more sticking down. My husband brought in the shrink pack of generic super glue.

The cats jumped into the fishtail palm that is recovering from last winter’s hard freeze. I decided since this was already broken that it was fair game for a collagraph plate.

This one is dry bok choy. I had to reconstitute it partially to unfold it. I think it will make a good looking print. One of my classmates grew up in Hong Kong. The scent of the soaking bok choy drew her to my table. The remainder of the package, reminding her of home, went home with her to make soup.

From food for the soul to food that feeds both the soul and the body:

Fresh waterchestnuts!

If you have never had the opportunity to eat fresh waterchestnuts do keep watch in the oriental markets. They are a pain to peel. I simply sautéed them with a little peanut oil, garlic, ginger, and green onion. Food fit for the gods. You will never buy a tin can again.