thelmasmith

deadline September 30
Open to all artists living in Arizona, California Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. For the exhibition of the Art of Democracy posters we will be show original print posters, e.g. screen prints or other traditional printmaking. Submit unframed and the Union Gallery will mount in a uniform way. These posters will not be returned. and/or for the Political Art original prints is the primary focus, but we will also accept a variety of work in different media as well. For artists exhibiting original work (who will want it returned) we will need to have an exhibition application. Download it here or at the website.

http://www.union.arizona.edu/csil/gallery/exhibiting.php deadline September 30. Artists who would like to submit are encouraged to contact Holly Brown at brownhb@email.arizona.edu or at the gallery, 520-621-6142.

The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs has issued an RFP for this substantial grants program. Grants of $200,000 to $600,000 will support programs that “utilize the arts to engage civil society - particularly youth and diverse and underserved populations - and that foster linkages and build partnerships between U.S. and overseas nonprofit arts and cultural organizations and local communities.” Project themes are limited to: 1) Mixed Visual Artistic Mediums: Cultural Exchange between American Indigenous and Minority Artists and Indigenous and Afro-Latino Artists from Latin and Central America; and 2) Mixed Visual Artistic Mediums: Cultural Exchange between American Women Artists and Women Artists from Africa and/or the Middle East. Applications, due May 22, must be made through nonprofit organizations or institutions of higher education. www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/04/grants_for_arts.php

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

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.

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.

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.

I’ve been here and not here. I signed up with Pima College for a Printmaking class and a Museum and Galleries Practices class. So I’m running to town three times a week and trying to shoehorn grocery shopping and errand running into that fuel usage. It’s interesting but fatiguing.

The first printmaking assignment was not intimidating. Thank goodness. I’m rather pleased with myself as I had never done carving before. This is the scan of the proof sheet for Lady Alice. The print block is 4″ x 2″; I was using up someone’s purple ink. Click to enlarge.

The second printmaking assignment was alter ego. I finally asked Karen, my table mate, what she had done about the topic. “I know who I am and I’m happy with my life; I don’t need Wonder Woman. I just did what I wanted to.” This after I had been through four iterations that neither fit the assignment nor was anything boldly graphic. I could not figure out how to carve the things I had drawn.

I had been through my image files on the external hard drive and even dug out the snapshot files from before I owned a digital camera. Nothing made any sense. Finally at one in the morning, after tossing and disturbing every cat in the house I just gave up and got out of bed. I went and pulled a snapshot of a tree I have always loved. The hell with the assignment; I know I can make a good positive/negative out of this one.

This is the unproofed plate. Click to enlarge. I painted the grey battleship linoleum with gesso so that I could see my cuts. My fingers and fingernails tell me that there is some clean up to be done once I see a proof. I can feel the chumbles that will give me trouble.

The textbook prices will make one cringe. However, when I saw the amount of technical detail in this one: A Printshop Handbook: A Technical Manual For Basic Intaglio, Relief, And Lithographic Processes. I did not hesitate. One good text book is worth a dozen, popular press, quilter focused, technique and process books. This one is authored by Beth Grabowski. I wonder if there is any kinship with Kerr Grabowski.

The other textbook, The Complete Printmaker is both historical data and technical information. I think one could work a lifetime with these two books.

So, though I am more than usually silent, I am here and I am working. I have four days a week at home. Day by day I have been working my way through deadlines; real ones and ones I have imposed on myself.

The other fly in the ointment is a speeding ticket. How humiliating to drive a roadster and get caught in a speed trap going so fast: 46mph.

The other week I took some glycerin and diluted it well with water. The porcelain, butcher’s tray, doesn’t show you the water. What you do see is the dry lotus leaf beginning to rehydrate.

What is imagined as a flat circular leaf floating on top of the water is, in fact, a shallow cone shape when dried. There is no way to open it fully.

The beautiful drops of water happen because of a natural film on the leaf.

It eventually, over a few days, softened enough to either make a print or to make joan, a chinese tamale, that one can still find in big city dim sum lunch rooms. I have eaten them. I do eat the lotus root.

I chose to make a print so that I could carve a linoleum block.

The one picture of all the lotus root was out of focus. You can see here, one uncut segment and some slices that were used to print.

I went looking for the lotus symbolism. I decided it was going to be a week long research job. Not today.  There is something about the lotus there for me.

I had to get the print work done as I was going to lose the lotus root; it survives a long time in my refrigerator but not forever.

Since I working on another project and trying to get it finished up, I laid the linoleum blocks away to be carved another day.