Remembering Workshops in Australia

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I am planning my eleventh trip to teach in Australia. It will likely finish with a six day master class titled, “Marking Places and Making Spaces”. I am looking forward to going back, looking forward to teaching Australian students. They immerse themselves so much in the classes I teach there. This image is one I took of part of a white board in a class I taught there in 2007. I like to capture the essence of workshops that I teach by recording what I drew there to help a student understand what I was talking about. So much easier to have a marker and board to illustrate the possible forms for containment. There is the pentimento of what was important the day before that is a constant reminder of how we alter our ideas and how we want to hold them…..a book? a basket? a box? or another form dictated by the very subject and our reaction to its importance.

During an un-needed point in the very class this and other photos of the white board were taken from, I found the following notes in my sketchbook of that time. Here is an excerpt that perfectly describes my times with Australian students.

Notes from 2007 on Teaching in Australia

“Fourteen of them are here and I interview them all to find their personal direction and get them to contain their passions to a manageable  place that has lids, doors, pages, covers, bags and baskets – how much of all this do they want to conceal or reveal. Some of those working with the personal stay quiet and have the materials needed. Others might ask my input on materials and form. Then they, too, go quiet and leave me out of their next decision. Now I am only the direction sign.

I envy them at these moments of discovery, adjusting, learning and note-taking.  So I busy myself with making another sample, drawing and writing on the board, and try not to hover too close to them.

Later I will make the rounds again, one by one, to see if I am needed or not. If I am, it is usually a technical problem, easily solved while they let me handle their work and materials.  They will also share why their work is taking a particular form. How it all fits around some thing that matters to them.

This is the gift they give to me – letting me in to help make the spaces and places for things that matter.”

notes on board lo res
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A New Series of Wood Block Prints

Garden book iron fish print
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I have been sidetracked from breaking down old clock parts. A newly landscaped front yard has me thinking about documenting the details of the space via wood blocks and perhaps some writing for a limited edition of books. Working from the photos I took over the last month as the work progressed, I selected some of the more interesting angles and subjects. Next I altered those images to first black and white and then outlines to be redrawn with tracing paper and simplified to transfer to the blocks.

My wood of choice is poplar trimmed to six inches wide and four feet long. I pick the clearest (no knots) and straightest boards to bring home where they are cut to size. This four foot board yielded nine wood blocks measuring five and one half by five inches that I have sanded to make them easier to handle and accept the drawing transfers.

What looks good on a drawing may not necessarily work with the grain of the wood, so continuing alterations are constantly being made. It took making only three prints with the block on Thai kozo paper with re-carving where needed to get the results I wanted. And what I want is a simplistic documentation of the mood of a Japanese influenced garden. Here is the first in the series…three rusty iron carp lanterns poised by the pond’s waterfall near the front door.

Note: The piece of wood that I burnished the prints with is a wooden shoe mold found in an antique shop for five dollars. Once I picked it up and held it in my hand, I needed to own it. I have sanded, oiled and waxed this new tool that is engraved with, “Foot Form Patented.” Perhaps it was a child’s size shoe mold in an earlier life. While in my possession it will be the wood block burnishing tool.