Time in the Studio and Being Evaluated

Posted on by Sandy Webster

This is a small white line print that I started from a carving in Australia. I was spending a few extra days with friends after the Grampians conference and inspired by the white line works of Andie, a student who took my class last year. She did a whole series of the Grampians during our time together last year and after. This year she gave a small accordion book of all those prints reduced to fit the format.

While teaching white line printmaking down in Hobart, Tasmania I carved a block with two types of Eucalyptus leaves and pods. The block is only about six inches square so I put the images side by side. And during my time at Baldessin Press shortly thereafter, I experimented with carborundum plates. Here is the start of both.

Using carborundum is tough. It is like pouring sand on lines made with glue, shaking off whatever does not stick. Then you wait until it is totally dry to ink, wipe off and put in an etching press. There is little control and even less opportunity for details on a smallish plate. This one is only about three by four inches. If the paper is too wet then the rough carborundum takes some of it off when you remove the plate. It is hard to wipe the plate as the roughness tears at whatever you are wiping it with. I am not giving up on this technique but I do need to do some serious research on how to use it to good effects.

I did have time this week to work on the small carved block to try various papers that would work best for white line printing. The softer papers worked best….Rives BFK or Somerset Velvet. I also think it is best with these to print the images separately rather than together.

My good old crispy feeling Stonehenge worked well for dry point etchings on vinyl plates. I wanted to capture the shedding of the Eucalyptus trees like in this picture.

I started the drawing and etching while spending those extra days at Halls Gap in the Grampians.

It took several passes with paper that was too wet and realizing that the drawing needed to be improved upon before I got five that were okay. Here is a detail of one where you can see that the lines are a bit furrier than I would have liked.

I also realized during the process of putting ink on the plate that the small plastic credit card was making hair line scratches. Wherever they appeared I had to draw a new branch or leaves to camouflage them. So now I use only the cutoffs of davey or book board.

And while talking about printing. I took some white line prints into the craft shop at the John C Campbell School and donated another one to their auction. Actually this one….well sort of this one….minus the lotus in the foreground.

New frames arrived today to put two of the last of these crows into.

Just need to order glass. Also new frames for larger white line prints.

And speaking of the folk school, the evaluations of my class from students arrived today. There were eight students. One of them only mentioned that the chairs needed wheels, five said very positive things about the class and the instructor, and two were different from what I have seen before. One of the two thought I was just a bit impatient and the other claimed that she and I failed to bond on a personal level, “due to no one’s fault”. And both of them wanted handouts. There were handouts of syllabus and how to marble papers using earth pigments. Recipes for making corn flour paste and gelatin plates were written on the board for them to copy as well as internet sites relative to the class.

It was a hard class to teach contact printing with plants as there were so few out week before last. Most of them bought my book on Earth Pigments, so there was printed information there on what we were doing for part of the week.

But the evaluations are wonderful to receive. You never really know what the students are truly thinking and this gives them a chance to tell you.

The next time I am scheduled is not until November. A friend may arrive to help me keep any eye on the situation here at home, I won’t be just arriving back from Australia by less than a week, I won’t be looking for leaves in a class about stitching in and on books, and I might be a bit more patient and ready to bond on personal levels.

Til next week.

Getting Ready to Go

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Spring is popping out here in Western North Carolina. I am trying not to succumb to its fever as I tie up all loose ends to leave Tuesday for a month in Australia. My mind bounces from one thing to another and then back again. Tomorrow is the art group meeting. I need to pick up the studio. My small piece of checked luggage has everything I need for students and then some….but no clothes yet. Monday is time enough for that.

The artwork for an exhibition has been delivered to Asheville to be taken on from there with other artists works using paper.

All those who are helping to keep an eye on Lee have been documented and scheduled. Whatever they need is somewhere in the house and directions for how to find it, how to use it and how important it is to keep things running smoothly. Photographed instructions on how to use the DVD player, the washing machine and pictures inside of cupboards on where things go….even how to fold Lee’s underwear so it fits in the drawer and will be where he looks for it.

But I did get to watch the Olympic curling match this morning after taking photographs outside of a few things the deer are not chewing on….like these small bushes with blooms in white and pink.

They are not eating the forsythia and jonquils….not yet anyway. Saving their appetite for the first sprout of hostas I imagine.

The fish pond with budding Japanese maples along its edges.

And Jay, an elderly goldfish that we named after an elderly friend who passed away many years ago. Our Jay gets lighter and lighter each year as his color falls away. I am always happy to see him wake up from the winter sleep they all go into just below the surface of ice.

The river birch’s skin is very pink this morning as its bark falls away.

Just outside the front door the creeping jenny is thriving.

One of those “know it all” acquaintances that we all have said we would be very sorry that we ever planted it. We are not. I fills in with all the other ground covers and the color is always so fresh….and so welcome after a dreary winter.

One other thing I did this morning was get out my small cans of wall and trim paints. I take a small brush and starting with the walls and corners, I cover up all the dark marks from cat rubbings and chips on the outside corners of drywalled archways. Next the oil based trim paint catches all the dirty fingerprints and scrapes from moving things about.

Now when I get back from Australia and check on Lee, unpack and do laundry I won’t have to look at those marks and wonder when I will get the time to do what I just did this morning. Instead I have just a few days before teaching a five day class titled, Prints, Pigments, and Pages – A Collaboration with Nature. Earlier this week I wrote the syllabus and checked to make sure I have all the materials and equipment needed to keep eight students satisfied.

It will be a fun class. They always are. This time I get to add marbling papers with earth pigments. The walnuts students will be using have rotted to perfection. We will make small gelatin plates in class for printing bits of Nature. All equipment for contact printing leaves from around the site is ready to go. Feathers are coming soon to make our paint brushes. I think I am ready and just hoping a friend comes along to look in on Lee while I am busy in class.

The other thing all set to go are those infernal taxes. This was always something Lee did. I really hate numbers and kept myself to just balancing the checkbook each month. Now it is this plethora of papers that need to be collected and delivered so that our tax lady can get started long before our appointment mid April. Why people actually choose this as a profession is as beyond me as those who make a living by looking deep into our other private areas.

Last night was lovely wine, scotch and company on the porch. I am sure there will be more bits of nasty weather before Spring is officially here, but it is so nice right now.

In one week I will be finishing up my two day white line printmaking class in Hobart, Tasmania. I will do a blog then.

Now I am off to pick up the studio and do my physical therapy exercises before having a bit of Stone’s Ginger Wine and thinking about dinner.

Til next week.

Thinking About Clearing Space in the Studio

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Sunset. Another day goes by and I have done little to get rid of things. A gallery is closing and I will get the works back that did not sell. More things piling up. I need to make some decisions here.  One of the problems is when you work in “mixed media” everything has potential.

This is the latest of the boats done for an exhibition in March.

It is bigger than the last one. And instead of having a bell that rings in a memory carried in the anchor, this one has several jingling bells in the hold. Just rock back and forth and you can hear them. The passenger is safely tucked inside wondering what to recall next.

His attic is full of stories….his and others. The rocks are the important thing here. Images of them on the boat as well as the house’s footings. And those that create a path along the deck of the boat. Here is where they came from.

It is an old cigar box with stones that I collected from a dear friend’s driveway in a town where we raised our children. Pacia lived to be almost 100 years old and I would stay in her house ( a converted train station) every time I went back “home”. One day I simply had a need to take a bit of the place with me. I have dipped into this box often.

Also in there are scraps of sandpaper the men taking wood working classes would give me when I was teaching at Arrowmont. I like those bits of used sandpaper. I like the sound of them. I like how they are supposed to smooth things over while irritating the heck out of it

.

Here are some of the stones as well as the sand papers in my tai chi figures. There are fourteen of them that take their poses as their burdens get less and less in each one. Here is the first one of the series in an earlier work. Now they just march along a wall in the studio reminding me to take the “focus breath”. I should pay attention.

The shot into the shoulder has helped and I will be able to get back to doing my tai chi and yoga stretches. I do them here in the studio and not in a class setting. That was only to learn the moves and the breathing.

All the works for the other exhibition are packed with their artist statement. Someone will get them to Chattanooga for me.

I am enjoying looking at just the sixteen nails on the wall. How long I can not hang something there is a good question. Someone I admire in the art group showed very large mulberry paper works. I loved the paper and assumed I needed some….just five pages that are 55″ x 27″. Those and a detail brush that “can paint cat whiskers” made from rat hairs. It was only five dollars and seemed like a good idea to have one. Besides it was a supplier I had never ordered from before that carries mostly Asian arts materials.

I am not being very successful at ridding myself of things. But I will get there. I just need to figure out how. I do know one thing. Once it is out of the studio, I don’t miss it.

Someone told me that she got rid of 100 things per week. I think it was each week. But she counted scraps of paper in that one hundred things. It might be a place to start.

Til next week.

 

Moving Right Along

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I reworked this boat about memory loss and the drifting in circles. Now it is mounted on a nice river. Still only has one oar, probably to keep it off the rocks. Still has its memory bundle and not so many fish following along. I like it.

Then I took a good look at the River Lethe Boat full of passengers and decided to give them a bit of a break. I remounted the boat on the plinth and tied a rope up to a dock of sorts. Now titled, Waiting for the Ferryman. Maybe they will get some different water to drink while they wait and their memories will return.

And then on to making new boats with the same theme of memory. I revisited the boats done for an exhibit about remains and especially loved this one housing an old friend.

The house part was to hold small bits of memorabilia about the person whose ashes are in the hold.

But on my new ones that I am making for the exhibit, probably just four total, the house holds the passenger. Here are some views of the first one.

The anchor attached to a piece of written on shifu thread holds the small jingling bell that jogs our memory. It can be moved to the front of the boat or put in the “water”. By moving it about you hear the bell.

The mica window on the house part obscures the passenger inside. He/she is going it alone in this series.

And in the hold are the fragments of the passengers life or they could be ferrying other peoples’ stories along with their own.

All in all it was fun to put the papers made in Claudia Lee’s class to some good use. Making something that did not look like Claudia’s work. I also used some of my own chemically rusted papers. It will be interesting making three more of these that have the same theme, similar papers and good stories.

I am still thinking about how to rid myself of so much stuff in the studio. When I return from Australia I think I will be ready to throw out not only earlier work but a good part of what I used to call “inspirational parts”.

Part of my tidying up this week was “unfollowing” some people on social media. I am seldom interested in reading their self promotions that read like marketing themselves, or their workshops, or their books, or, or, or…..

Of course, that said, I actually was tempted by India Flint’s new venture about making bags. I think it is because I have so much respect for her, number one, and her integrity is pretty hard to beat. Plus I was thinking how nice to belong to a group of women who stitch bits together and chat about it when they feel like it.

Then I had another thought….what if I am expected to perform something in order and on time and answer questions!

So I am not doing it. I am not purchasing her lovely new workbook. I am just going to have to realize that I am beyond paying attention to anything other than what I think needs doing at the moment. My moments are getting pretty precious.

Not only that, but I am well stuck into the fourth of six Karin Fossum books on the kindle. They are like an Australian licorice to me. But I am pretty sure that the Darryl Lea brand no longer is in business down under. Last year I ordered a box of bags for my husband from Amazon and was told that they could no longer get it. And Karin Fossum really needs to stop writing such good Inspecter Seger novels.

Reading this blog over, it seems a bit scattered, a bit out of control. Well that’s the week. Next week I will do better. Art Group tomorrow, (they will set me straight) and a cortisone shot in the shoulder later in the week.

For now I will tidy the studio, AGAIN, and go back to my kindle with wine.

Til next week.