Off on Another Adventure

Posted on by Sandy Webster

baldessin front door

I worked on this press all day today here at the Baldessin Studio. More printing of the photogravure plates I created yesterday. Here are the two larger ones.

photogravure print Anne's farm

photogravure print shearer's kitchen

Both are photos I took in Australia within the last few years. I rarely take pictures of people, just things and those wonderful Eucalyptus trees.

Before I had the one day course with Silvi Glattauer on the photogravure process of printing directly on the plate I spent two days giving a class here on book bindings that can accommodate the addition of prints. We also made pigments from the rocks we collected here on sight.

Baldessin pigments

Beautiful aren’t they? Lovely students as well. See them below grinding pigments and photographing the books made in class.

pigment grinding

silvi photoing books

We had a visiting kangaroo on the first day.

kangaroo peeking

Tomorrow I leave here for Melbourne then out to the class I am teaching in Halls Gap. I hope the weather is cooler there. Tonight it is more cold beer at a local pub in very good company and excellent conversations.

There are so many interesting people to listen to here in Australia. I collect their stories like small gifts to open later at home and share them with others. And when I do that, I am visiting them all over again, back in the pub without ever leaving home. I will write another blog entry when I can find enough time and internet.

More kangaroos for sure.

Australia – at Baldessin Press

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Etching subject

I am in Australia and spending a week here at Baldessin Press in St. Andrews north of Melbourne. So far the trip has been full of meeting old friends and meeting new students. Here in the press studio I get to do my own work for a while before teaching a two day workshop.

This morning I picked up a small branch of Eucalyptus leaves and tiny gum nuts. They were the subject for a drawing to then engrave on a polymer etching plate. First I tried to get the drawing as close to the actual subject as possible with my new graphite pencils (set of 12 in a crocodile tin). I just used the H and the HB.

Etching drawing

Once that was as good as I could get it, I laid the mylar etching plate over the drawing and channeled Rembrandt to make the marks with my etching tool to capture what I did with pencil. This was not easy.

Etched plate

Next I inked it with a sepia toned water based etching ink using a piece of mat board, tarlatin and phone book pages to wipe. Then the first test print….and another.

Etching first two prints

Seeing so much space around the leaves I decided to trim the plate by one half inch on three sides. It seemed better this way and fit easily on the Stonehenge fawn colored printmaking paper. I ended up doing four of the prints today and might do more tomorrow….or make a new drawing of something else and print that. I am surprised how well the etched line has held throughout this many prints and can just continue when I return home.

Etching four prints

Next Monday after my class I will be taking a short course in photogravure from one of the best, Silvi Glattauer who is affiliated with Baldessin Press. It is a process where I can load my photo polymer plates into my Epson printer to transfer my photos or drawings to make images for limited edition prints. This is going to be very exciting.

Now I am having a bit of red with crackers and cheese. It is pretty hot here today and a nap might be in order.

More later.

The Things I Used to Do – Figures

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Vining Pair

I was posting on facebook the other day some earlier basketry pieces that crossed loom weaving with basket materials and I remembered these two figures. They were made of honeysuckle vines and then small patches of “clothing” were darned into some empty spaces. Attached at the hip they happily hand the vines to each other. Their faces were sculpted with clay.

Since I only took slides back when this work was being made I had to use my scanner to adapt the slides to digital images. Quite the process and they don’t transfer as well as this particular scanner had convinced me of on purchase. But you can get the idea. And the one big thing I learned is that these slides just need to be tossed out. I can’t believe how many talks I must have had to give to still have loaded carousels and slide cases filled to the brim.

Here are some more figures made from turned wood and pine barks. Of course there is the ubiquitous bead added here and there. Back in the 90s you weren’t making “art baskets” unless you added a bead or feather.

Wood Kimono 2

 

Wood Kimono

And some more figures done in the knotting technique.

When I was looking through these slides I noticed that almost everything I was doing was in mixed media. How else can you get those beads in there?? Gourds were lots of fun to work with.

And finally the series I worked on in undergraduate school. It a nod to the patriarchal system of old men attempting to teach the next generation of old men how to be capable of the responsibilities expected of them in carrying out their duties so to speak.

Patriarch for Music
Teaching Cooperation
Teaching Stamina
Detail of Stamina
Face of Music and students
Other Languages
Teaching Other Places
The Graduate

The men in my community donated the tools to be parts of each piece. Cloth was from old clothes or my sewing bag. All the old men “students” listened closely perched in their mountain laurel seats. I still have all of them but my favorites are cooperation and the graduate. He seems to be waiting for the next generation of old men to arrive from a stone egg. These led to more work about men, their body language, their way of belonging and keeping afloat in a world of feminism. Below are the men moving from one place to another via the turning of pages and ending up just where they were before and in the perceived proper order and relationship to each other. The last is a detail of men navigating their way through feminist philosophies in boats bound to sink and dragging testicular anchors of stone while firmly clothed in what they were taught about manhood.

Navigations lo res

Documenting -The Things I Used to Do – Nature Pictures

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Nature sketches 1

I used to do lots of these small Nature inspired drawings/paintings. On some I would put their identification. Documenting. I love documenting. Once it was on the paper and I knew what it was, I was satisfied. Simple straight forward work. Nothing here to think about. Just look closely and let your hand to the work.

 

Wildflowers and dead birds. Some done from photographs, some from life. We actually kept the birds in the freezer if I could not draw them right away. I loved looking closely at all the parts and seeing if I could make the brush do the work. Some are done quite badly, and some not so bad. I saved them all with little idea of what to do with them. I turned to making a limited edition of calendars with some of them. These were printed on my computer and stitched together. Not many to sell and likely I just made enough to cover the cost of ink, paper and thread. Here is 2004.

This book below I made about the same time. I had seen a flag book somewhere and found it such a simple concept. The movement was magic. I thought I could do a series of children’s nature books using that format. I started with ABC’s in the Woods. Then I planned to move on to ABCs in the Sea, ABCs on the Farm. You get the idea. When I finished this one and showed it to someone, they said, “Did you know that Hedi Kyle made an alphabet book with her flag book design?” I did not. I did not even know that Ms Kyle originated the flag book design. I never exhibited the book anywhere and I was rather unenthusiastic about continuing with the series of books. I did make a few posters using my trusty Epson printer and sold a few, again barely covering the cost of ink and the over sized paper that was necessary.

But I found the original in with my sketches and will show it below. It was fun figuring out how to get the entire alphabet into that woods.  “Q” was a rusted can with a leaf coming out at just the right angle, X,Y, and Z were patterns of plant life but the rest were all creatures in the woods.

ABCs in the Woods

ABCs in the Woods open

I think I will return to smaller works. Another piece returned yesterday from exhibition and now I have to do small repairs on it and find a place to store it. This might be my last year of doing any work that does not fit onto a page. I will seek out inventive ways to rid myself of the work coming back home.

A small note here on the piece returned. I did it because it seemed like a good idea. The theme of the juried show was very interesting for me and I wanted to interpret it visually. There were several pieces entered and many did not make the cut. Mine did. The exhibit was up for one month. It cost me $50 to have it shipped both ways. The work had to be for sale and their take was going to be 40%, mine 60%. For some odd reason (maybe I had hoped it would sell) I priced the work at $400.  Their take would have been $160, mine after shipping cost deducted would have been $190. The piece took two days to make when I add the hours up. I am keeping all this in mind as I return to the studio to mend the work returned and put together what might be the last of the kind of work that has so little return other than the shear pleasure of making. Let’s hope striking that match will be just as satisfying.