Feature Works

I don’t know what it is about when you ink a plate that makes you think, “Ahh, this could be good.” Such incredibly false hopes for such a limited knowledge of what I am doing. It’s amazing how easily I think it will be so much better than it really is. Collographs just might not be my thing.

Well that was pitiful I had carved out around the wave and the hill with the road. Thought that the ink would catch in there and give me some definition.  The ink has too much extender in it I think. And the print lacks definition where it is needed, around the camel, boat, sharks, anchor, you name it. So I decide to gesso all the good parts to elevate them and create more of a separation between them and the background.

I increase the amount of ink in the mix and print again.

Believe it or not, I even attempt another collograph with the camel being dragged up the hill to a house. Just the bow of the boat is in the foreground. It is a vertical image. It was embarrassingly bad. So I wonder if the story is so important, go back to etching. There is just too much texture in these collographs. Which is fine if you want what you did in undergraduate school. When you were trying to avoid “wedding cake” plates. Here are some I still have framed and stashed here in the office and and storage room behind me.

The one above my instructor let me use all the packing materials off the latest delivery box of inks for the studio. I liked it rolled with two different inks. I thought it was “mysterious”. Actually it is rather weak by any standard in printmaking.

Here is another one that this one inspired. I was heavily into textures at the time with weaving and basketry.

On this one I was pushing the limits and patience of my professor because I was not only draping cords and fabrics all over the plate, but was printing on a textures surface as well!!! And using two different colors of ink really does not take it out of the realm of what a twelve year old can do.

And one last observation on my early work in this technique. I found a very large framed collograph in the storage room that not only had all these threads, etc draped all over but was printed in the chine colle technique of adding textured and colored papers and even cloth before printing. And if that was not enough texture for me, I actually stitched around the image with varying embroidery threads and stitches. This has not been an affirming visit into the storage room. I need to get rid of that stuff!

I really don’t know why I felt the need to revisit this technique. All it has done is point out its limitations and my own. So in the few days I have spent time, ink, paper and false hopes, I have decided that it is the story of the camel that matters. Me and my camel. I think maybe illustrations (etched of course) of my encouraging the camel to help me get him up the hill. So I am heading back in there with my etching tools and small plates to tell a story.  More about the results later but here is an image of a recent etching and our Christmas card this year which was actually a tiny etching done as part of a series in the same class I was playing around with collographs.

A few weeks ago I thought it would be fun to revisit making collographs. I made several in an undergraduate printmaking class. I like how easy it was to get texture. But to that end you have to sacrifice details….drawing detail. Taking a piece of book board (davey board) and covering it with cut outs of card stock for the tree trunks and then bits of rosemary for the leaves I tried to get the essence of what I saw out my studio doorway. There also is a stone pillar made with  card stock stones and daubs of garnet gesso for a “stoney” look. More bits of whatever made up the ground under the crepe myrtle trees.  I did not think it was too piled on. My teacher back then said, “Don’t be making it like a wedding cake. Keep it printable.”

So I put it together and shellacked both sides after coating it with gesso for additional textures.

I decided to just print it and see what would happen. Well the “wedding cake” aspect is certainly apparent because the abundance of white means there was little contact with the paper. I did not like how the stone pillar came out at all and thought before I try this again, I will just chop off that part. I also hammered down some of the high parts and really increased the pressure.

All said and done with this experiment, I like the plate better than the prints. AND I learned that whatever I learned in undergraduate school had been well and truly forgotten. So the next best thing is to go onto YouTube and watch some tutorials. My books from back then were very out dated compared with the internet innovations in printing collographs.

I don’t know why I wanted to use the dark umber ink instead of the black. It might be that the mistakes are less glaring in a color print.

So taking another board and only card stock paper from an old folder, I created a block image of a bird nest. Super simple. Finding the flaws in ones work is always easier if things are kept simple at first.

A collograph plate is only good for so many prints and then the build-up flattens and it is hard to get an image after about ten or so runs through the press. It took three to get the pressure and viscosity of the ink just right. The ink should be thinner than when covering an etching plate so it can seep into the cracks and of course in the long run, waste less ink. Here are the brown ones and then the black ones. The black ones definitely give me more information on what needs to be done or not done when printing. But by now I have used up almost all of my ten passes.

I will say that once they are matted and signed they do take on a more professional look. But it also seems that by the time you get the hang of it a lot of ink is wasted, not to mention time and paper. The end product could just as easily have been done by a ten year old. A ten year old with an etching press. I may go back to the dry point etching. At least there it is more about my ability to make marks, draw so to say.

But just to share I am going to show one more plate that I am working on. The subject matter is how it is for me sometimes…..feeling like hauling a expletive deleted camel up a hill. Here is the camel in an ill-fated vessel sailing over dangerous waters only to get to that blessed hill with a camel who is intent on carrying the same dilemma on his back as a reminder that even at the top of the hill, nothing is going to end…..be prepared to start again.

I will post a picture of this when I print it just so you can see. The pencil lines need to be carved out to allow me a fine line (like etching). The boat is using a textured paper. The house that is for me, the hidden passenger, needs to have a window cut out so I can see where I am going. And of course there is the huge rock for an anchor that might just leave me stranded out there among those awful sharks if the wave doesn’t put us all overboard.

I hate that camel. But the good thing is I think it’s some fairly rich territory for more to come. Plus I am learning loads about the techniques and knowledge required to make a decent collograph.

I now have three Safe Houses made. There are tiny bits of gold leaf in each one. I think I am going to keep making these for a while and then find a way to let them go.  The clothes line in each one seems important to me. Making more might show me why that is so.  Here is where my Art Group comes in. They are so supportive and questioning full of observations that I have not seen. And they are encouraging on the work that is hard to talk about, hard because it is a bit raw yet.

Also in the studio is the In Search of Lost Time parts. They are waiting for me to find the time and inclination to continue. I think one reason I don’t go on with some of these pieces is simple. What do I do with it when I am finished? Where does it go? How much more space can I give it to just hang out in the studio to show to students and Art Group? And who in the world collects things like this in a day of preferring to just have something “pretty” sitting there? Who wants to think about what an object might possess in the way of meaning?

There are lots of clock parts here so I really do need to get back to assembling them. I bought horse shoe nails to hook over parts to nail into wooden bases. They don’t call them “horse shoe” nails anymore, now they are fence post nails for wire. They are so handy to have in the studio for keeping things in place when using wooden parts.

And speaking of wooden pieces, here is an installation in the making that has hung out in the corner of the studio for some time waiting for me dig out the rest of the parts that go into it and then get down to business.

It is called, “What Was She Thinking?” There are a total of five of these old balsam hat forms that I have saved for many years. Each will be perched upon one of these large weaving spools. I am thinking that the failed bowl turning of my son’s in the center here will mount onto a shorter spool with the “girls” all gathered round. In their heads I will take advantage of the right and left brain thinking processes. Holes might be carved into their heads with chain attached books that can be examined but only returned to that side of the brain. Some of them may have connections to brain in the middle of their grouping, some may prefer to opt out and stay with their own thoughts. I was recently given an old clear light bulb which will be mounted to the top of the brain in the middle….an idea source of sorts.

I need the distraction of this kind of work. Like all of my close acquaintances the election here in the states has given us pause as to what kind of people we are. How little other people’s rights really matter in the face of seeking our own comfort zone. It is a telling time for all of us and I am willing to wait it out in my studio and give support when and where I can to those feeling the pain of what our country has done.

And here is another picture of something in the studio. A reminder that it won’t be long and I will be winging away to Australia again. Such comfort in that!