The Results: Is It What We Planned?

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Garden Book Open
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The Garden Book is finished and there will be two more made just in case I want to exhibit one. Six blocks were carved to get the images I wanted, larger ones for the backdrop and ones to cut out for the foreground. This took days to make and the best part for me was the carving of the wood and the engineering of how it would all fit together and still be a book, still maintain the idea of being in a three dimensional garden scene.

All of it done to represent the essentials of how our front yard was re-landscaped to have this feeling of stone paths meandering through Japanese maples and boulders and shrubs and coming to an end at the front door where the water garden is.

Garden Book Page 1
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Garden Book Page 2
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Garden Book Page 3
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Garden Book Latch
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We have the large gong but we have yet to see the gate-like structure for it. This will take more time but is coming and be the first thing seen coming up the drive, so it had to be the feature of the first page.

Lately I have been thinking of how those of us who are “makers” just keep making whether we have a place for the work or not. I don’t really have a commercial gallery for artist books. They take so much time to do that pricing seems too hard to figure out and out of proportion to what the buyer would consider spending. It is the same with sculptural pieces that tell a story of their own. There is no way to let it go to a gallery for fifty percent of the retail value. But what else can we do with all these things we make.

I am getting ready to make some new pieces for a shop, The HomeWork Series. The frames cost me $12 each (they are 11″ x 14″). I will paint them next in a color I needed to buy by the case to make sure that there would be enough of this graphite grey when I needed it to keep the pieces consistent. I ordered paper that cost $5 a sheet to get perhaps two mat boards worth cut from each sheet as I cover and create inset shelves for small found objects that go with each piece. Next I will hand stitch a small boro like textile that will suspend from a branch from the garden and hang over a graphite drawing. There will be additional stitching and a small collection of little things related to the image. I will need to purchase glass for the frames and finish the backs where there will also be a small envelope containing a list of materials and techniques used in the completion of each work.

The finished work will maybe sell for $300 maximum in the shop. I will be paid $150. And from that $150 I have spent at least $30 in materials and many hours in the careful planning and execution. At least when I finish these pieces they will have a place to go.

The ones that come back from exhibition are here, waiting for me to make a decision on what to do with them. There are getting to be too many of them. Too many things are coming from my head and hands.

I am talking myself into being a writer. Just pen and paper and most of that ending up in a bin. Seems like a good solution when I finish tackling the problem of too many things on shelves and walls and boxes and corners that I don’t even want to go into.

 

Japanese Garden Wood Blocks

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Japanese Garden wood blocks
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This is what I am planning now for a limited edition of books on the new garden.

The larger blocks on the bottom will be the background image, then about 3/16″ in front will be the top image cut around to reveal the background and give the triptych a depth that will make the viewer feel like they are in the garden. It will fold out to three sections.

I plan on using my etching press to print the images and hope for some additional depth by way of deeply pressed images. And then it will be a matter of getting them cut just right and designing the book to accommodate the three sections. Then the cover material and the closure that will likely be a trimming from one of the Japanese maples out front.

If nothing else, I am learning my limitations and need for further practice, or instruction, on the craft of carving wood blocks. But the sound of the tool removing the wood is an addictive sound….scritch, scritch, scritch….something like that. More on this work as I proceed.

Next week I will write a bit about the trip for the North Carolina Soils and Conservation International Conference in Greensboro. All those watercolors I made for it are drying nicely.

And a small note on the last blog about Teaching Workshops. Some people have actually said they are flattered to be copied, others that they find it pretty disheartening, but the vast majority are like twenty-five years ago…..quite silent. But thank you to those who have at least passed it on.

 

Carving Wood Blocks

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Carving a scene series
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I am still carving small images from the garden with the hope of doing a limited edition of small books. This latest one of a lantern under a dogwood tree is not really that good. It started out the full size of 4.5″ x 4.5″ and I think there was just too much information in the image. Information that did not need to be there and I was not that fond of the background.

That is a problem with making the scene too large. All you can do aside from starting over, is continue to cut away until the subject of the image becomes the object that stands out. This was supposed to be about the lantern in moonlight under a tree…..not a lantern in a landscape that happened to have the moon shining behind a tree.

My solution was to just keep carving away until the image was much smaller, making the lantern that much larger. I am still not sure that I like it all that much. There is always the other side to carve on. There is always just tossing it out.

Now I have put it aside after photographing most of its transitions to use as a reminder to plan better in the first place.

carving the bench
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To that end I have drawn and colored in with a marker the image I want on this new block. It is easier to see how the print will look doing it this way. I will work a bit on this today and see how this plan works out. In the meantime I have enrolled in a printmaking class this fall just to pick up some ideas of how others work.

 

 

A New Series of Wood Block Prints

Posted on by Sandy Webster

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.