Feature Works Archives - Page 90 of 117

Something With Pictures

Posted on April 29, 2018 by Sandy Webster

I saw one of these on someone else’s blog. They are made from Lake Michigan rocks and encased in vellum. How could I not want to buy the last two available from Shanna Leino. She is an extraordinary book artist and tool maker. Now my responsibility is to keep them clean. Do not sit them onto painted, smeary, muddy, gluey surfaces. They are between 3.5 and 4.5 inches and quite heavy. Perfect for holding things in place….clean things.

This week in the studio I painted 192 small 2″ x 4″ sheets of kozo paper with 153 watercolors made from the soils of Australia.

When they were dry I sealed the color in on both sides. Sorting them according to colors so that they move through the country by color was a bit of a challenge. I am fairly satisfied now.

Even the very pale sheets have some color clinging to their edges. Here you can see that they go from the greys to creams to light terre vertes to pale yellows and then on to more intense colors. Deeper yellow ochres through the browns to reds and finishing with a nice caput mortuum…deep brownish red….old blood.

My intention with these is to stitch on each sheet before it is folded into a folio and then coptic stitched to the next one in line. I want the long book to flow like the endless landscape of Australia. I want to roll it back and forth between my hands. At least that is the plan.

The thread will be something I bought over there. A cream or beige or Eucalyptus leaf green. Not sure about that yet. Maybe all three?

I have been dipping into these watercolors for several projects.

This one now housed in the South Australia Museum.

This one now in Australia’s National Library.

The Lake Mungo book housed in Queensland State Library.

There were many, many hand pulled prints colored with these same watercolors.

Another thing I did this week was take all of my pop up book collection to Western Carolina University where I received my BFA in 1997. There were over ninety titles. So many were gifts and so many more I just found irresistible. Many came from museum gift shops and were extremely complex in their movements. They were very happy to receive this collection and told me that the artist book collection I gave them late last year is now housed in their museum. I like that students can have access to these books. Much better than having them in boxes here.

Here is the only pop up book I kept, the one I made myself….Art History Pops Up.

This one was so much fun to make. Ten iconic art images throughout history. We do not have access to the shiny slick papers that make pop ups work so well. It is tedious and very wearing on the movable parts to make one. At least that was my experience so far. I have been asked to work on another with someone knowledgeable on the history of the book. I hope I can live up to his expectations. More on that project later in the year.

Meanwhile that is it for now. But one more thing, the novella, Kind Gestures, is now on my website, offered in spaced out chapters.

Til next week.

Time in the Studio and Being Evaluated

Posted on April 11, 2018 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.

Prints, Pigments and Pages – Collaboration with Nature

Posted on April 6, 2018 by Sandy Webster

This is Carl’s book made in the class this last week. There were very few leaves for the contact printing part of the workshop but we made do.

Starting the week with contact prints with leaves and gatherings from the blacksmith’s shop.

We moved through the week with making watercolors with local soils. Marbling papers with those same pigments, using walnuts gathered last fall from around the book arts studio and making small gelatin plates to record bits of the surrounding plant life.

The goal was to finish a book of samples that could be added to later.

Here is Cindy’s work table where good things happened.

Cathy’s finished samples book and her title page pocket.

Ellyn’s clever title page of Brasstown’s colors.

Kathy’s pages and finished cover. Starting with her shifu lesson.

Amber’s folios being prepared and one of her finished pockets inside her book.

Marie’s pages.

Denise’s finished book.

And Carl’s pages. For some of the pages he hunted down old 45 rpm records to insert into the book. The sample was on one side and his recipe of how it was done on the other “label” side.

He had a beautiful opening page of the local pigment watercolors and the duck feather paint brush made in class.

I have been teaching at the John C Campbell Folk School since 1988….so this makes thirty years! I was thinking of stopping and hanging up my ideas but this class was so wonderful, generous and thoughtful about the processes that I think I will continue for a bit longer.

Thank you so much to the school and especially to the students. A lovely week that will take at least that long to put all the equipment and materials away in the studio.

Til then.