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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.

 

Back in the Studio and Wondering What in the World?!

Posted on by Sandy Webster

fish in snow

There is a bit of snow on the ground. I am in and out of the studio. Working on ideas that take me to Lee’s shop to borrow his time and tools. Cutting through books, using his torch, using my new burning tool, using watercolors from Australian soils. In the middle of several days just getting “to it”, I wonder just what is it I am doing. Is all this work saying what I want it to say? Am I wasting precious time on these things?

And then I pass by the wine bottle fish hung over the holidays outside my studio window.  The light catches on them and their wires have all rusted and still hold the fish as they swim in the cool winter winds. Then I think to myself that when I thought of doing this thing (hanging every fish wine bottle I could find under a porch with wire and rocks that were once a very long snake in the yard) I thought it might have been a dumb idea. But it is not. It amuses me. I like that my daughter and a friend helped with all that twisting of wires and hanging them just so.

fish in winter

The problem is that a person needs to have someone to ask. Someone who just might have a handle on how you think and can rein you in when you go too far. Someone who will say without equivocation that maybe you should rethink that idea and maybe even something like, “For god’s sake, clean up this studio. It’s all looking a bit muddled in here.”

I had someone like that once and then not. Years later I wrote the following poem about that loss. You read while I go pick up the studio and pretend she is still here looking over my shoulder.

Lost

 

It happens slowly – seldom just one instance

often a comment, a look, a difference of opinion.

 

Then a chill will seep in and work its way around

making a hollow that slowly fills with wariness, distrust.

 

And then its gone – the friendship, the companion,

the one person that you depended on to answer

“What do you think – what do you really think?”

 

S. Webster

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