27 Tuesday Sep 2011
Posted in Exhibitions
Please stop by and see me at my booth in the Sandhill Crane and Art Festival. I will be selling woodblock prints and a few hand carved tile…thanks to the help of my friend James Freeman.
22 Monday Aug 2011
Posted in printmaking, woodcut
These woodcuts will be available for sale during “Art in August” in downtown Tecumseh on Friday, August 26th. I will have a booth in the alley between Blush Boutique and Ivy Gallery. The woodcuts were hand pressed to Rives BFK paper and hand painted with watercolor.
I will also have a booth at the Art-a-licous festival in downtown Adrian on Sept 16th and 17th. There will be t-shirts available with this design during the festival.
20 Monday Oct 2008
“Night Heron”, Linocut, 7×8
This is the lino that I cut on the Friday of the Artalicious Festival.
This design was originally tried as a glaze on a vase during a collaboration with James Freeman. But the design melted during firing. So here it is again in lino. I really like this one. I used Akua Color again and it is great. I think I found a new ink. The paper is Rives BFK. I use a Richeson Baby Press for printing. I’m not sure I will color this one. I like it just the way it is…but who knows. I change my mind a lot.
The inspiration for this design comes from the AuSable River, the summer moon over Devils Lake, moonlight and crickets.
24 Friday Aug 2007
Posted in Linocut, printmaking
K and I visit the Smokies quite often since my parents live in Wears Valley, just outside of Townsend. Smoky Mountain images are always floating around in my head so this wasnt too difficult to develop into a linocut design. But, it didnt come out as well as I would have liked. For one, my cuts were too deep in many places. I had hoped they were high enough to show up in the sky but they were not. Anyway, I’m supercritical of my work and could go on but I wont. I thought about calling this linocut “Black Jack” because I ran out of ink on the 21st print. I’ve been hand printing all my prints with a Speedball plastic baren. I just ordered two new barens the other day to experiment with. I ordered some larger sheets of linoleum. I’ll need them for the Artalicious Art Festival in a few weeks. I also ordered some heavier Rives paper than what I have been using. I used up the last of my Speedball black ink. The other day I used some of my friend’s Dick Blick ink and I think I like it a little better. It was not as thick as the Speedball brand. I use oil based ink mostly. I’m a slow worker so I like the fact that it wont dry up on my glass before I even get going. When I’m really organized and energetic the water based ink seems to work just fine. I have yet to try and paint over dried water based ink. I assume it would dissolve but I havent experimented with that yet. 
19 Sunday Aug 2007
Posted in Linocut, printmaking
This is just another linocut for the annual LCVA Box Show auction coming up in September. I experimented with my ink on this one. I started with brown, then slowly added, red, yellow, and orange. I hand pressed 20 and only the first two are exactly the same. The others are a mix of rusty colors and that’s exactly what I wanted to do….for once..ha! I use the pheasant tail nymph a lot when I fly fish. It’s on my top ten list of flies, especially when I fish at devils lake. It works great under a dropper for crappie or bluegills. Anyway, I’ll have this one on display at my booth at the Artalicious Festival in Adrian on September 14th and 15th. Pi Benio of Adrian College asked if I would be a printmaking demonstrator. So, I’ll be there with my tools, ink and paper making whatever. I think I may have a printmaking partner. I asked Carlos Tobar who is a long time printmaker and painter in Adrian to join me. He said he would and he’s going to bring one of his portable print presses….YESSSS!
08 Wednesday Aug 2007
Posted in Linocut, printmaking
The annual LCVA Gallery fundraiser is coming up in September. For the past two years I’ve created art with a “fly box” theme. I may do one more fly besides this one, but I’m not quite sure which fly to do. This is the first time I’ve ever painted a linocut. The heavyweight Rives paper took the paint well without warping too much. I’ll probably do a series of flies and then move to a series of landscapes done in an Arts and Crafts style, similar to the work of Kathleen West.
14 Thursday Jun 2007
Posted in Linocut, printmaking
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25 Tuesday Jul 2006
Posted in Linocut, printmaking
“Caja de Mosca” is my first attempt at a lino cut print. This isn’t the first time I have worked with the fly box theme. I painted “Spanish Fly Box” and “Fly Box” in acrylic last year for the LCVA Box Show. And, I’ve done a few watercolors depicting streamer flies. I’m somewhat pleased with how this turned out. It wasn’t as difficult to cut the linoleum as I thought it would be. That might have more to do with just having brand new sharp cutting tools. I decided to go with the representational look of a fly as opposed to trying to cut them realistically. One of the reasons for that is my influence from studying Aztec imagery. But, when I finished the final design I thought it looked more like Native American art from the Pacific Northwest. As for the obvious cutmarks on the print, those were intentional. I wanted it to look like a lino cut. I looked at several relief prints before I started and liked the style of leaving cut marks. I think it gives it more of a human touch. If I didn’t leave cut marks one might ask why I just didn’t create it in Photoshop? Or, one might just assume it was done in Photoshop. I wanted to leave some evidence that it was done by hand, or could have been done by hand. One of the beauties of cutting block in my opinion is that anyone can do it. It seems these days that you have to fork over a lot of money to get your work reproduced, which is why I rarely reproduce any of my work. And, that’s a subject for another blog. Anyway, these “Caja de Mosca” prints will be auctioned off at the LCVA’s 4th Annual Box Show. A few of them will also be auctioned off for the Zonta Organization to help advance the status of women worldwide.
