New Publications

This book was recently released from Lark Crafts, featuring yours truly on page 115! Juried by Gene McHugh, the Kress Fellow for Interpretive Technology at the Whitney Museum of Art, this book shows the extreme range of possibilities in paper art - including, but not limited to, handmade paper, commercial paper, cardboard and compressed paper, cutting, folding, casting, shaping, scoring....preview some images by other artists here.



My book, White Mountain, was selected.

This past month, I was also honored to be a part of The Art of the Book, at Seager-Gray Gallery in Mill Valley, CA. My pieces, Chacaltaya, and Kasha Katuwe were featured. The exhibition included a gorgeous catalog.





Finally, I was interviewed by Leticia Burgos for an upcoming edition of Estampa. The article will be in Spanish only, as it is a South American publication. Leticia sent me the first draft right away for proofing, which left me completely mind-blown. All I could think was, WOW! Can't wait to see it.

New Print: Listening

This new print combines etching and linoleum block printing! I haven't had much opportunity to really explore etching since, well, undergrad, and I missed it. Aquatint, grounds, stop out, spit bite, scraping...there is just nothing like working a plate. It's like working (developing) a drawing, but the history and palimpsest is in the metal, it has a palpable presence in three dimensions (albeit, a low-relief sort of presence).

But I can run my hand across the surface and feel the drawing. It has dimensionality. When printed, that dimensionality is transferred, so the ink manifests the corporeality of the drawing.



I love contrasting processes - the flat planes of relief printing on top of the more atmospheric aquatint. Layering these contrasts, to me, is the most exciting. It is where the image becomes the most exhilarating and tenebrous.



God, I've missed etching.

This print is actually on paper made from the first test batch of pulp I made in my beater! It was just some cotton linter I beat to test Dulcinea out, found it sitting in drawer over the winter and thought it was the perfect size for this plate. Which is another thing I love to do, use something that I've been saving because I didn't have a use for it yet.

In other news - I've been updating the website. Check out here for my new prints section. More to come!

Understanding

(source)

New Artist Book: Tamalpais

A new little book made out of waste prints from this. For anyone unfamiliar with the term "waste print" - when a printmaker pulls an edition of prints - often some are discarded from the final tally because of slight irregularities. Traditionally, these were discarded or destroyed.

However, as an artist, I find opportunity in these waste prints. I figure, I've already messed it up somehow, why not use it for a basis for experimentation? I can only make it better. So I draw on them, or use them for collage, or in this case, cut up them up and fold them into an artist book.

For larger views, click on the images.



I was a little unsure what to do with the repetition of imagery, and decided to make the book a sort of meditation, with the mountain being a visual focal point as well as a metaphor.



With this new work, I'm trying to be be less linear in narrative, to leave open up the stories I tell visually, and actually, leave some gaps for viewers to fill in with their own intuition or background. Some older imagery is returning in the prints I'm working on right now, I'm circling back while entering a new phase at the same time.

Between two poems

Spent the past week sort of in the middle of these two poems by Wendell Berry.

The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Wendell Berry

What We Need Is Here

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

Wendell Berry