here are a few pics from a recent photography expedition to the Exploratorium in San Francisco. this is the most incredible place for a photo shoot!!! especially the section on optical illusions!! two floors of fun and wackiness and so many amazing things to explore!!!

i kept wanting to post this sketch and then deciding against it, thinking about how bad it is technically, not really resembling my deer dear at all. but, looking at it tonight it finally dawned on me…how i’ve been using my subjects as objects to project myself and my own feelings onto and that’s some really important stuff.

my drawings have never been about technical proficiency, realism, or any of that other classical drawing stuff. they’re childlike, curious, and wrought w/ bad perspective, proportions, and an extremely stylized aesthetic. they’re about my subconscious, my feelings and the things inside me that i need to express – that are dying to get out but don’t seem to have a healthy way in which to do so.

realizing this also makes me understand that my drawings over the years are almost like a journal or a pictorial record of my life experience. for the most part they focus on those things that are frightening, worrisome, or bizarre to me so they’re not a completely accurate record. they do help me understand my process, however. not only in an artistic sense but also the process of discovering, experiencing and navigating this crazy wild ride we call life.

my new obsession…i love her so! she came into my life almost a month ago and ever since she’s been my favorite subject for photographing and drawing. i love her sad little frown…she’s such an inspiration to have around!

a few random drawings from the past year…

let me tell you about my little wondrous discovery…offset printing! i live for the days in the studio where magical mistakes happen that bring a sense of delight and being alive like nothing else. this little gem of a discovery definitely falls under that category…it had been so long since something so spontaneous and unexpected had happened to me in the studio i was starting to wonder if i was still creatively in tune with the universe.

i’ve always been really impressed w/ every print and artist book i’ve encountered that was printed on an offset press but have never for the life of me understood the process behind it. so, you can imagine how excited i became when i inadvertently discovered offset printing firsthand in the studio!!

it all started w/ a black intaglio layer and a few colors of relief down on my plexi plate. i decided to add a layer of yellow straight to the plate w/ a brayer and in the act of rolling the yellow ink onto the plate i ended up picking up the relief and intaglio layers below. OMG! i saw the little owl on the brayer and started to freak out! i immediately rolled it out onto the nearest sheet of paper and couldn’t believe my eyes. oh, the possibilities!!! i ran over to fuzzy bob to show him what had happened and he said, “oh! you invented offset printing!” so, i had! now i get it.

these are some experiments from my last day of studio time at the college. by this point i felt i had fully exhausted the unanticipated bird theme i’d developed throughout the semester and wanted to get back to the kind of art i’m used to doing. i wanted to use my sketches and line drawings and somehow incorporate them into my print work. it was important to me that i didn’t stray away from the ideas and imagery i was most interested in exploring. for most of the semester i had let go of concept almost entirely in an effort to explore the techniques of printmaking. but, on my last day of studio time it was important to me that i incorporate my style and ideas into the mix and set the tone for the direction my print work will go.

above are three different artist prints and the original sketch the plexi plate was carved from. i drew a bit w/ a micron pen over the first mono print, which is printed on a remnant of some very stiff variety of Arches paper. the second would have been a successful print if it weren’t for my registration error. it was meant to be a mono print but the intaglio layer didn’t print dark enough so i tried to run the plate back through w/ just the intaglio layer inked up but got the registration wrong. at least the wind-up guy now looks like he has a mustache!

it was so much fun playing around w/ the oil-based inks – i hadn’t had much exposure to them throughout the semester as i’d been focusing mostly on water-based silk screen. i have a lot to learn!!!! about color mixing, achieving desired consistency, and fun tricks for playing w/ depth, pattern & texture. printmaking equals never ending discovery. and, having lots of leftover rejects for manipulating and reconstructing later. oh, what joy for a paper/print/ephemera hound like me!!

Here’s the last of the giant wheel prints – done entirely in silk screen using the photo-emulsion process and printed w/ water-based inks on black Arches cover paper. i love how vibrant and bright this print is against the black background!! it’s definitely my favorite print of the semester. the images are taken directly from my own photos of Cedar Point and migrating winter geese.

i also wanted to add a picture of my beloved silk screen – the one i made from scratch – so you can see how it looked before i began printing. I ended up donating this piece to a fundraising auction event at the?Arts Council of Mendocino County where my printmaking teacher is a board member. I hope it sold and raised some money for this wonderful organization!

ideally, i’d like to continue w/ this amusement park ride series and envision prints with both the zipper and big swing ride as focal point. my thoughts behind this series are of a representation of man’s lofty pursuits, his love of movement and flight, and that sense of bright whimsy, joy and etherealness experienced through a sense of total freedom. going higher and higher and higher still in an effort to free ourselves of this earthly sentence. to transcend both physically and spiritually and break past any real or imagined barriers to complete and total bliss. these are the ideas i’m trying to explore as they are of particular personal interest to me these days.

here’s a super spontaneous print begun one afternoon during open studio from a rolled out layer of blended ink onto a piece of muted blue/green lokta paper. it was as simple as that – i was just playing around while cleaning up my rollers and spontaneously rolled some out onto my fancy paper just to see how it would look. i kept the paper for a while thinking it would serve as a really nice background for an image someday.

i ended up using the silk screened birds from the ferris wheel etching prints and layering them over what became a dramatic sunset sky. this is my only print on handmade paper and the way it takes the ink is so different than traditional printmaking papers! i love how you can really see all the fibers in the paper and how the ink just sits on top of them sometimes, failing to cover spots and letting the paper’s natural color show through. for all the meticulous planning i usually do before getting into the studio nothing is as thrilling and fascinating to me as the unexpected things that happen while in there working! that’s what i live for!!!

here’s another version of the ferris wheel etching. the intaglio layer came out so much more crisp in this version! but, i’m not a big of a fan of the washed out background and placement of the silk screen birds. still, this was “fuzzy bob”’s favorite so i decided to post it (that’s what we lovingly called our amazingly talented and helpful print studio coordinator to distinguish him from our professor bob.)

here is a fairly small print – about 3″x5″ – which began as a mono print from a plexiglas etching of a ferris wheel. i etched the plexi w/ a long, sharp nail and a reverse photo copy underneath so i could easily follow the lines. it was so tiny & intricate – it took me almost 6 hours to complete!! once i was in the studio i began with an intaglio wipe in black and then rolled out a relief layer of various colors straight from brayers. after running this through the press and letting it dry i finished the image w/ a few silk-screened shore birds. this is one of my “Giant Wheel” series inspired by cedar point’s ferris wheel of the same name. i love how colorful it is!!!!