Halloween Print Show?

Anyone interested in a Halloween event for our print club proposal.
Could potentially be amazing.

Printmaking Bibliography

Buzz Spector
My Poetry, 2001
Polaroid
28.75" x 32.5"

Here's a link to an excellent and thorough bibliography for printmaking and printmakers compiled and hosted by Beauvais Lyons at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Learning to love you more

Miranda July, everyone's favorite gamine director/author/performance artist, has the greatest website.

I'm telling you about it because I think that it will inspire even the most reluctant printmaker ever to pick a roller to start something...anything, to see where it will go. Learning to love you more is a site that has "assignments"-not the print 7 prints by Friday type of assignment, but the kind of task that asks us to document our experiences, from clothing to politics. From its humble beginnings as a site, Learning to love you more has become a book, an exhibition, and an ongoing phenomenon that inspires not only artists, but teachers, farmers, senators, and more. Yes, farmers.

So, look at the site. Try the assignments. Make prints and drawings from the things that happen. You can do them in any order.

Most importantly, take a chance, like Miranda July did, and put your thoughts, words and actions out there in a sincere, collaborative way. Post to this blog. Start a conversation. Take a flash photo. Repair something. Make a field guide to your yard.

Set something in motion here: Who knows what it might become.

Seriously, because I'm the only one posting... and I would like to see what happens when everyone takes ownership of this space and engages it. My favorite kind of procrastination is blog hopping.

Printmaking student blogs

Two of my students in the elective class have opted for blogs instead of sketchbooks this semester. The blogs act as a virtual sketchbook-opening up their experience with printmaking to a much wider audience and feedback than the standard "pass in your sketchbooks to me and I'll be the judge of that" mentality.

You can see their work, influences, as well as reactions to critiques and everyday life.



Pictures: Woodcut with embossing, Sylva Johnson

www.nicoletteross.blogspot.com (Nicolette Ross, 1st year grad)

www.serioussharks.blogspot.com (Sylva Johnson, undergraduate)

The Laundry List

One day in 1795, Alois Senefelder's mother called him from his workshop. She was sending out a load of laundry. She needed paper to record the clothing items. Senefelder didn't have any, so he penned the list on a flat stone with a grease pencil.

He was 24. His father had been a noted German actor. Senefelder wanted to go into theatre, too. He'd already written a play that did pretty well. He'd made a little money with it.

But then Senefelder's father died, and he was left poor. Maybe he could make a living by writing, but it cost too much to have material printed. So he did an astonishing thing. He set out to invent means for printing his own works. And, while he was in his workshop, his mother asked for that laundry list.

We did two kinds of printing in 1795. In relief printing you create an image that protrudes from a plate. When you ink the surface, ink hits only the parts that stick out. Both typesetting and woodcuts work that way.

The second method is intaglio printing. You cut an image into a plate, ink the whole thing, then wipe the surface clean. Ink stays in the depressions and transfers an image to the paper.

Now Senefelder was about to discover a third method. He wanted to etch copper plates chemically. Then he had to make that laundry list. He used a limestone slab -- the kind printers mix ink on. He'd planned to try etching stone as well as copper.

He was about to erase the stone. Then, on a hunch, he etched the surface with acid. Sure enough, the grease pencil protected the stone. Words were left standing. The depressions were far too shallow to take ink. Yet, they did take ink.

Senefelder had stumbled on new means for setting off inked and non-inked regions of a flat surface. He'd found a way to make stone take ink chemically, not mechanically. The full chemistry of the process wouldn't become clear until long after his death. It's tied to the makeup of limestone and fatty acids.

We call the process "lithography." That's Greek for Senefelder's own term, "stone printing." And it was not simple. It took four years for Senefelder to get the process under control.

By the time he died in 1834, lithography had become the dominant means for putting pictorial images and musical scores into books. Senefelder had passed from seminal inventor to innovator. He gave us a series of lithographic presses, each one better than the one before it. He improved the chemical process.

And what of Senefelder the writer? Well, in 1819 he wrote a wonderfully clear textbook on lithography. And, as a writer, he kept right on serving printers -- down through the 19th century.

Island Press visiting artist, Chris Duncan

On September 29, we will welcome Oakland-based artist, Chris Duncan to Washington University's Island Press and work with him for the week to create a print project. Here are some links to Chris' work:

at Gregory Lind Gallery
at Jeff Bailey Gallery

Chris is interested in exploring concepts related to process, transformation, and reduction. He is known for his work involving intricate string sculptures, and has now begun to literally explore the threads that tie nature, science, and the spirit into life. He equally centers the work on personal and political issues, including works like "World War 3D," which is composed of a globe, a cube, and panel that is littered with dots that represent chaos and destruction. (from dailyserving.com, September 2007)