15 December 2016

Happy Holidays



SHINE YOUR LIGHT
Watercolor woodblock print
10 x 7.5 inches on Japanese Shioji paper
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Hello, dear blog readers.

It's been awhile since I've posted, largely because it's been awhile since I've made any prints. The sudden death of my father-in-law in November, plus emotional fallout from the U.S. presidential election, locked up my creative juices for a time, but I'm easing back into my studio with this small holiday print.

Wishing you light, warmth, love, and peace as 2016 draws to a close and a new year comes to us. Happy holidays to all.

xo Annie

13 October 2016

Paint By Number Yellow Lab


PAINT BY NUMBER YELLOW LAB
Watercolor woodblock print
Six hand-carved blocks
10 hand-printed applications of color
12 x 9 inch image (30.5 x 23 cm) on 15 x 11 inch (38 x 28 cm) Echizen Kozo
edition: 15, plus 5 artists proofs and 1 "poet's proof"
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Made for a 20-print portfolio called Traces (named after a poem by Annie Rogers which contains themes of memory, language and loss) this print is a tribute to my 13-year-old yellow lab Ty who died in June. After working for many months on the Relics dot prints, and then spending six weeks on this print of Ty's fur, it seems to me that the more closely you look at something, the less sure you become that you know what it is.

The print and portfolio will be showcased by Zea Mays Printmaking at the Editions/Artists Book Fair in NY, November 3-6, 2016, so please go check it out if you're in NY!

Here are photos of the print in progress:


21 September 2016

The End (Maybe) of Virtuoso Carving

Detail of Block #5 carving

Working from the photograph of Ty's fur I showed you in the last post, I used Photoshop to help me separate the image into six distinct colors, then transferred the separations onto six 12 x 9 inch blocks (30 x 23 cm). I started carving around September 1 and have been carving ever since, today being the 21st. I'm happy to say that I'm on the 6th block now. (The print is due October 15.)

In my own mind I call this very detailed, very tiny, very tight type of carving "virtuoso carving." I've worked like this quite a bit in my woodblock career — see my carving of page one of the Algonquin Bible, or the recent halftone Relics prints for example — and it's totally in keeping with the traditional Japanese method of woodblock printing (think ukiyo-e prints). It's also physically demanding and intense to carve this way. I've developed arthritis in my neck as I've aged and it's uncomfortable for me now to spend 100+ hours at my carving desk, even though I use an easel-like setup and a good chair. I never say never, because I know how I am, but this print may be my "virtuoso carving" swan song.

We'll see about that…  Meanwhile, I know the feeling I want this print to have. I want it to look just like my beautiful Ty's fur. I want it to look soft and inviting. I want it to cry out to be touched. And I think that requires hewing closely to the photo.

I made a mistake on block #5 and had to fix it. Obviously, a small slip of the knife on a print of swirly fur can often be ignored, but I slipped on an area where it really would have glared. Superglue to the rescue, as superglue doesn't soften with all the water needed in mokuhanga.



As tough as this carving job has been, I don't anticipate that the printing will be much easier. It will be an edition of 21 prints, per the portfolio specs. I have to pause before printing to get ready for Northampton's Printworks 2016! I'll tell you about that in the next post.

14 September 2016

Hair of the Dog

Before I continue the story of the woodcut I'm making for my dog Ty, I want to clear up one thing. Something I wrote in the first post led several people to believe that I'm doing a series of prints about Ty. No. Just one. I'm making one print that will be part of a portfolio with Zea Mays Printmaking.

In my last post I showed you some Photoshop sketches I made playing with the idea of doing a paint-by-number portrait of Ty. I landed on the idea of doing a winter scene with small figures representing me and Ty walking into the distance and I sat with that image for quite a while. Finally, though, I let it go. It felt too cliché. Something I learned as a commercial artist is to push beyond the cliché. People recognize and identify with clichés, but a visual cliché also allows a viewer to glance at the image, think to themselves "oh, right, I know that," and move on. I think the best images use cliché for connection but then add a twist to make a viewer look again.

More importantly to me, though, the iconic mid-century paint-by-number look just felt too silly and ironic. It didn't match my feelings about losing Ty. So I began again, trying to locate an image that would better match the whole "felt sense" of my relationship with Ty and how it feels to not have him with me any more (see note* below for more about felt sense). I looked through my photos of him, and this one jumped out at me:


This is a photo of my favorite part of Ty's body. It's above his left front leg, I guess you'd call it his shoulder, where the fur of his "mane" became the more regular fur of his hind quarters, and I loved the way it swirled right there. My eyes often landed on this part of his body when we were at rest together.

This is the image of Ty that clicked inside me as "right"— as being true to my feelings about him. It expresses the intimacy of the relationship, the physicality of it. I'm a very mental and visual person, and I learned so much from Ty about being physical. He demanded that I inhabit my body fully. He wanted me to run and hike and throw balls and play and he wanted us to always be touching some part of each other when we rested. It's that physicality, the athleticism of him, and the warm comfort of touch that I miss so much. My fingers miss the beautiful softness of his fur and the strength of the muscles under the fur. So this is my starting point for the print.

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* Felt Sense*
This is a term from a psychotherapeutic technique called Focusing. A felt sense is a body sensation that is meaningful and that points to and somehow matches a vague, elusive and usually pre-verbal inner experience. I think that locating the felt sense of any particular experience or situation is useful for artists and is in fact often used by artists intuitively — that moment of aha, when an image just feels right.

09 September 2016

"Traces" Portfolio for the E/AB Fair

Print portfolios are a tradition in printmaking, I've learned. A portfolio is a group of prints, usually united by a theme or technique, presented in a case of some kind. A portfolio can be created by a single artist, or more often by a group of artists. Sometimes the portfolio is an exchange, where each participating artist receives a complete portfolio, and sometimes the portfolio is designated for sale. For me, there are pros and cons to participating in portfolios (we can get into that in the comments if you all want to), but I was invited to participate, along with 19 other artists from Zea Mays Printmaking (ZMP) studio, in a portfolio that will be showcased in NY in November 2016 at the Editions/Artists Book Fair and I jumped at the opportunity.

The portfolio is called Traces, named after a poem by ZMP studio member Annie Rogers which acts as the prompt and unifying theme. It's a strong poem with a lot of visual word-images that could be used as inspiration, and it contains themes of memory, language, loss, and childhood. As I wrote in my last post, my mind and heart were fixated on the loss of my dog Ty and when I read the poem I became also fixated on the mention of a paint by numbers kit.

Vintage paint by number paintings are an iconic mid-century art form — low-brow and democratic, much like many types of printmaking. Paint by numbers is also a pretty perfect description of the traditional Japanese process of making a woodblock print. In this method, most of the major decisions about the image are made in the sketch phase. The carving and printing are executions of the sketch and literally involve carving areas for each color based on a drawing and then laying those colors down in the printing. Click this link to see an example of how the colors build during the making of a print, much like filling in a coloring book, and much like painting by numbers.

So I started looking at vintage paint by number kits.

Deer are a very popular motif in paint by numbers.


Rivers are also popular, and Ty loved his rivers!

I photoshopped a picture of Ty onto a river-themed paint by number just for fun.

There's quite a bit of Asian-themed imagery in paint by numbers, too. That could be cool, to reference the Japanese roots of my chosen art form.

Ha ha ha, here's Ty in Japan.

Or why not just do a straightforward paint-by-number style dog portrait like one of these?

Snow scenes are also popular paint by number themes. The top image here is a Kiyoshi Saito woodblock print (I love Saito). I was surprised to see how much the Saito looks like paint by number. A snow scene would also work with the poem "Traces," which talks about snow and a blizzard.

This is one of my favorite Saito images, "Winter in Aizu." The solitary figure is so lonely and haunting. Maybe I could do a Saito-style winter scene of tiny me and Ty walking.

The winter scene is where I landed and I spent a long time pondering what the scene might look like. In the next post I'll tell you about a subsequent shift in my thinking.

08 September 2016

My Dog Ty

Three months ago my 13-year-old yellow lab Ty died. Actually, he was 13 years and 1 day old. We didn't even know he was sick, and the day before he died, on his birthday, I had a fantastic time with him. We went on a long walk at his favorite local place, the Mill River, and he had some canned tuna to celebrate his big day. The next morning I awoke to find him pacing around in the kitchen and I knew instantly that something was seriously wrong. After some visits to the veterinary hospital, it was determined that a tumor in his abdomen was bleeding and there was nothing they could do to save his life, so we euthanized him.

They say that losing a beloved pet is emotionally and psychologically as difficult as losing any other family member, and that feels true to me. I'm coming around now, but one of the things I've had on my to-do list while the grief is still fresh has been to design a print for a portfolio I'm participating in with Zea Mays Printmaking this fall. With Ty on my mind so strongly, I found that as much as I tried to not make my portfolio print about him, I couldn't get my attention to go anywhere else. So I'm working on a print and it's about Ty.

I started by looking at some photos of him. Here are a few pix, and I'll post again tomorrow to share the specs for the portfolio and how my ideas have evolved.

Ty was not allowed on the furniture. Except sometimes.
Ty as a youngster.

01 September 2016

New Book: Relics

I just received an author copy of my new book Relics and I'm happy to say it's proofed and available to be ordered. Relics is a 68-page soft cover print-on-demand book that showcases the entire group of prints and scrolls from my "Relics" series. In addition to high-quality reproductions of the art, the book includes a section illustrating how the prints were made, plus text that was written especially for the debut show of these works at Oxbow Gallery in Northampton Massachusetts in August, 2016.

Below are a few page spreads. You can see a preview of the entire book here on the Blurb Books web site. And you can order copies at this link.



Each of the halftone prints is shown at three different sizes to replicate the gallery experience of viewing the works at varying distances.

Each scroll is shown in its entirety and also with a detail shot revealing small text.


31 July 2016

Relics Scroll 10: Time Stops for No One


For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
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Like many of these cliches, "time stops for no one" urges us to move on and not linger in the past. It also suggests that we cherish the time we have, since we don't know when our lives will end. I was struggling to find a sub-text for this one when the poem Good Bones by Maggie Smith came across my Facebook page in the aftermath of the Orlando shooting. It's a beautiful poem if you haven't read it. I chose one line:
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways
Haven't we all.

Tech notes: The background was printed on an uncarved wood block, the black circles printed in sumi ink through a stencil on the same block. The large text was stenciled through a hand-cut acetate stencil and the small text rubber stamped.

29 July 2016

Relics Scroll 9: You Only Live Once


For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
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"You only live once." Which kind of means "just do it" or "carpe diem." You've got one life to live, so live right. Live life to its fullest. Take a chance.

I took the phrase literally, though. Do we only live once? Popular science says that the human body replaces itself every 7 years or so. This isn't actually true, but many of the cells in our body have very short lifespans -- stomach cells last about a week, skin cells no longer than 3 or 4 weeks, and fat cells 8 years (that explains a lot). At the cellular level at least, we constantly make ourselves anew.

For this scroll I chose a verse from the Upanishads that is a metaphor for rebirth:
When a caterpillar has come to the end of a blade of grass, it reaches out to another blade, and draws itself over to it
Tech notes: The background is three colors (yellow, blue and magenta) with circular masks cut from paper and stencils for the large cell shapes. The large text is stenciled and the small text rubber stamped.

28 July 2016

Relics Scroll 8: What Goes Around Comes Around


For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
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"What goes around comes around" we say, especially when it seems like someone is getting away with doing something unethical without consequences. The phrase can also be applied when someone does a good deed without reward. We say "what goes around comes around" to indicate that eventually someone will do a good deed for them as well, that their good karma will return to them.

My own feeling about this is that our good or bad deeds might or might not come back to us in our external lives, but that "what goes around comes around" applies more accurately to a cycle of thoughts and actions that happens constantly inside each of us. I chose a quote about this inner cycle from the Upanishads:
As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.
One of my own primary spiritual practices is to keep an eye on my thoughts and desires and try to catch the ones that might harm me or others before they become deeds.

Tech notes:  The two-toned background was created on an uncarved block using both a mask and a stencil for the middle ring of circles. The gray in this piece is liquid graphite, which has a subtle sparkle to it that I really like. The large text was stenciled, the small text rubber stamped.

14 July 2016

Relics Scroll 7: Time Heals All Wounds


For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
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"Time heals all wounds" they say. I was nursing some fresh wounds as I made this work, having just lost Ty, my 13 year old labrador retriever. At the moment I post this, 33 days have passed since we euthanized him. That's certainly not enough time for the wounds to be healed, and part of me doesn't even want healing. I want to remember. I want to remember the sensation of patting Ty's head or throwing my arms around him, I want to remember how his face seemed to smile at me whenever I came into the room. I think at best time fades all wounds, and there's some sorrow even in the fading.

Many of the Psalms in the Bible's Old Testament are lamentations, people crying out in pain and grief. I chose a few words of lamentation from Psalm 39 and wrote them in my own voice along the edges of the stream of dots:
Help me Lord, hear my prayer
 Tech notes: The background is a woodblock monoprint on an uncarved block, the circles are stamped with a hand-carved rubber eraser stamp, large text was stenciled and small text rubber stamped.

13 July 2016

Relics Scroll 6: Oh My God


For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
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Although OMG is a new-ish social media abbreviation for it, "oh my god" has been a much used exclamation ever since I was a child. I remember my mother frowning on it, like it was a kind of swear word. But it's interesting to think about when we say it. We say "oh my god" when we're surprised. We say it in the face of a stunningly gorgeous scene. We say it when something unthinkable happens. We sort of mean it when we say it. For the small text (not visible in this photo) I used a line from the Mahabharata, when Lord Krishna shows the warrior Arjuna his divine form, a form so awesome it can barely be withstood by a human being:
Seeing that amazing form, wonderstruck Arjuna, his whole body tingling in ecstasy, bowed his head in obeisance to Lord Krsna
The pattern on this print is called the Flower of Life mandala and it is said to represent creation in sacred geometry.

Tech notes: The background and top and bottom bokashi (gradations) are woodblock monoprints done on an uncarved block. The mandala of circles was printed on the same block through a hand cut stencil. Large text was stenciled, and the small text was rubber stamped.

11 July 2016

Relics Scroll 5: Nobody's Perfect


For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
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Everybody makes mistakes, right? It goes without saying that nobody's perfect.

I used a Japanese image/drawing for this scroll called an enso. Enso is a brush-drawn circle, a calligraphic spiritual practice in which the calligrapher makes an uninhibited brushstrokes to express continuity, balance, wholeness and completeness. Enso masters strive for perfection, yet every enso is unique and thus the practice expresses the beauty of both perfection and imperfection.

There are several religions that claim that their prophets or adherents are perfect or can achieve perfection. When I hung this show, I put this scroll near a print of the Virgin Mary, who as the mother of Jesus (said to be a perfect human being) is believed to be the most pure and perfect woman who ever lived. Mohammed is believed by Muslims to be perfect, Buddha is said to have achieved a perfected state. But the text I chose to pair with my enso is a translation of a Sanskrit mantra. It reads:
Om. That is perfect. This is perfect. From the perfect springs the perfect. If the perfect is taken from the perfect, the perfect remains. Om.
  My own feeling about perfection is that there is a perfection in the sum of the parts that can rarely be seen in the parts themselves.

Tech notes: I made the enso with watercolor pigments and a large brush (this was the seventh enso I made). The large text was stenciled, the small text was hand written with colored pencil.

08 July 2016

Relics Scroll 4: Everything Happens for a Reason


For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
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Like many of the cliches and platitudes I'm working with in this series, "everything happens for a reason" is a thing that people often say when they want to move on and move away from an uncomfortable thought or situation. "Everything happens for a reason" is often used to absent ourselves from grief and regret. But it's also a phrase that reflects the human tendency to want to make meaning from our lives. I paired this one with a portion of a verse from Ecclesiastes (Bible):
[To every thing there is a season,] and a time to every purpose under heaven
Although the verse seems to say that everything happens for a reason, Ecclesiastes 3 actually advises us to pursue our earthly activities in their proper time and order without worrying about reasons.

Tech notes: The whole background was printed on an uncarved block with circular stencils. I then added pencil lines and used pencil for the lettering. The small text (barely visible here) was done with rubber stamping.

07 July 2016

Relics Scroll 3: #Blessed


For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
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#Blessed is a hashtag that's used on social media in a couple of different ways. Sometimes it's used earnestly to express gratitude for good fortune in everyday life, but often it's used ironically by people who find the hashtag to be a form of "humble-bragging." I've mostly seen the second use and in fact the NY Times wrote an article about the use of #Blessed back in 2014 if you want to find out more.

I combined #Blessed with a text from the Quran, which explicitly and without irony instructs devotees to speak about their blessings:
You shall proclaim the blessing Allah has bestowed upon you.
Tech notes: The background and top and bottom bokashi (gradations) were made on an uncarved wood block, the center circle was printed on the same block through a stencil, the small circles were stamped with a rubber eraser stamp I made, the large text was printed through a hand-cut stencil, and the small text was rubber stamped.

06 July 2016

Relics Scroll 2: It's All Good


For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
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Another phrase/cliche that we use a lot which is interesting to ponder is "it's all good." When we say this we usually mean "don't worry about it" or even "I don't care." It's dismissive, like "it is what it is." I paired this phrase with a bit of text from the Old Testament book of Genesis (you can see the tiny text extending like five rays from the bottom of the sun shape):
God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good
Putting these two texts together made me feel a little sad. It is indeed all good — the land, the seas, this beautiful planet and all the beings that dwell here. That would be a great thing to remember every time we hear this phrase.

Tech notes: I printed a circular orange-to-yellow bokashi on an uncarved wood block at the top of the paper. The orange lines that create the sun shape over the bokashi are a transfer drawing (see this post for an explanation of that method). The small orange and yellow circles were stamped with a rubber eraser stamp I made. Large text was applied in watercolor through a stencil, small text was rubber stamped.

04 July 2016

Relics Scroll 1: It Is What It Is


It is said that although America is still one of the most religious nations in the western world, we are on our way to becoming a much more secular society than we have ever been before. We like to think of ourselves as rational and free of superstition, but there are many vestiges of religion in our culture that seem to go unexamined. One of my favorite ways of excavating unexamined ideas and attachments is to look at colloquial language, especially platitudes and cliches. For my Relics exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings.

I started with "it is what it is." I'm sure that, like me, you hear (and/or use) this phrase several times a day. We toss it off to mean "whatever" -- things are as they are and we're not going to try to change them any further, but I think "it is what it is" is a deep insight. Accepting what is rather than fighting against reality can alleviate a lot of suffering.

On each of the scrolls I added smaller text from various spiritual traditions. On this one, below and to the right of the main text, you might be able to make out a small circle of white text. It says "I am that I am that I am that…" in a repeating circle. This text actually comes from two traditions. In the Old Testament of the Bible, Moses meets God as a burning bush and the voice of God says "I am that I am." There is also a Vedic (Hindu) Sanskrit mantra "Soham" which means "I am that." "I am that" is a way of identifying oneself with the universe or ultimate reality.

For the printmakers who want to know how I made the image, it's a woodblock monotype with paper prints. I made a background blue on an uncut block, then cut some circles out of paper which I inked, laid on the block, and printed with a baren. The darkest circle was made by inking the block and printing through a circular stencil. The large text is stenciled in white watercolor ink; small text is rubber stamped.



I mounted Japanese decorative paper (chiyogami) onto the print top and bottom by creating a paper tape with strips of mulberry paper and an adhesive called "Gudy 870" that I learned about from Karen Kunc when I took a workshop with her at Anderson Ranch.

Nine more scrolls to show you…

01 July 2016

RELICS at Oxbow Gallery Northampton MA


RELICS
watercolor woodblock prints and scrolls
30 June - 31 July, 2016
Oxbow Gallery, 275 Pleasant Street, Northampton MA
Reception Friday, July 8, 6-8 pm
Hours: Thursday - Sunday, noon to 5 pm
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My apologies for the long silence here on my blog. At the end of 2015 I applied to become a member of Oxbow Gallery, an artist-owned and -operated gallery here in my hometown of Northampton, Massachusetts, and I was accepted and put on a waiting list. At the beginning of April I got a call letting me know that there was an opening and that I was up next on the waiting list. As it turned out, the opening also meant that the large front room gallery (approximately 450 square feet) was available for the month of July and I could have a solo show there. I jumped at the chance, but had to immediately shift into high gear in order to get enough work done to fill the space, so no blogging…

I knew I wanted to show the Relics halftone prints I was working on, but at the time of the phone call I had completed only two of the seven I had planned. I also had a list of 15 or so platitudes that I wanted to print along with the halftones -- common American platitudes that could be construed to have religious or philosophical meanings (phrases like "what goes around comes around"). I realized that I would have to work in some new ways in order to get it all done in three months, so I decided to finish the halftones as planned and then do the text pieces as one-of-a-kind mixed media pieces mounted as scrolls.

There was no way to speed up the halftones, so I worked long hours and finished the last of those on May 20, giving me just about 4 weeks to make ten scrolls. I'll show you the scrolls in some subsequent posts, but below are a couple of installation shots. The show will be up until the end of July, so I hope if you're in the area you'll stop in. And let me know if you come to town -- I'd love to see you!

20 May 2016

Halftone Quartz Crystals



RELICS: CRYSTALS
Watercolor woodblock print
13 x 13 inch image (33 x 33 cm) on 17 x 19 inch (43 x 48 cm) Shioji washi
edition: 8
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This is the seventh and final print in a series of halftone prints and scrolls (coming soon) called Relics which explores the often unacknowledged but inescapable religious past that underlies our 21st century secularity.

Crystal healing is a quasi-scientific practice that employs stones and crystals to create an energy field designed to promote healing of the body and/or spirit. While a number of cultures have historically used gemstones in this way, crystal healing in our time is most often associated with so-called New Age spirituality.

Although it's likely that any healing created by crystals is a placebo effect, quartz crystals do in fact exhibit a unique quality called piezoelectricity — electricity resulting from applied mechanical pressure — and are used in oscillators and circuit elements. It's easy to see why some people believe that quartz crystals vibrate with energy. And, placebo or not, one must admit that a flawless quartz crystal is pretty mesmerizing.

19 May 2016

Halftone Shiva Nataraja



RELICS: SHIVA NATARAJA
Watercolor woodblock print
13 x 13 inch image (33 x 33 cm) on 17 x 19 inch (43 x 48 cm) Shioji washi
edition: 8
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This is the sixth in a series of halftone prints and scrolls (coming soon) called Relics which explores the often unacknowledged but inescapable religious past that underlies our 21st century secularity.

If a single icon had to be chosen to represent the extraordinarily rich and complex cultural heritage of India, the Shiva Nataraja might well be the most remunerative candidate. It is such a brilliant iconographic invention that it comes as close to being a summation of the genius of the Indian people as any single icon can.  (Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art )

The dancing form of Shiva, called Nataraja or Lord of the Dance, shows the Hindu deity Shiva in his form as the cosmic dancer, the source of all movement in the universe. The stylized gestures of the dance represent Shiva's five activities: creation, preservation, destruction, concealment, and revelation. Surrounded by a ring of flames that signifies the cosmos, Shiva dances away the world of illusion and ignorance and transforms it into enlightenment and eternal serenity.

14 May 2016

Solo Show at Charles Krause Gallery, DC

This past Thursday night (May 12, 2016) I was pleased to be able to travel to Washington DC for the opening of an exhibition of my work at Charles Krause Reporting Fine Art Gallery. The show is an overview, with pieces from several of my print series, including We Are Pilgrims, Loaded, I Was a 20th Century Lesbian, Borders and the new Almanack series.

Charles Krause Reporting
1300 13th Street NW (corner of N) Suite 105 Washington DC

Through June 18, 2016

Open Saturdays and Sundays, 1 - 6 pm, and weekdays by appointment.

Meet Charles Krause!

Charles Krause’s gallery focuses on the art of protest, propaganda and political change, an interest which evolved over the course of his career as a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post, CBS News and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. On assignment in Latin America, Central Europe, Russia, Asia and the Middle East, he witnessed many of the wars and revolutions of his time. Read more about Charles's award-winning news career here. I'm proud to be showing in his gallery.

Old friends and new. Fellow artist/printmaker Joseph Beery and my sister-in-law in the foreground.
I was so pleased with the turnout and the conversations that happened.
I spent a lot of the evening doing printing demonstrations. Here I'm with poet Margaret Mackinnon and her husband. Margaret and I share an interest in working with history in our art.
One of my favorite things about showing my work is hearing how other people see it and what it evokes for them. I had some wonderful conversations.

I also enjoyed prowling around DC for a couple of days. My pilgrimage to the Lincoln Memorial was especially meaningful.