Spring has sprung in Texas and as the seasons change so does my work in the studio. I have dedicated April to be my printmaking-only month. The beginning of the year has flown by sewing customs and I finally had to say "stop" to all that and reclaim my space back as a printing studio. Now that I have cleaned a mountain of fabric and bits of thread off the tables, I have ink, paper and brayers ready to go.
The rest of the year is dotted with lots of print related events so I am happy to be in the studio to make more work and to share it with others. I am also teaching a good amount, and if you are local to the Bryan/College Station area, see my Facebook page for regular events and updates, or if you are not on FB, ask to be put on my local mailing list for events that goes out about once a month. Here's a quick rundown on whats coming up:
First of all I am teaching an ongoing printmaking class on Thursday nights in Bryan, TX. It's been a lot of fun and is open for everyone to attend. There will be several workshops coming up in May and September at the Forsythe Galleries at Texas A&M and the Arts Council of Brazos Valley.
I just did a demo yesterday for the local art league, about reduction linocuts, and will do another one on engraving for the Forsythe Galleries (TAMU) in July.
Demoing at the art league, photo by Nikki Smith
This week I am working on a wood engraving for the cover of the next Wood Engravers Network publication, Block and Burin. It's a really fun project so far. I don't want to reveal the image too much until after it hits the mailboxes, but here's a *little* sneak peak.
As soon as I'm done printing this one, I have a piece to make for an invitational exhibition at the Forsythe Galleries. Some local artists were selected to make work inspired by pieces in the University's collection. I was given a nice watercolor by Stanley M. Long that features a horse and rider to work off of. More on that later when I get to it.
In May I teach a workshop on making linocut postcards and then take off with the kids to Finland for a month and a half. I'm going to try really hard to finish the book on Finnish wallhangings while I'm there and have my parents help on babysitting the kids. The project has been going for a long time, and I think I have enough to finally put it all together.
After we get back there will be an art fair in Bryan, TX, that I am looking forwards to participating, some classes, and a solo show at the Sead Gallery (also in Bryan) at the end of the year that I'm really excited to create new work for.
I have so many ideas brewing and already know I won't have time to make even half of what I want. Some ideas are for nice exhibition prints and then some ideas are for small prints that would do well at an art fair and on Etsy. Hmmm, and come to think of it my website needs a revamp too, but looking at all this, it'll probably have to wait until the end of the year!
I have some nice websites to share for resources but wanted to do a separate write-up for that. You can look forwards to a press-maker, image resources and other random things that are out there as soon as I get another chance to sit down and write.
I finally got a chance to sit down and write from in between illustrating and running the house. While I have been busy with my nose buried in the studio every week, my hedgehog engraving has been popular in Etsy Treasuries, here are a couple for you to see. They are all quite beautiful.
NEWS: My work is currently up in the real world at the Washington State Convention Center. The exhibition is titled PS 5 and it features prints by South Puget Sound artists Dorothy McQuistion, Bill Colby, Janet Marcavage, Ann Johnston-Schuster and me. The exhibition runs through Oct 23rd, so you have plenty of time to go see it. The address for the convention center is: Level 2 South Galleria, 800 Convention Place, Seattle, WA. Hours are 7am-10pm.
The other bit of news is that my work and an interview are also featured on the Printsy Blog. Its quite a fun little interview with pictures of prints for sale in my shop.
I love to browse the other entries on the blog on my free time. The whole site is devoted to printmakers who are on Etsy and the articles feature work from one end of the spectrum to the other. It is wonderful and encouraging to see how many talented printmakers are selling work in alternative venues outside of the traditional gallery system. I like galleries, but with the constant moving, I find it easier to sell online and though exhibitions.
Mentioned in the previous posts was that I had carved a place to work in our new house. My husband is the greatest, and let me take up half of our living room to use as a studio, with flat file, presses and equipment. Otherwise it would have had to go up two narrow flights of stairs, to the third floor, which was not the greatest option. I bought this white and orange retro bureau (see below) from a yard sale, that has a shelf that folds down to a writing table. It works perfectly in a small space to paint on. I have given myself a time limit to finish all the rest of the illustrations in the next two weeks. I have been painting or drawing just about every day for a couple of weeks now, and am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I only have 5 images to draw and paint.
So to illuminate the process, I took some pictures. When working on a book illustration with a character, you want it to look the same thoughout the book. Being towards the end of the book, I have a set way of painting the little wren that makes it much easier than in the beginning, when I was just getting to know the her. When working, the whole place looks like a big mess, since I spread other finished illustrations on the table next to me with the manuscript and reference images, so I can constantly look over to make sure colors look the same thoughout. I tidied it up for the picture a little bit...
I start by sketching on any sheet of paper that I have handy- normally I do have something better than a notebook though (but you never know when inspiration strikes). Here is a sketch for a 1/3 page illustration of the little wren sitting in her nest. I normally just keep drawing over and refining the sketch until it is they way that I want the final illustration to look. Then I trace the main lines on watercolor paper and start painting away.
How do I know what to draw for the book? I have gone over the manuscript with the author in the beginning. We talked about color themes, how she envisions the illustrations and what her expectations were. The text was also divided up to fit 1/4 - 1 page illustrations. The author had a general idea of what she wanted me to draw for each one but was open to suggestions and input from me. Throughout the process as I finished images, I sent them to her for approval. Sometimes I made suggestions on how to adjust the illustrations and sometimes she had some changes to make. So it has been a flexible process as we go along. The author I am working with is wonderful- she gives me a lot of freedom to interpret and if needed change the illustrations around. Working with such a great partner also makes me want to paint even better and make the book look absolutely beautiful. I can't wait for it to actually be finished.
I am painting borders for each page of the book. Below you can see how the finished nest illustration will look set on a page. The text is obviously missing, but it will go on the top and if needed slightly around the illustration.
Here is the beginning of another image. On the left you can see the manuscript with a quick sketch of my idea on it. The sketch for the illustration is in the middle. I just use watercolors to paint with and normally use a dark outline around the basic forms on the page.
Here is the little wren singing. I decided to flip her facing the other way to make her look more natural in the layout of the pages.
After I am done with the illustrations, they will all be scanned in with a high resolution. Then they'll be set within the borders. Everything will be imported to Adobe InDesign to put the illustrations together with the text and then the book will be ready for publishing! It has been a very exciting process, and I will keep you posted on when the book is ready. I don't want to give out too much information before it is all done.
So now you know how I work, not very glamorous, but it works and I would not want to do anything else! Next time I'll share a small intaglio printmaking tip from Dan Welden.
The studio has been somewhat taking shape, there is still a lot of organizing to do. I will get a shelving system in August that I will be able to put a lot of my things in, but until then, it will be messy. I am going to try to get it organized, since I need to get going on finishing up illustrations for a book and start work on new projects. The image is a photo collage, sort of a 360degree view of my space. I just need some more space in the form of shelving to be organized and use the space for printing, drawing, watercolor, and design work...
My work is featured in two shows, one in Helsinki and one in Seattle. The one in Helsinki is already up at Galleria G, Pieni Roobertinkatu 10.
The popular summer members exhibition has new work from both well known and new graphic artists. Here are a couple of overviews of the gallery area. This is the gallery for the finnish graphic artists society, and you will find a wonderful large collection of prints to browse through. If you are not in Helsinki at the moment, many of the artists works can be viewed online, here is the english version link. You can view works either in Sales Collection or Artists.
These were just a few of my favorites:
Ritve-Liisa Virtanen, Bear Your Cross I, 2011, Screenprint, beeswax, collage
Pia Kousi, From the series: Topsy-turvy-photo-stereo-synthet, 2010, pigment on film, plexi
Maija Lavia, Puun Kosketus II (Touch of the Tree II), 2011, pigmentprint
Kirsi Neuvonen, Matkakertomuksia: Sininen Portti (Travel stories: Blue Gate), 2011, etching, aquatint, copyetching (not sure what that technique is)
The other exhibition will take place at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle, 800 Convention Place, Seattle, WA. The exhibition is installed on July 15th, so you can stop by to see the work after that. If I remember correctly off the top of my head the show is up for at least two months.
"PS 5" features five Puget Sound printmakers work: Bill Colby, Dorothy McQuistion, Janet Marcavage, Ann Johnston-Schuster and Mirka Hokkanen. I hope to get some photos from someone when the show is up to post those as well.
Next time we'll look at some illustrations. Until then, have a great day!
Greetings from rainy Dupont. Its been one of those on again/off again weeks with rain. We even had a nice little snowstorm a couple of weeks ago. It's been pretty amazing that every time I have taken our dog out for a walk, the weather has always been nice. God's pretty cool in the little things he does to bring sunshine in our day.
After arriving home from TX I had the Tacoma is For Lovers craft/art fair the very following weekend. I had time to sew a couple of things for one half of my table, and then I had prints on the other half. Here are a couple of shots from the very Valentine's day themed fair:
Here is what else I spied from around me. If you live in Tacoma area, the TIFL fairs are really worth making it to. The wares are affordable and there is so much variety. I will really miss going to them after our move. My table was next to Laurie Cinotto's. She has the most wonderful things made from paper. As a printmaker, how can I resist! Of course I did not take a picture of her table, but you can see her beautiful things at her website. I already had one pin, and had to splurge on another one as well. I also ended up getting a pair of earrings from Maija McKnight, who does equally beautiful jewelry (and who, of course, I did not get a picture of either...).
So after a busy week of sewing for the fair and unpacking after the trip, I got a chance to print the horse plate at a local high school with a small printshop. The press was a nice Conrad Machine press. Mental note, the day when I save enough money for my own nice press, make sure it has gear reduction drive in it. I was breaking a sweat and growing biceps like Paul Bunyan cranking the plate back and forth though the press 40x !
As you can see from the picture above, I was using a sheet of mylar for registration. That always works well for me. I have dried my prints by now, but am hesitating signing them, because I am not quite sure if I want to add watercolor in the effect of chine colle, and have a light yellowish background for the whole print area. I like the effect of setting the print apart from the border that way, but its a pretty big area to cover uniformly, so I can't decide if I can handle the agony of trying to manage it. Should have thought of it before I printed... We'll see.
I also took down the last exhibition I had in Kent last week. Now I have two more classes to teach and 10 more illustrations and I can finally pack my bags and move. We are having a lot of trouble because of Army bureaucracy, but I hope it will be ironed out in the next couple of days before it gets too late. I am still waiting for the interview I've been promising, but in the mean time I have a guest writer share some tips on polymerplate printing (intaglio style). Excited about that. Have a great week, Nappi (our dog) wishes you a happy early spring!
It has been such an eventful week! I set up exhibitions in Seattle on Monday, Auburn on Wednesday, had a reception on Thursday and Open Studio Tour on Saturday. Needless to say, today has been a slow day of recuperation after all the work and being in the spotlight. Here are some photos of the events.
Everything went great at our opening at La Familia Gallery in Seattle on November First Thursday. We had several hundred people stop by our gallery. Everyone seemed to like to work up on the walls- I got several chuckles from people interacting with my peeping tom cat boxes, which made me feel great.
Here are Zanetka Gawronski, Brad Strain and Mirka Hokkanen, all ready for our big reception night.
Here you can see my inconspicuous peeping tom cat box. When you push the slice of wood on the bottom, a cat comes out of the top.
Zanetka enjoying friends at the reception.
Open studio tour in Tacoma. I took two presses, tools, blocks, proofs and prints to my old studio space in Tacoma to share what I do with people. I had made a little keepsake linoblock that people could roll up with ink and print to take home from the event. The space is shared by 3 other artists, so we were able to pull a nice crowd over the course of the day.
So here we are placing the paper over the linocut.
And rolling it through the press...
Some of the kids got interested in printmaking and wanted to try their own had at it.
Here's what my space looked like before the crowd came in.
Just outside of the window was this awesome roof with moss growing in a pattern on it.
And of course, I am always greeted by Nappi our Aussie when I get home at the end of the day. She has the knack as many other canines of looking like the poorest animal in the whole world to get some attention or even better food...
It has been such an exciting week. I just returned back from Minnesota from the Mid America Print Council Conference. It was well worth the trip. Every day was packed to the max with demos, lectures, exhibitions and of course hanging out with friends. One of my favorite things is the sheer amount of prints that you see in such a short amount of time. There is so much creativity out there and it is so much fun to see all the exciting ways in which printmaking media are being stretched. It will take me a while to digest all the things I learned and all the artwork I saw. Before it gets too late, I wanted to share as much as possible with you, and then it'll all go to the back burner for slower processing. I uploaded the better photos to my flickr site so you can see exhibition and event photos there. I did not realize it until afterwards, that I didn't really take pictures of people, just all the exciting things I saw at exhibitions and events. But I am sure you'll get the gist of it.
So here are shorter and longer excerpts of demos and lectures. The first video is from the Moku Hanga demo by Preston Lawig. Some people stayed after the demo, and Preston showed us how the plastic plate prints compared to a traditional shina plywood. I had never seen this plastic used for printing before, so that was pretty cool. I am pretty sure it was high impact poly styrene. Someone correct me if I have that wrong.
The second video is from James Ehlers engraving in the 21st Century demo. He had some new engraving tools that I had never seen before, so those were pretty cool. I had to break the video down to 3 sections, you can get all of them on YouTube. I also learned a new way of transferrign images to plates. James demonstrates that in the third video. You print with a lazerprinter on parchment paper and then rub that on your plate. the image is transferred and then you heat it up to adhere it better on your plate. you could use a hot plate, a torch or even a lighter. I have to try that out now.
Here's two pictures of what a traditional and the newer model of an engraving tool look like. You can tell the older is bent and longer and the newer is straight and shorter. The newer one is also made with a really tough metal, so that it lasts longer, but on the down side (or up depending on the way you look at it) is that you need a diamond honing stone to sharpen it. You can buy the modern version of the engraving tool online for about $33.
One of the keynote speakers for the conference was the young artist Swoon. She had an excellent talk on Friday morning. I was running out of time on the camera, but wanted to capture at least a couple of bits of her talk. I have been a fan of her work for a while now, so it was awesome to see her in person and hear her talk about her work. There are two separate videos I loaded of her, so go to You Tube to see the other one.
The Unevenly Distributed panel was also a joy to listen to. They discussed how old and new techniques and print and mixed media works all combined together in the art making groups that they were parts of. There were books, collections of paraphernalia, audio components, and all kinds of things that these groups were incorporating with prints. It was very exciting!
The three groups work that were discussed were Florida State University's Small Craft Advisory Press, Preacher's Bisquits Books and Impractical Labor in Service of the Speculative Arts (ILSSA). All of these organizations have great websites with lots of resources. The panel chairs were Denise Bookwalter and Chad Eby, and members Kristen Merola, Tate Shaw, Emily Larned and Bridget Elmer.
The video is 6 parts long, here is the first one, and the rest of them are on You Tube on my channel as well.
Whew, and if you haven't seen enough about printmaking yet, how about some chine colle. You can't have a print show with some one doing chine colle. Here the technique is tackeld on the enormous scale by Cole Rogers and Zac Adams-Bliss from Highpoint Center for Printmaking. I don't know if I will ever settle down and have a chance to print anything this large, but their technique is worth noting. It is very accurate and easy enough to do. You will also get some pointers on how to make chine colle paste and efficient application even on tissue-thin papers. This demo also two parts, see the other one here.
Last there is a short video of the "Let the Machines do all the Work" demo with Robin Schwartzman. I missed most of it, but they did another short run at the end of their time slot. The beginning of her video has a quick shot from the art building court yard, where they were doing a print extravaganza. It was already winding down, but looked like a lot had been going on during the day. I missed some of the fun things going on, they had a printing system, where they put a bed over the print and you would pull the proof by jumping on the bed. The bed gets moved over, and voila, your print is done!
This is a lot of info to cram into one post. Hope you find something interesting in one of them, and consider coming to the next conference. The next print conference will be the Southern Graphics Council one in St. Louis in March 2011.
Oh, and before I completely space out, I added my new work to my website, www.mirkah.com. Just click on the new works tab...
Soon to follow, exhibition news, catalog for sale (oooooh) and upcoming events!
I have an exhibition up at Tacoma Art Place at the moment. Quick exhibit info:
Where: TAP, 1116 S. 11th St. Tacoma, WA
When: until Oct 10th
(If you can't make it to this one, no worries, I have exhibitions coming up in November, January and April.)
TAP is a non-profit art center in the middle of Tacoma. It is a great (and affordable!) place where locals can get together and make art. There are sewing machines, ceramic equipment, a photography dark room, stained glass and beading supplies to name some.
The front office faces the street and has some walls open for exhibition space. If you are interested in having a show there, contact the TAP exhibition coordinator for more info. The show was easy to set up, and I like the way it turned out. I was excited to show some new pieces that have not been out if Tacoma before.
Just two pictures from the reception below. The Tacoma art bus stopped by and brought a whole bunch of people by, and I was asked to talk a little about the artwork. The bus is a pretty fun idea. The galleries in Tacoma are spread apart, so instead of trudging to each one by your self, you can have a party on the bus, which makes stops around the best galleries in Tacoma every third thursday. The tickets are only $10 for the whole night. I need to get on this bus next month!
My work has also been featured on a couple of Etsy treasuries and a blog in the last months.I love both of these treasuries. One has a bird theme, and the other has such pretty colors!
The same bird print was also featured on Diane's Etsy Favorites blog. Her blog is worth checking out, she features her favorite picks from the endless universe of Etsy items.
