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!
I was interview by the local station a couple of weeks ago about my exhibition in Kent. They did a great job editing my talk down and inserting images while I'm talking about the artwork. This is the next best thing if you can't make it to the exhibition.
I traveled from Seattle to San Antonio on Tuesday to do a two-week artist residency at the South West School of Arts and Crafts. I had worked here about 4 years ago when my husband was doing a four month training at Fort Sam Houston. When Margaret Craig, the printmaking instructor told me that they were starting up a visiting artist program, I was happy to get the opportunity to come back.They have a great printmaking facility here.
I started working at the print studio on Wednesday and have been working on a reduction linocut since then. The image is based on a true story about an incident that happened here in Texas to some of my friends. My friends planted African violets in the flowerbed in the front yard. Over night the local deer that treat their yard as a buffet, came and plucked out all the violets (did not eat them!) and laid them nicely on the walkway.
I started with some drawing to figure out the composition, and then succeeded to get more detailed figuring out how a violet could jut out of a deer’s mouth as it was removing it from the ground.
To print the reduction linocut I built a registration jig like I have at home. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, see it here. It was a little bit more challenging to print on a larger etching press, we’ll see how well it worked out when I start printing the second color. I was getting a lot of push with my plate, and to fix that I was holding the back end of the paper up and letting it down as the plate went through the press. Ink pushing looks like stretch marks in the ink. It happens towards the end of the plate as it goes through the press. The paper is being stretched as its being pushed between the plate and the roller.
To combat this, I was keeping the felt up and over the top of the roller, and holding the paper up as it went through. One of the ladies working in studio (Molly) gave me an ingenious trick to keep the back of the paper lifted while printing. We cut pieces of soft foam (often comes in packaging when you get something fragile) and put them down at the end of the plate. That way I only had to hold the paper steady long enough for the front to catch under the roller, and then I could move over to spin the wheel more easily. I did not attach the foam to the board, so that they would not get dirty while I inked the plate. I just kept shuffling them on and off the printing base as I was printing.
On Friday morning I printed the first lighter color and continued to carve the plate for the second color. First thing Monday morning I will be very excited to see the second color! I’ll post more images as I get them done.
On a different note, I also have two solo shows up in Tacoma and Kent right now. I had time to post a whole bunch of pictures from Kent on flickr. You can see them here. The show in Tacoma comes down in 1.5 weeks and there will be a closing reception in Kent on Feb 22nd. After that I am starting to tie up loose ends to get ready for a move to Germany in April.
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.
