Posters for Exhibition Done

I worked hard on these all week and finally finished, just in time to take a work-free Christmas vacation! They will be printed as posters for the Old Print-New Tricks exhibition for January. I was going to adhere them to foam core, and after the exhibition, put them up in the printmaking room. If you would like to have the posters for your class, email me and I can send you the pdf file.

Moving Jitters

Its been a hard with trying to make some art lately. School, holidays, house guests, emptying my studio to rip carpet out and put flooring in. Oh, I didn't know that much stuff could fit in one room... Now everything is all stacked and mixed up. The good thing that came out of it though was that I organized and photographed all the editions that I had in my flat files. Now i have to edit the photos and hopefully post some new ones to my website at some point next year.

We are moving across the country to Seattle area in January, after I put up my curated show at AASU. I did have time to make and order the postcard tonight, so here it is. more to come as we progress.

I also took part in two portfolios in the last couple of weeks. I make linocuts at home for both of them, I figure they turned out pretty good. The mouse is for the AASU beginning printmaking class portfolio and the antsy is for Saltgrass Printmakers portfolio in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Telfair Art Fair

The Telfair Museum is hosting its 14th Annual Art Fair on November 7-9th. The fair is one of the museum's largest annual fundraisers, with a juried art show and sale that showcases original artwork by painters, sculptors, photographers, potters, jewelers, and more. This year’s much-anticipated event features the work of more than eighty artists from the Savannah area and across the nation. I know at least Deb Oden will be representing printmakers with a booth of her own.
Three of my works were accepted to the juried Open Art tent, a new category initiated last year which showcases the work of talented emerging and student artists. (Works are going to be Missing Winter, USDA Choice and Refined Beef)
I am also doing another holiday sale bazaar on Ft Stewart in two weeks, so I need to get ready for that... hope to sell some prints too, busy, busy, busy

Exhibition coming up

A couple of my works were accepted into the upcoming juried exhibition titled Sustainable Source.

Sustainable Source is a show hosted by Longwood University’s Art Department and the American Democracy Project and it features works that highlight the theme sustainability and the resourcefulness of international contemporary printmakers and papermakers.

The works accepted are one of my light boxes and a couple of my small booklets (above) from 2006. The show opens this friday Sept. 29th and closes Oct 24th.

I am also working on a couple of commissions right now, I was going post pictures of them in a couple of days.

I also have to mention a couple of printmaking resources I ran into this week. One of them is another blog, Dean Clark's printmaking blog. He works for the Graphic Chemical company, and has updates on new materials coming out, conferences and other neat things related to printmaking.

Another website, Archival Methods, is a store that sells archival supplies-boxes, interleaving etc. They have very reasonable prices, and right now you can receive 15% off on your purchases. *CODE # 12066 for 15% off your next order*.(Valid until 12/31/2008)

Lastly a nontoxic printmaking website, with a lot of helpful information can be found at http://www.nontoxicprint.com/.

Junk in da Trunk Indie Craft show

Yeah! I was at a cool little art & craft fair organized by the Desotorow Gallery in Savannah this weekend. The weather was hot and humid, but that did not hinder people from showing up. It was so much fun. I am thankful for all the people who supported my work and purchased some prints. My little hedgehog print was popular - I'll post a picture of it finally. I made friends with Christi, Jeff and Doris, my nextbooth neighbors. Christi makes awesome jewelry and is co-owner of a great new gallery in Savannah called Kobo Gallery. Their store can be found at 33 Barnard St. in Savannah.

Here are some other pictures from the fair, first a photo of the street with people setting up friday afternoon, and then a photo of my little table. I also had a couple of boxes on the ground with prints and other handmade things in them. Good times, good times...

Beef and hedgehog- unlikely couple

I had the wonderful opportunity to work on some copper plate etchings at Savannah School of Art and Design these last 2 weeks!!! Thank you for Jennifer Jenkins for that opportunity.
The two prints are not at all related, and I barely got the second one tolerable. The first print was a bull and rider titled Refined Beef and the second one was a round plate with a little hedgehog all curled up. I'll post a picture of the bull and rider for now. I am submitting it to the AASU faculty exhibition in September.

I have to mention a great exhibition up currently downtown Savannah. Curtis Bartone's etchings, drawings and paintings adorn the walls of the S.P.A.C.E. Gallery on the corner of Whitaker and West Henry st. Works will be up until Sept 24th. Curtis uses very detaild linework in his etchings, so they are fabulous when viewed in person, but pictures do little justice for them.


Curtis talks of his works: "I view the act of art-making as a way to explore and to question man's attempts to tame, control, and consume his surroundings." "My paintings and drawings, filtered through art history and mass media, attempt to make sense of seemingly disparate elements and create connections and order in what appears to be disharmony."

If you have a chance to check it out, it's well worth it!

Third Bird

Two new prints to share. I have been working so hard this past week, to get these done. Next week when school starts, my time to work will diminish to next to nothing. I am teaching at Armstrong Atlantic State University, and just recently got a bid to teach a drawing class at the Macintosh Art Association, so that increases my load a little.

So I did one more bird solar plate, and editioned the cow print for the portfolio "Picturing the Beast". I had to print the cow prints on the press at school, since my little press at home was too small for the paper size. I'll go pick up those prints tomorrow and add a pic. I changed the colors a little for the final print for that.

The other print is another bird common to Finland in the winter time. The three birds, especially the Great Tit and Eurasian Bullfinch are birds that I remember watching from my grandmothers kitchen window every winter. They bring back a wealth of warm fuzzy memories to me. This one, I don't have pictures of color separations or proofs yet, but will add them later.

Second bird print

So I finished printing my second bird solarplate this afternoon with the help of my husband who willingly submitted to helping me wipe plates and blot paper. I had a hard time proofing, and trying to figure out colors. I printed one proof on a animal book page, below, and thought it looked nice, but then figured since I don't have similar pages, all the prints would be really different and decided to ditch the idea. I might print some stragglers later on on sime different papers just to try the idea out once more.

I also attached the colorproofs and separations so you get a better idea of the process I go through. The last print, I drew with pencil on mylar, this time around I used a water soluble color pencil (black) on the same material. I like the texture from the pencil better. It was easier to get an even grainy surface, so from now on I will use it. The only bad part was that you can't erase mistakes as easily.

New bird print

I am trying to get a lot of printing done before school starts next week and to have something new to submit to exhibitions. Just working on stuff helps me think and process ideas for future projects as well. I am trying to figure out what direction to go with my art, sinc I have been doing factoryfarming for so many years now. Like said in my previous post, my thoughts are dwelling on the forests so I just worked on a little birdy native to Finland.
My accomplishment for today is printing this new triple solarplate. I did a couple of color proofs before settling on the final color, the third print on the right is the finished print. For the last piece of paper I also printed color separations of the plates to show to my students as part of a solarplate demo.

I am working on another bird solarplate and woodcut right now and got a chance today to talk to a friend who does japanese woodcuts as well. He recommended flexcut carving tools from Japan Woodworker. They are supposed to handle very well, and be razor sharp. I ordered myself 4 to test them out. I was happy to see that they were much cheaper than tools that I bought earlier this year from McClains. When I get a chance to try them out, I'll be sure to let you know how they work.

Website updated

I updated my website with a new design this weekend. There are some new pieces in the galleries as well. The squirrel logo was something different for the page for a change. I figured it would reflect me well, since lately my mind has been dwelling on woods and forests a lot and squirrels are seen as busy bees and thifty (-like my husband sees me).

New Work

I am off to go visit Finland next week, and wanted to finish and proof solar plates that I wanted to use for the animal portfolio. This one is about knowing where your meat comes from since I feel that most people are so removed from food production. I think the title is going to be short and sweet: "Shortloin".

I have to play around with color a little more, but so far so good. I was going to work on it after I return in 3 weeks. If you have any comments I'd love to hear them.

Completed lightbox series

I finished the final piece for the lightbox series. So happy they are done, such a sense of accomplishment. Now I guess I have some lightboxes to make... I also wanted to get maybe one more print done, a solarplate, before the end of the semester in 2 1/2 weeks. We'll see if I make that deadline. The craft frontier needs some attention as well, so I might be sewing for the rest of the week. You can read about those creations at my other blog. I hope you like these last prints, more new works and news to come soon!

I'm shining today

Yeah! I finished two more of the lightbox prints today. I am really trying to finish them on time to sumbit them for the Graphica Creativa exhibition in Finland, and have some time to make other prints before the end of the semester mid July. I have one more to go. I am still amazed at how they look when you flick the light on.

I also was printing some cards on the side, and ended up making a handy little holder for small prints. I think I saw a print holder somewhere that was converted from a CD-holder, and this one had the same idea. If you have one lying around, that would work, but since I don't have one, I just cut some slits into a scrap piece of wood and Voila! a drying rack is born.

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How to built a lightbox

When I started working with the polymer- or solarplates last spring, I figured it would be the cheapest option just to build one. Since there was some trial and error, I figured I would share how I built the one we are using at school now.

The hardest part was figuring out the lights, since there are limited resources here in the "country". (I live about an hour out of Savannah, GA) If you are only going to do smaller plates and have the resources to buy one, get a facial tanning lightunit from ebay or from a supplier. Solarplates need UV light to expose, so the tanning units work great. Then all you do is just build a box around that. Note, regular fluorescent lightbulbs won't work.

I wanted to make a little bit of a bigger unit, to accomodate larger plates, so I built one out of MDF to house two- two lightbulb- ballasts. (total of 4 bulbs) The cost ended up being about $100 for everything.

Shopping list:

MDF

4- 2' blacklights that you can get from your home improvement store or even at Walmart

2- 2 bulb ballasts (Lowes)

Some screws and wood glue

2 hinges


Above. Here is a picture of the finished box with dimensions. I did not wire the cords from the two units together so you have to plug them in separately for now. Addition: You can plug the cords into a surge protector, which makes using them easy, since it has a switch on it.
Below. A picture from the inside of the box

A picture of the sides, the little strips are to make carrying easier. If yo plan on using the unit a lot, you might want to drill a couple of holes on the sides to let some of the heat out.

With this unit, the lights are about 8" away from the plate, and we have tested exposure to be 1 min 30 sec. For aquatint screens we have been doing about 1 min 10 sec first with the screen, then the same amount of time with the image.

Hope this is helpful to you. If you have any questions, please ask.

Working those light boxes

I have been working on these two prints for a while now, and they are done! I have not had the time to fix up a vertical light box, so I had to take 2 of the photos sideways. I really like the way the vertical one turned out. I have three more to do for this series to finish it. I'm also working on some images for solarplates and linocuts.

My work will also be part of a portfolio "Picturing the Beast" organized by Jennifer Jenkins and Curt Bartone. It will be featured as an exhibition at the upcoming Southern Graphics conference in Chicago. Artists selected for the portfolio include Oscar Gillespie, Dale Clifford, Mark Hosford, Eun Lee, Loy McWhirter, Bert Menco, Heather Muise, Ashley Nason, Peter Olson as well as Jenn, Curt and I. So exciting!

Two new prints

I worked hard this week/weekend! The theme was cow breeds in Finland that are about to go extinct. One is a 3-plate linocut and the other is a photopolymer intaglio plate. For the photopolymer, I made a drawing first, then I scanned it in and printed it on a transparency to expose the plate. Here is the first proof that I pulled off this morning. For more information on how this process works visit Dan Welden's site www.solarplate.com.

Exhibition coming up

Coming up:

Art Biologic (juried exhibition) at the Limner Gallery, Hudson, NY.

Show will be from May 3-24, 2008

Visit http://www.limnergallery.com/ for more information.

Reception May 3rd, 4-6pm.

Feature

So I make some crafty things too. An image of one of my creations was published all the way in Australia in Frankie Magazine!

Website up and running

After ironing some kinks out, the new website is up and running. Please check it out at www.mirkah.com!

new series- lightboxes

I am working on a new series that incorporates screenprints and lightboxes. Heres a couple of images of the work in progress. This is the first prototype for the box, and I think it works well. So I might keep it like this for the rest of the series too.

The paper is handmade by me from recycled soymilk cartons. They are all the same size, so I have to come up with something to vary the series up. The text and images will relate to dairy factory farming and problems caused by it.

welcome to my blog!

Hi, I just started my blog. I am in the process of reconfiguring my website, and thought I'd start a blog to go with it. Here you'll see glimpses into my studio processes and craft mania. I plan to post works in progress, crafty bits, inspiration and other artsy things that I get involved in.