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!

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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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!

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.