Just received this paper sample pack, letter, and bamboo watercolor sketchbook from the wonderful folks at the Awagami Paper Factory for submitting a print to their mini-print exhibition!

BONUS POST Since my documentation of the process of making my last prints was pretty underwhelming, I decided that for next one I'd take it a bit further than the usual cellphone quality pictures and excessively verbose captions. Today I made a short timelapse of about an hour of carving on my latest print. This print is going to be a reductive woodcut with at least 6 colors, and I'm hoping to do more documentation like this for some of the printing and subsequent carving.

I know I'm about a week late in posting these, but here's a couple pictures from when I made the final prints of my last piece. This edition was special for me since not only was it my first since graduating from Montserrat, it was the first using the studio and supplies that I've invested so much time and money in. I was a bit hesitant at first for 2 reasons. A.) I hadn't had a chance to try out the new inks that I bought and I wasn't sure how they would handle. B.) I haven't touched a barren since I did a variable edition of 50 prints (for fun!) 4 years ago right before I graduated high school. I'm not sure if I'm generally just out of shape or if press life was way too kind to me, but I can't imagine how I did 50 when my ass was so severely kicked after a dozen of these new prints. Anyway, one of the prints went off to a call for work at a paper factory in Japan, after spending an arm and a leg on an application fee and shipping it there. As excited as I am to have a print out there, I'm thinking of somewhere a bit more local for the next one.

I've been awfully busy and quiet these past few months. I moved back home after graduation and recently got a job. While I started out pretty strong back in May with getting materials and making myself a set up for printing, it got really hard to stay motivated after a few weeks. The new job has been pretty helpful as it forces me to get up early every morning but also leaves me with free afternoons. Over the past week or so, I kicked some serious ass on the woodblock pictured above and was finally able to proof for the first time tonight. Actual printing will (hopefully) take place tomorrow, and I'll be doing my best to take the time to document the process and some of the solutions I've found/come up with for printing in a garage without any sort of press.

The image of my face was generated by taking 6 pictures of myself from different angles/making different faces. These 6 pictures were then gridded off into half inch squares and each assigned a number. I went across the grid collaging 1 square from each image, determined by rolling a die, into the corresponding square of another grid. This design was then transferred to a woodblock, carved, and then printed over textures that had previously been printed onto the paper from upholstery samples.

For this project, I used the I Ching to determine a random number between 1 and 64. That number of metal BB’s was loaded into a BB Gun (specifically a Red Ryder BB Gun) and then fired at two plexiglass plates from a distance. The cracks from the impact were then traced with an etching needle and printed in variations of Red, Yellow, and Blue in series of 3 determined by flipping a coin to decide on which plate to use.

Inspired by John Cage and his work with the I Ching, I decided to honor him with a variable edition of a hexagram from the I Ching printed 64 times. The coin flipping version of the I Ching ceremony was performed to create a hexagram. I got number 52, “Keeping Still.” The hexagram was then printed with ink that had been abandoned by fellow printmakers and tossed into a bucket unmixed. The virtue of the hexagram 52 came into play when I was printing these and was forced to stay in one spot behind my screen for a few hours focusing on the action of printing each of the 64 individual 7.5″x11″ prints that would later be hinged together in sets of 4 for the final installation.

Click here to learn more about Kitchen Lithography from it’s inventor, Émilie Aizier.

I went into detail about this series when I posted the first one a while back. Click here to read my process.

Here are some pictures of the stuff I had in the window of the gallery and the main installation from before all of the madness of the reception. Photo courtesy of xjoexedge

The past week’s just been insane. Here’s a few pictures from the last couple days (mostly from last night’s reception) of the surely hundreds that were taken. I’ll be posting more as they come in and after the show comes down, I’ll get some good quality pictures of the prints themselves along with a detailed description of how they were made. Big shouts out to everyone who came out to see it with us (if you haven’t seen it it’s up until the 24th) and an even bigger shout out to Mingo Gallery and Custom Frames for having us.

as for the arm question, it really depends on which arm. I’m primarily left handed, but being raised in a right handed dominated society made me learn how to do a lot of things with right hand. if i lost my left arm, i wouldn't be able to draw as well as i can now, which would limit the type of work i’d be comfortable making. in that case i’d probably stick more to what i’m currently doing, focusing on creating abstraction through conceptual processes. if i lost my right arm i’d still be kind of limited with the work i could make at first, considering that i’d have to relearn basic printmaking skills like wood-carving and using large rollers (although i could have someone help me with those) but i’d get it all back eventually. either way, if i’m losing an arm, i’ll do what wes eisold did and get a solid black prosthetic, or get my friends to paint on one for me. also i feel like i would probably do gratuitous amounts of anatomical drawings of my residual limb as a way of becoming more comfortable with it. whether through it’s physical impact in the creation of my work, or directly as a theme, it would find it’s way into my work.

https://www.facebook.com/events/852482741477494

Here's some in-progress shots of a woodblock print I'm working on for my thesis and the reference photo I collaged for it. I'll explain the concept when I post the finished prints.