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Rollers and Spoons

I went to Pam Lawson‘s for a printmaking class today.  It is an informal monotype class, a small group with lots of individual instruction.  I’m free to work on my ideas with the help of someone who knows what she’s doing and the added benefit of a press and lots of rollers.  With a big roller, you can ink up a plate with a pattern on it and transfer the pattern on top of a 2nd image, which is what I did below.  After the first one I used the ghost impression left on the plate as a guideline to make a new, more abstract version.  Mostly I wanted to get the hang of using the big roller.  In the first one the roller a jumped a bit, you can see it if you look at the bottom edge.  I’m going to try next time with a darker ink in the background, probably an indigo or a deep violet, and a lighter figure, to see if I can get more contrast.  The model is Peg Mulqueen, in Laguvajrasana.

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The spoon and napkin here is from daily drawing practice.  Daily drawing is more of a goal than a reality, but I keep coming back to it.

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Monotype Guild of New England

Today I submitted 3 images to the Monotype Guild of New England for their annual national show in early 2013.  It’s a bit out of my league at the moment, and I have reservations about submitting to anything when I feel like I need this year to build a body of work.  It’s not cooked yet, the flavors haven’t melded.  But it was hard to ignore that monotypes and monoprints have been my primary output lately so, what the heck.  I won’t hear until 12/10.

After serving as a juror on a week long murder trial, which was quite a wringer let me tell you, I managed to get back to the studio (a.k.a. my kitchen turned print shop) last thursday with the kids and, not expecting anything, I got some images I liked.

 

 

 

This is a riot.  All I did was trace a picture of an elephant from a Jane Goodall book for kids, on acetate, ink it up and print away.  You can see that I’m obsessed with the alphabet stencil.  I love the way the letters and symbols are the building blocks for a language, in a similar way that yoga poses are the building blocks of a yoga practice, and simple images can be the building blocks of a visual language.  I’m still having problems getting the ink to adhere and release properly from the acetate stencils so I’m going to have to come up with something better.  I can try a sturdy paper and coat both sides with gloss or matte medium.  That’s next.

Did I mention that I think I need to buy a printing press?  This is Pamela Lawson’s fault.  I saw her monotypes at Lawrence Academy’s gallery in Groton, MA last thursday and they are gorgeous and bright and cheeky.  Take a look out her red-winged blackbirds, done mostly with rollers.

Unbelievable.