Rob's Thesis

The images below are installation shots of Rob Woolley's thesis exhibition.

Rob Woolley and Sara Jones opened their thesis exhibitions last night. There was a big crowd in the course of the two hour reception, good food, and lots of interesting discussion. Rob, as many of your know, is graduating with a BFA in printmaking. He's the third BFA printmaker from our program since it started in 2003. Brett Ernst and Diana Hatchett are the other two. Rob has been accepted into graduate programs at the University of Florida, The University of Cincinnati, and the Herron School of Art at IUPUI in Indianapolis. He has accepted Herron's offer. Coincidentally, David Morrison, our Rolling Knob Press Visiting Artist coming in next week, oversees the Herron MFA program in printmaking. It's going to be an exciting week.

New Relief Prints

Some new relief prints hot off the presses. Some are for an edition of four and some are for an edition of 11 for our Wonderland exchange portfolio.

Danny Palafox

Mel Smith

Will Goolsby

Tatum Park

Pako Martin

Miranda Becht

Jerry Abshear

Greg Truesdel

Daphne Dohoney

Daniel Marshal

Connie Goodwin

Aberlyn May

Lithography Press Woes

Our Charles Brand Lithography press had been inoperable for the past three weeks after the warp plate that sits under neath the press bed finally warped. We've had the press around 30 years and never had any problems. Then one day, as the bed was passing over the center roller, a shotgun blast sound came from under the press. Apparently the warp plate, a 1/8 inch sheet of steel, had finally stretched enough that is had no place to stretch to, so it would recoil with a considerable percussion.

This is the "new" litho press, repaired just in time for David Morrison's visit to our shop and Rolling Knob press. We don't have time to sand and paint, but at least it'll be functional for intensive printing next week.

Rob and Shawn are positioning the 30" x 50" steel press bed at the end of the litho press for reinstallation. The press bed is about an inch thick and weighs several hundred pounds. It sits on top of the warp plate.

This is the way the press looked for about a week after we removed the bed in order to extract the warp plate. Diversified Sheet Metal, Inc. made the new warp plate in a very expeditious time so we could meet the Morrison deadline. They were great to work with.

Thanks to all who helped, risking limbs and digits, to get our press up and running again: Rob Woolley, Shawn McPheron, Danny Palafox, Will Goolsby, Greg Truesdel, Pako Martin, and Jeffrey Purlee, Daniel Marshall, and Troy Haggard.

IMMERSED

Rob Woolley and Sara Jones will be opening their BFA Thesis exhibitions on Thursday in the Barr Gallery. The reception is from 5:00 - 7:00. It's going to be a beautiful show, come check it out. If you can't make the opening, the exhibit continues until May 26.

DAVID MORRISON VISITING ARTIST

The Indiana University Southeast Printmaking Department and Rolling Knob Press are excited to be hosting a four day visit by David Morrison to our shop, April 12 - 16. David will be creating an edition for Rolling Knob Press, a multi-plate/stone lithograph, and meeting with drawing and printmaking students to discuss their work. Below are two of David's prints that were exhibited in the Passion and Process: Impressions from America's Master Printmakers at Louisville's Water Tower in 2006.

Iconic Bracelet No. 1

Iconic Bracelet No. 2

David is currently Professor of Art at the Herron School of Art, Indiana University/Purdue University at Indianapolis. His work has shown in numerous international, national, and solo exhibitions in which he has received over seventy awards. His work is included in numerous public and private collections and he has been a visiting lecturer and guest artist at a number of universities. David graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985 with Master of Fine Arts and from the University of South Dakota with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1981.

GROUP PORTFOLIO PROJECT

This semester's group portfolio project is based on the theme of Wonderland. The paper size will be 8.5" x 11", and the image size will be any scale that successfully addresses that idea through the selected process, including bleed. The edition size will be 11 so that everyone will receive a complete portfolio with ten randomly selected prints with one complete set going to the print shop collection.

Wonderland offers the potential for many different interpretations as long as the obvious isn't settled on as the best alternative to the problem. Try to generate as many solutions as possible before you decide on the direction of your print. Also give consideration to the medium/media you select as it will have a big effect on your edition. The final trial proof will come in on April 5, with final editions due on April 28. We need to also think about the actual portfolio container and the design and medium of the colophon page.

Reworked Intaglio

The S240 group began the semester by picking out an abandoned plate from a previous semester, pulling a proof of the plate, and then selecting a 4" x 6" section of the image to transform into another image but also utilizing part of the original image. After they found the area to work with, they cut the plate, cropping down to the 4 by 6 section. Learning how to utilize their scraper and burnishing tools, they removed the part of the metal plate they wanted to transform, and then added additional imagery by etching in line work, aquatint, soft ground. By pulling working proofs of their plates in progress, they also learned how to ink and wipe intaglio plates, and print on the etching presses. The below selections were particularly successful in transforming the original zinc plates into new matrixes that yielded some pretty interesting impressions. You can click on the images for greater detail.

This is Troy's reworked intaglio plate, with the original impression on the right and the new version on the left. He did a lot of scraping, sugar lift, aquatint, and line etch, transforming the image from the crouched figure to an "A-Bomb." If you look closely at the background, you'll see the mountain range he included in his image.

Tatum pulled some existing shapes out of the heavily etched plate, the original impression is on the bottom, she did some scraping and burnishing and then some open-bite to create an abstract pattern of positives and negatives.

Pako found in his original impression, the bottom image, a car buried in lots of dark texture. He pulled that out with scraping, burnishing, and sanding, and then added some text and additional imagery.

Daphne selected a deeply etched plate of shapes suggesting fingers, the bottom impression. There was a lot of open-bite, so she continued with that approach by adding imagery of a "polaroid" shape and some vine, and added a subtle aquatint into the image area of the polaroid.

Danny found a skull buried in this deeply etched plate, bottom impression, and used his scraper and burnisher to bring out that feature. Then he got rid of all the other information by scraping, burnishing, and sanding. After getting the plate back to a nearly clean surface, he added another scull and other shapes set off by a lightly etched aquatint.

Connie found a plate that reminded her of her camping experiences, the right impression. She pulled out features that suggested to her a camp-fire by sanding, scraping, burnishing, and etching. She then added some hand coloring with water colors.