Advanced Printmaking

The advanced print group is well on the way exploring many avenues of expression. Alex is body-stamping on curved sheets of glass and contact paper; Angie is looking at photoploymer plates for both intaglio and relief; Chasson started with intaglio and plans to move into monotypes and possibly relief; Emily is printing relief and then pasting the images around town, and Rebecca is getting her feet back into the process after a two year hiatus, starting with intaglio. Here are their beginnings:

Alex

Chasson

Rebecca

Angie

Emily

Fall 2013, Printmaking Basic Media

A new semester has started in the printshop. We started the learning process with three-color separation monotypes, getting everyone acclimated to the shop, the press, and the idea of building imagery with layers. There were some strong responses to the process and some engaging explorations into color, texture, line, and value. Some examples:

Amelia

Ashley

Christina

Dustin

Kaitlin

Kathleen

Kathryn

Katy

Maho

Tamara

Tre

Zane

Oscar's return visit

Oscar has decided to incorporate two more plates into his engraving, so he is back home in Peroria completing the mezzotints that will carry the lush colors (looking forward to the Oscar Red). He'll return on December 1 and 2 for a print-a-thon in the shop with the usual band of Rolling Knob Press printers. We're all pretty excited about that. We learned so much while he was here, so everyone is working on engravings and mezzotint collagraphs to keep the momentum going. Thanks, Oscar, and we'll see you in a few weeks.

Oscar Gillespie's Visit

Oscar has been working in the shop all week, cutting away on a large zinc plate that's polished to a jeweler's perfection. He's also taught my students how to engrave and many are cutting away on their plates. Yesterday he presented his work and influences to about 50 students and faculty. It's been a busy week so far.

Oscar is preparing copper plates to so that color can be added to the engraving he's been working on. The proof below is where the plate was yesterday afternoon, but there has been a lot more cutting since then so I suspect that it's much more lush with Oscar's distinctive line work.

Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may provide an intaglio printing plate line work for printing images on paper as prints; these images are called engravings.

Engraving was a historically important method of producing images on paper, both in artistic printmaking, and also for commercial reproductions and illustrations for books and magazines. Partly because of the difficulty of learning the technique, is much less common in printmaking today. However, traditional engraving, by hand with a burin, continues to be practised by goldsmiths, glass engravers, gunsmiths, and Oscar Gillespie!

The works below are examples of Oscar Gillespie's print work that he has shown to numerous students and faculty during his visit. These are only a few of the many prints he brought with him to share. 

This engraving with aquatint (maybe even some mezzotint) has the intense "Oscar-Red" that adds a very unique quality to his work.

The above reductive relief print was a demonstration impression that Oscar created for his students. I was glad that he brought it with him as my beginning students are currently working on relief prints, so seeing other possibilities other than simply black and white was good for them to experience.

This is one of a series of circular engravings created by Oscar, the fluidity of the line work is amazing.

Check back later to see the final impression.

Oscar Gillespie Rolling Knob Visiting Printmaker

Oscar J. Gillespie is a Professor of Art at Bradley University, where he has been a member of the faculty since January of 1986. He teaches printmaking and drawing. As a printmaker, he is noted for his expertise in monotypes and in intaglio, especially metal-plate engraving.

Born in Arizona in 1952 and raised in Holbrook near the Navajo Reservation, he holds an M.F.A. degree in Printmaking from Arizona State University (1983), and a B.F.A. in Printmaking from Northern Arizona University (1977).

From 1986 to 1991 he directed three biennial Bradley National Print and Drawing Exhibitions. Since 1991, he has guided Bradley’s Cradle Oak Press as Printer and Coordinator for a program that invites noted artists to campus for the purpose of collaborating with faculty and students in the creation and publishing of hand-printed editions.

Exhibiting widely since 1974, he has shown his work in more than 300 solo, group, invitational and juried exhibitions. His work may be found in more than 60 public collections, including the Fogg Museum, Harvard; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Denver Art Museum; the Lauren Rogers Museum, Laurel, Mississippi; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, the New York Public Library; the Plains Museum, Fargo, North Dakota; and the National Museum of Posnan, Poland.

Congrats to Wende

Night In by David Dreisbach

David Dreisbach recently celebrated his 90th birthday. For those of you unfamiliar with Dreisbach's work, he has been an exhibiting artist since 1949 and an educator from 1952 to 1991. He studied with Mauricio Lasansky and Stanley William Hayter. He has exhibited in over 250 one man shows and a very large number of national and international juried and invitational exhibitions and workshops.

David has a lifetime of artistic endeavors and is well respected as an educator who instilled strong artistic commitments in a large impressive group of students. He is an internationaly known expert and innovator in the printmaking field who helped to create technical advances in color viscosity printing.

Joy Peterson of Louisville is the sister of David. She wanted to honor David's 90th birthday by awarding a 'scholarship' gift to a deserving student in printmaking. Joy contacted me for recommendations. I told her that I had several deserving students, but I suspected that since it was to honor her brother that one who had a strong background in etching would be a good match for Joy's intentions. I recommended Wende for this honor and Joy was very excited about that selection. I sent some of Wende's images to her, but I am also going to include some her and invite Joy to visit our blog. Please extend a congratulations to Wende, and enjoy some of her intaglio prints.

Making Love

Transforming

Jelly Fish

Micros

Wende Cudmore holding the card from Joy Peterson

Wende is a senior in the Fine Arts Program and will be graduating in the spring with a BFA in Printmaking. Her work explores nature and it's patterns and those influences on our world, both subtle and overt.  She is currently involved with the tradition of creating "quilts", but rather than employing fabric, Wende is composing her quilts out of printed images from etchings and collagraphs.  They will function as objects rather that the traditional utilitarian bed cover. Wende is also very involved with vegetable papyrus, creating wall hangings, bowls, and most prominently, hats.

Kiwi Hat

  

Critique

Lots of interesting dialogue yesterday during the upper level critique. Besides hitting on the usual kinds of things that printmakers like to talk about - process - we got into some of the motivations that inspired  creative investigations. I think it is highly important that such exchanges encourage a thorough grounding in the broad range of traditional, contemporary, and innovative printmaking techniques. It also encourages everyone to formulate and articulate philosophical and personal concepts and to move them into the visual. Although we have a relaxed studio environment, we also have an intensive studio experience with critical and theoretical dialogue, and that was very present yesterday. I appreciate the candor of dialogue. The goal of helping one another was healthy and constructive.

I hope some of the suggestions that were offered are thoroughly considered, especially in regard to context. Who are you as an artists and why do you do the things you do? Who else might be doing something similar and why are they doing it? Is there a difference between art and craft and how does it relate to the art and craft of printmaking? What about the traditions of your work and how does it relate to the contemporary?

Fear was an unexpected topic, and that evolved into some intense exchanges. Creativity and fear are strange bed fellows, so to say, with fear being the destructive counterpart. In fact, fear is perhaps the biggest block to creativity. Fear of making mistakes, of being criticized, of disturbing traditions and making changes, of losing the security of habit. It can go on and on. A change of focus will surely help alleviate such anxieties.

Looking forward to the continued exchanges, both formally and informally. See you in the shop.