Butterfly Moving On to a New Home

 

My "Fruits and Flowers" butterfly has ended it's time at the Morris Arboretum exhibition. It has been donated to Community Partnership School where I work as an art teacher. Students from this school helped me decorate the center body of the butterfly with their drawings of seeded fruits. Below are some photos of the butterfly as it was installed at Morris and also the students who I took on a field trip to see it installed. 

This was such a wonderful experience. I am incredibly grateful to have been a part of it. 

Dancing in the Garden: Purple Dress Solo

White line woodcut (unique print)
Watercolors on 140 lb Canson watercolor paper
9" x 12" (image) 11" x 14" (paper)

This is the much improved proof of the print I posted about yesterday. I made the dress a bit more purple, I darkened some of the shadows, I added some purples and oranges to the red leaves, and I generally got a cleaner, sharper image because I set up a better registration block. This took me three hours to print just once, and that was with a block that was already painted up and saturated with color from the first proof. But worth it!

The photograph isn't great, but it was the best I could do at the moment. White line woodcuts are difficult to get a good photograph, so I'll have to work that out.

Dancing in the Garden: First Proof

This is the first proof for the first print intended for my next book project, Dancing in the Garden. It will be a series of white line woodcuts of four particular children dancing in the stunning landscapes of the Morris Arboretum.

This print is definitely not a finished version. I need to play around with the colors and get a crisper overall registration. But I like the drawing on the block and many of the color interactions. It starts to give a sense of what I'm going for, which is a cheery, folksy,  mosaic of children in motion embedded in an array of outdoor plantlife.

Okay, back to work...

"Impatiens with Border" by Millicent Krouse

Last Saturday I finally checked out the local exhibit Artists in the Garden: PAFA at Morris Arboretum. PAFA (The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts) is my alma mater, so I was familiar with a number of the artists who had works in the show. But I did not yet know Millicent Krouse, who continues to enjoy a prolific artistic career, primarily as a wood block printmaker. For readers interested in learning a wee bit more about Krouse, check out page 38 of the Woodmere Art Museum's catalogue Women and Biography, found in PDF form here.  

The blossoms are beautiful, but sink. Black leaves droop over the double-thick bottom border, almost obscuring the block-letter label. A more airy blue squiggle fills the empty space above their heads. There will be no silences during this conversation. Three, open faces lean forward, their gazes locked on an audience that so long has eagerly awaited their colorful entry into this world. We so longed for spring, but nothing worthwhile comes without a price.