"Pigling Bland and Pig-Wig"

 

"Pigling Bland and Pig-Wig" 
12" x 12" 
4 color reduction woodcut 

This was going to be the first woodcut for my "Some Pigs" project, an AiRM - a project that will culminate in a solo exhibition at 1040 Creative in November of this year. 

However, while I like this print, I decided to go in another direction for the series of 12 pig prints for the project and calendar, and this is thus a one-off. 

This print illustrates the final scene in Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Pigling Bland, where the title character and his soulmate Pig-Wig manage to escape from their wretched circumstances into freedom in the wilderness, where Pigling has plans to settle down and become a potato farmer. The text in the print is from a traditional British song, excerpts of which are included in Potter's story.  

"Hand, Human"

Hand, Human
Reduction woodcut with 2 blocks, 2 colors each
6" x 9"
Limited edition of 30

I made this print for Baren Forum Exchange #76. While contemplating the theme "Humanity" I kept thinking about the time I was at the Columbus Zoo and a gorilla put her hand up on the glass, and I was struck by how much it resembled my human hand. Googling images of gorilla and other great ape hands, I kept finding scientifically cataloged specimens, cut off at the wrist and set on a table to be photographed or illustrated and labeled. So for this print I decided to make an image of my own hand severed at the wrist, set on a table, and titled as a sample specimen. I thought of doing it as a black and white woodcut or engraving, but that seemed to narrow the concept to a one liner. Instead I wanted to use color bright complimentary colors (that are commonly found in many of my reduction color woodcuts) to give the piece another dimension to interpret. The unnatural, flat purple hue on the hand emphasizes the graphic depiction while obscuring the race of the individual, and the yellow can seem both cheery and garish or alarming.

The broader concept will be to create a small series that includes other primate hands (at least the great apes) depicted in the same way and then exhibit them as a set.

Baren Forum Exchange #73: "Bathroom Dinos"

I just finished mailing my prints for Baren Forum Exchange #73. Paper size was 10" x 15", but there was no technique challenge or theme, so I decided to have a little fun and turned one of my dino drawings of my kids' plastic dinosaur toys into a four-color reduction print. These two in particular are "Bluey Neck" and "T-Rex", often used as tub toys.

One of He Kun's color reduction woodcuts

I don't know the title of this piece - if any readers out there do and/or have more information about this contemporary Chinese artist, please comment below! I found two of He Kun's colorful and playful reduction woodcuts for sale on Amazon of all places. But doing a Google search for the artist I found a website with some information and that features several more impressive reduction woodcuts, most of which feature people or animals in landscapes and make surprising and dramatic use of color.

The sky seems flooded with scattered shards. Perhaps they have broken off of the central landmass, and some have even fallen into the water, and so I fear a bit for the lone swimmer. My eyes rest on him and I am calmed. The swimmer moves in a path parallel to a steer meandering across the field near the water's edge. They have both moved just past the halfway point of the picture plane, and so I feel confident that they know where they are going and will soon arrive at their destination. Assuming they have a destination. The world around them is colorful chaos. The symmetry we perceive is but one perspective, the pockets of serenity are tightly localized. What grandeur in this partnership between the inner life of the human mind and the outward state of the material world.

Reduction Relief Prints by 4th Graders at UCAL

I love getting kids to do reduction prints. Typically they've never done it before, and many of them are pretty ho-hum about it until they pull that first print that has two layers of color, and then they get all excited about the effect of layering.

These are my three favorite prints (2 different color version of each) made by my 2D Mixed Media class for 3rd-6th graders at the University City Arts League in West Philadelphia. I'm teaching the same class again in the winter term.

"Winter Tree Line" by Gesine Janzen

I first wrote about one of Gesine Janzen's prints 7 months ago, when she had a work in the IPCNY Summer exhibition. You can view a larger image of this work (and purchase it) on Janzen's website here.

They seem to lean forward, limbs stretched out and up. They are blue and filled with longing. White gashes of light and peels of tangerine sun slip into their open embrace. Just above the horizon, branches arch over dark and mysterious passages. Though the trees of this forest stand bare of foliage, still, there are so many places to hide.

"Late Autumn" by Gordon Mortensen

Yesterday we had our first snow of the season, so it's a white Thanksgiving. Even though winter is my favorite season, I always get a melancholy feeling this time of year because the autumn foliage is so beautiful, but now the leaves are turning the color of mud, then falling to the ground, getting mashed up, and literally turning into mud.

Before winter is officially upon us here in Pennsylvania, here's one of Gordon Mortensen's woodcut reductions. Mortensen's prints are jaw-droppingly amazing in terms of the technical challenges; he often does dozens of layers of color and spends months making a single edition. For me, the result of his painstaking process is that his images of nature seem utterly frozen. Otherwise fleeting moments, here preserved for all time.

If you want to learn more about Mortensen and find his limited edition prints for sale, here's a link to his profile at Davidson Galleries.

I am both drawn to and a little frightened of this place. Are there monsters lurking in the hazy, purple distance? Are there creepy crawlies teeming beneath the smattering of golden leaves? Do equally breathtaking wonders lies beyond the forest's edge, or perhaps there is nothing more than a brightly lit oblivion. What sounds would my steps make if I dare walk across? A crunch? A squoosh? Or eerie silence, as if I were a phantom in a world no longer my own? Like a cake in the bakery's display window, I desire a taste, but am loath to disturb its aesthetic perfection.

Elizabeth Busey prints of Spirals In Nature

Images posted with the permission of the artist. More about Busey's work can be found on her website and blog.

The whole universe is based on rhythms. Everything happens in circles, in spirals. 

-John Hartford 

I'm interested in spirals lately, inspired by the amazing wood engravings by Beth Krommes that I discovered in the picture book Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature. This summer, spirals were the theme for the collographs made by my students.

Below are Busey's brief statements associated with these three images (in quotes) followed by my responses.

Ship of Pearl

"Growing in the cool, deep waters of the Pacific, a chambered nautilus expands its shell home in a perfect logarithmic spiral."

I stand at the top of a staircase. There is nothing particularly interesting about this floor itself. The fiery steps, luscious like slices of sashimi, are where it's at. If I dare to step, I've no doubt I will shrink like Alice, and enter a whole new world of wonder in the infinite below.

Great Unknown

"A swirl of larger and smaller light particles form our conception of the Milky Way Galaxy. Scientists theorize that the galaxy is a spiral shape, with a bar of brilliant light at the core."

Caught: a single, still moment in the galaxy's restless dance. Purple streaks drag across the blackness of space like strokes of paint in Van Gogh's Starry Night. Dots of yellow confetti swarm in the center, while others of a greater variety of hue float on the edges around a swirl that reminds me of the skirt of a Flamenco dancing woman. I feel the burning sensation in her breast. 

Captured

"A spider web captures perfect orbs of water. The web is the universal spiral seen in everything from galaxies to seashells." 

The dew at dawn makes visible this trap. Beads glisten and seem as hard and permanent as stone, each it's own contained world. The faint lines of the web appear deceptively delicate. So lovely is this harbinger of doom.