Indiegogo Campaign Art Card #1: Portrait of Edward Lear

2.5" x 3.5" art card
Oil-based ink on cream-colored, 90" smooth paper
Open edition

This is the first of 8 original woodcut art cards being created during my Indiegogo fundraising campaign. These will be thank-you gifts for all funders who contribute $20 or more. Funders will get to choose their preferred design to receive.

All 8 will also be for sale at my Etsy Store. This card can be purchased now by clicking here. All proceeds from Etsy sales between now and April 24th go directly to fund Words On Woodcuts Press!

This is a portrait of Edward Lear, the 19th century writer/illustrator who authored The Owl and the Pussycat.

Here's one of my favorite limericks also penned by Lear:

There was a Young Person of Smyrna, 
Whose Grandmother threatened to burn her; 
But she seized on the cat,
And said, "Granny, burn that!
You incongruous Old Woman of Smyrna!" 

With Cats On Our Laps

Bug On the Ceiling 
White line woodcut (unique print)
Watercolor on Stonehenge
10" x 33" (block), 15" x 40" (paper)

This is a self portrait holding my cat Aubrey. I got the idea and began work on it after doing a little white line portrait of myself last September. I'm gearing up for my next book project, which will be all white line woodcuts.

The title, Bug On the Ceiling, is meant to be bit humorous. Certain elements of this print point toward religious imagery, specifically alluding to Mary chosen by God to mother the Christ-child. But it's not a baby she holds, it's a cat. What seems a light on the woman's head is wood grain, and all other representational imagery is plant-life, distinctly earth-bound. Finally, there's the title, letting the viewer in on the totally mundane of reasons why she's looking up.

I'm not mocking religious sentiment so much as I'm attempting to elevate the every-day.

M.C. Escher made this woodcut, Seated Man With Cat On His Lap in 1919. In it, the subject is just as centralized in the composition, but he doesn't look up; he confronts his viewers. Boy that guy can look deadly serious even with a big curled-up cat in his lap. Reminds me of Cardinal Richelieu, who used to sign death warrants while his cats sat on his lap. (Richelieu had 14 cats, including one named Ludovic the Cruel.)

I love how this man's suit and chair just sort of melt into the flatness. His head practically floats. The Prophet Mohammed is said to have once cut off a piece of his clothing rather than disturb his pet cat who was sleeping on it. Perhaps there is something transcendent about the companionship of these domesticated carnivores, who have not the loyalty of dogs, nor the nobility of horses. We initially kept them to kill vermin in our granaries. Now they occupy the most intimate of spaces in our homes, even anchoring down our very bodies.

I keep making woodcuts. Different kinds of woodcuts. I make books now so I can make a whole series of woodcuts on a theme or to tell a story. Another artist friend of mine recently said to me, "Not everything needs to be a woodcut." But almost everything kind of does need to be woodcut! Because I haven't hit a wall with that. I keep finding new avenues to explore with it. It's only the same old thing over and over again if I let it be. I must stay in this small place I currently occupy; dig deeper to find whole new layers of sediment; look longer through the keyhole to find what few others have noticed.

Lots of times I hear Peggy Lee's voice in my head, singing, Is this all there is? Yeah, this is all there is. And at least most days, it's enough.

Triumphant In Achieving My Indiegogo Campaign Goal!

I have reached my Indiegogo campaign goal! Words On Woodcuts Press will undoubtedly become a reality with the publication of Cats A-Z this summer. 

The monumental woodcut print shown here is Triumphal Arch. It is one of the largest prints ever produced, and was commissioned by Emperor Maximillian I to be displayed on walls in palaces and city halls. 

It also perfectly illustrates how awesome I feel right now!

Thank you to everyone who has contributed and shared information about this campaign.

THE FOCUS NOW: 

While I've cleared the first hurtle, I still need to raise additional funds to enact my business plan. I've applied for an interest-free, crowd-sourced small business loan and am currently waiting for approval to launch that campaign. Any funds I raise through Indiegogo that exceed $2000 go to reduce the amount I have to borrow to make this small press a reality. And that increases my press's chances for long-term success.

The Indiegogo campaign runs through April 24th. Help me keep spreading the word. Also, check in on this blog where I'll be posting eight original woodcut art cards as thank-you gifts for all the funders. 

90% Funded in the First Day - WOW!

Yesterday morning I launched my Indiegogo campaign to fund a small press. Today I woke up with that campaign already 90% funded. Well over 100 friends, acquaintances and even strangers shared my campaign. My GoGo Factor is through the roof, with my campaign featured on the front of the Indiegogo website and the top campaign in the Art section.

So much support... I'm overwhelmed with gratitude. 

Even though independent publishing was something I'd been seriously considering for almost three years, and researching and planning for months, I felt rife with apprehension. After all, Words On Woodcuts is just a one woman operation out of my home studio, and I have other responsibilities as a part time art educator and raising my two little girls. 

For your amusement, here is my favorite outtake from filming the video pitch. The person filming (whose voice you will hear) is my 5-year-old daughter. We filmed this while her toddler sister was napping. It was the only time of day when the lighting in my studio was good. 

Special thanks to my friend KM Scott (author of Legends of Steragos) for doing all the video editing. If I'd had to learn to do it myself, I never would have finished in time to launch on Friday the 13th.

As I hit the "launch" button on my fundraising campaign yesterday morning, I still worried I wouldn't be able to raise the necessary $2000 during a 42 campaign. Today I'm wondering how much I can raise beyond that goal to reduce the size of the necessary business loan and increase the press's chances of long-term success. 

From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU ALL!!! 

Help Me Launch Words On Woodcuts Press!

Two weeks ago I announced that I'm launching Words On Woodcuts Press to publish beautifully-crafted books which will feature my woodcuts.

Today, the fundraising begins!

Check out my Indiegogo campaign here. There are all kinds of goodies, including original woodcuts from my studio and signed copies of the books if you can donate.

Keep checking up with this blog. Over the 42 days of the campaign, I'll create 8 original art card woodcuts to give as additional thank-you gifts for donors.

If you can't contribute funds, that's fine. Just help me spread the word. Thanks!

Two Landscapes by Umetaro Azechi

I've written once before about a work by the Japanese artist Umetaro Azechi. He was an avid lover of nature and mountain climber, and I wrote about his woodcut Mountain Man I.

His woodcuts are very distinct for its "simple and rustic" look (as the artist himself put it), unique approaches to depicting space (a sort of flattening in order to see everything at once from above, which reminds me of traditional Inuit prints and wall hangings), and cool, clear colors. The blog Funomena has a good article about discovering Azechi's work.

I thought these two woodcuts of mountains compared well together. In the first, everything seems to rise up. The white road curves slightly as it moves through a scattered handful of houses, toward a hill that seems like a great rolling wave. Puzzle pieces float on the surface of the wave's dip like broken ice. Behind the wave rises what seems to be a long-dormant volcano, The flattened tip of this tallest mountain bears a black and blue gash that peels down the side.

In the second woodcut, everything seems to pull down. A congregation of dwarfed hills attentively observe a house, which sits in a happy, little green and speckled pool. A few even smaller hills or pointed rocks descend into the white valley, edging closer to the house, like curious children.

What strikes me most in both of these prints is how much the mountains and structures seem alive and possessing human-like personalities, motivations, and relationships with each other. There is a great sweep of collective interactions taking place within the scene as a whole. These simple and still images are also folk tales and portraits of small communities.

Looking at these, I feel so small, but also so utterly welcomed.

"Sky In Winter" by Kasamatsu Shiro

I year and a half ago I wrote about Kasamatsu Shiro's print Summer Night. Here we meet again on the opposite side of the seasonal cycle.

Flutters, then stillness. A spattering of chirps, and then only the soft sound of the wind blowing through the pale and spindly trees. Branches reach across the scene like rushing waters. Some of the birds swim with the stream while others cling to twigs like buds waiting to bloom.