Teen Woodcut Class at CAC: Reductions, layer 1

On day 3 (of 5) of this crash course for beginners, my students printed the first layer of what will be a color reduction woodcut. Hopefully they'll manage to complete 3 layers of color before the end of the week. One student did manage to get to the second color today (see below.)

Teen Woodcut Class at CAC: First Proofs

This week I'm teaching a woodcut class to youth ages 12-16 at the Community Arts Center. None of the students had made a woodcut before, and the class is short (5 days, 1.5 hours a day) so this is a rather intense introduction for them. Day one I showed them some example woodcuts, had them draw right onto their boards, demonstrated how to use the knives and gouges, and they got to work carving. Today they finished the first proofs of their first cuts. Not too shabby! I'll be posting the rest of their work as the week progresses.

Highlights from Baren Forum Exchange #76 3/3

Harmony by Anne van Oppen

Final highlights from Baren Forum Exchange #76. 

A small spider dangles from a bit of web stuck to an index finger. In a moment the bug will land on the foliage beside it and crawl away into the folds of the leaves, and the person will serenely watch them go. 

Memory by Theresa Martin

Upon seeing this second print, I wondered who Wiesel was. I googled and quickly found Elie Wiesel, and knew that was the correct person because something about this print had made me think of Holocaust survivors. The aged and weary face that looks out with such an expression of gratitude speaks volumes. It is the expression of one who can feel immense appreciation for all of life's moments, however small - such as a brief and peaceful encounter outside with a garden spider. 

Highlights from Baren Forum Exchange #76 2/3

Humanity by Brad Ladwig

More highlights from Baren Forum's Exchange #76. 

With these two prints, the theme of humanity is represented in the abstract. Brad Ladwig's people remind me of Leo Lionni's picturebook Little Blue and Little Yellow, as all the people are shown as circles of color. In Lionni's story, the colors are at first separate, but then they mix, and become unrecognizable to those around them. 

Conversely, in Ladwig's print, the circles are all together in the same bowl, still, static and distinctly separated from each other. As Kahil Gibran wrote On Marriage: "let there be spaces in your togetherness." 

Interconnected, You & Me by Diane Cutter

Diane Cutter's print perhaps shows what happens if the circles intermingle but instead of blending their colors, they create new shape, rather like the intermingling of oil and water. The shapes morph like a lava lamp, creating new shapes as they go, though it seems no matter how much they intermingle, creating ever increasingly complex designs, the even percentages of stark black and white will persist. 

Looking longer at these images, they both seem to illustrate a sort of pluralism, where participants of equal value manage to meaningfully retain their differences as they share the same space with each other. 

Highlights from Baren Forum Exchange #76 1/3

Stand up and be heard! by Chris Doogan

These are some highlights from Baren Forum's Exchange #76 - another particularly excellent set of prints. Thanks to all who participated.

To start, I'm just going to leave these two here, and viewers can make of the pairing what you will. I don't have any specific point to make. With all the talk of gun violence in America, with the inevitable suicides via firearms that are so common here, and the cringing I personally endure all summer as the news reports of shooting rise with the heat, I simply want to share with the viewers of this blog the experience of leafing through my latest pile of new prints and contemplating the juxtaposition.

Sniper by Anthony DiMichele

Highlights from Baren Forum Exchange #75 2/2

Part 2 after yesterday's part 1. For my second post highlighting some of my favorite prints from Baren Forum Exchange #75 I've decided to feature two landscape: Sauvie's Island by Barbara Mason and Saou by Abel Dewitz 

We've been here many times before. It's so familiar, we keep designating it as a place to meet up. It only exists in our mind's eye, a memory of a few shapes and colors. The details aren't important for our purposes. It is a sudden grasp, a deep inhale, a purposeful opening of our eyes after a period of dark retreat inward. The world is still out there. In there. Over, out, and above.

This will all fall away. Break up, drift apart, and disappear.

Highlights from Baren Forum Exchange #75 1/2

I'm rather late posting these highlights of Baren Exchange #75 (I've already also received the prints from #76 - will post those highlights later this week), but they also were delivered late, and big whoop, later is better than never.

I've selected these two to feature first - if I'm  honest - for personal reasons, both sentimental and existential.

Wait, don't I always do that?

I spent a lot of time around children or by myself, and so I'm perpetually hungry for contact with other adults. Not boring small talk, but intelligent or at least juicy conversation. So when I looked at Therese Krupp's Over Coffee... I couldn't help but identify with the figure on the right who seems to just be yap yapping away, while the figure on the left looks ahead, sipping coffee. There's no clear indication of how either of these people feel or what they are discussing. I don't know if the person sipping is all that invested in what she's hearing her companion say or not. It's all just sounds, and a big, red rectangle, and steam rising up from mugs, and the smell of coffee, and this is the wallpaper of one sort of human experience.

So then there's this Still Life - Bananas and Coffee, by Brad Ladwig, and I'm in my kitchen, alone again, staring at this carafe I use every day, this fruit I bought at the grocery store yesterday, and I'll buy another bunch next week, and the week after that, and I'm just utterly struck by this pretty, but lonely, awkward, and incomplete moment, that is so much like many others, and yet it is this moment, right here, now, and never again.