1st Thursdays Impressions: The Printmaker's Art

WOMEN - African American Legacy: The Carol Mundy Collection

Two Special Collections exhibits in one week! This post is slightly delayed, but I was actually working on this exhibit at the same time as the Nierman exhibit at the beginning of November. Just slightly delayed...

This exhibit features photographs of women from the 1850s to the 1950s selected from African American Legacy: The Carol Mundy Collection. It was curated by Sandra Varry and was designed and prepared by myself. All of the photos that are on display were scanned, reprinted (some enlarged to assist with viewing), and mounted in order to protect the originals from the UV damage of being on display for several months. The exhibit also has a selection of awesome period cameras that are on loan to us. I feel bad since the photos should be the focus, but the cameras might be my favorite thing.

This exhibit is on the 5th floor exhibit area and will be there until the end of January when it will move into the cases on the main floor during Black History Month. At the end of February it will return to the  5th floor.

Artist in Action Studio at the Maitland Art Center

I've finally been able to move into the studio at Maitland! The window that has been repaired is awesome. I now have a growing wishlist for the studio including some storage drawers and a proper workbench.

My first piece of business in the new studio - working on the swinging diptych (seen left). I've been struggling for a while with how to handle the background, and I finally developed a plant motif that I feel walks the line between pattern and object. My current plan is a four color print (black, yellow, brown, blue) and chine collé in the body of the animals (light pink or some other flesh tone). I've got the animal image transferred onto the brown and yellow blocks and I've started carving on the brown blocks. I'm keeping my eye out for some dumpster wood to use for the blue.

My studio hours are Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday from 9am to 5pm (except holidays). Everyone should stop by! And a big thanks go out to Molly Chism, who helped me move in.

Leonardo Nierman

November 1st, 2012 was Leonardo Nierman's 80th birthday and in celebration I've curated a retrospective of his work in the Special Collections department on the main exhibit wall of the UCF Library. Nierman was born in Mexico city in 1932 and has become a internationally recognized artist. We have a large collection of his art at Special Collections, and throughout the Library in general. The nine foot bronze statue Flame of Hope by the main entrance and the stained glass Genesis on the third floor were done by Neirman. Both of which were acquired by the Library in 1987. These monumental pieces can always be seen at the Library, but the retrospective will only be up until the end of December. I recommend coming out to see it- it is rare that we pull out almost all of Nierman's artwork, especially the 6 1/2 foot by 8 foot tapestry. Now that was a unique challenge to hang!

Please enjoy the poorly pieced together panorama of the show below:

 

 

Hectography and the Russian Futurists

A page from Kruchonykh's Myatezh I (Mutiny I) 1920
created with hectography.

I am currently reading Joanna Drucker's The Century of Artists' Books to better ground myself in the theory and history of book arts. As I was reading about the books produced by the Russian Futurists, I stumbled upon a form of printmaking I had never heard of before. Hectography. These books, produced in the early 1900s, are some of the earliest artists' books. They were often produced as a collaboration of visual artist and poet- free to do as they wished with no editor or publisher breathing down their necks. For the most part they were produced by hand by the artist or poet through "lithography, linoleum cutting, potato print, stencil cut, and a now obsolete duplicating form called hectography" (Drucker 49). I immediately had to know what was up with this duplication process that had eluded my detection for so long.

I found a very helpful youtube video outlining the process. I would call it a marriage of carbon paper and Jell-o with a process similar to lithography minus the gum arabic. Since the materials needed are fairly household and the process fairly easy it became the print method of choice for the underground, not to mention it was also easy to destroy without leaving any evidence of insurrection. Besides Prisoners-of-War, it was also well suited for the classroom and many test papers or school newsletters were printed using hectography. All a school teacher needed was a pan of gelatin beside her desk and her classroom was instantly fitted with a copy machine before copy machines were invented.

Hectography may be obsolete, but it is not gone from this world. Tattoo parlors still use hectographic pencils to sketch their designs and then transfer it onto skin. One of the most exciting uses of modern hectography I found are printmakers using the gelatin plate to make monoprints. Linda Germain has a wonderful youtube video showing how easily the ink is released from the gelatin to the paper with just the gentle pressure of ones hands. She also has extensive gelatin printing tips on her website.

Well, I know what I'm doing the next time I'm in the mood for Jell-o.

Photo of Shelly Thorstensen's hectograph printing demonstration from Theresa Haberkorn's blog.

Art & History Museums Maitland - Artist in Action

I am very excited to announce that I've been selected as one of the Artists-in-Action for the 2012-2013 season for Art & History Museums - Maitland. We had our first meeting to go over paper work and get to know each other last Friday (and get a very professional and fancy name badge). It was also the first time I was able to meet A&H's new Director of Art Exhibitions & Education, Rebecca Sexton Larson.

I had a blast getting to know everyone. Trent Tomengo is in Studio 1, Dawn Rosendahl is in Studio 5, and I'll be sharing Studio 8 with Camilo Velasquez. Studio 8 is under going some repairs right now, so Camillo and I haven't been able to move in yet. Dawn is also waiting for Studio 8 to be repaired because she can't move in to Studio 5 until Camilo can move out. Is your brain in a knot yet? In other words, don't expect to catch Dawn or myself on campus until this is all sorted out. I can't wait to move in and get to work!


TheDailyCity.com: Maitland Art and History Museum Shacks Up Four Art...: The Maitland Art & History Museum has announced its 2012-2013 "Artist-in-Action" recipients for 2012/13: Whitney Broadaway, Dawn Rosenda...

The Mad Hatter Tea Party

Yesterday was the Mad Hatter Tea Party at the UCF Library. Amanda Richards was on the committee that organized this fundraiser and she asked me to help out with creating Tenniel inspired linocuts for a print-your-own-print station. I, of course, said yes. Amanda and I each carved two of the four linocuts we had available, which was more painstaking than normal since the cross hatching from Tenniel's drawings is not a very intuitive technique for carving in relief. However, we struggled through and I was pleasantly surprised with how well they translated into linoleum. Especially Amanda's work- this was her first time EVER carving and printing and they look as good as I could have done them. She is a testament to anyone who is on the fence about getting into relief printmaking. We decided to depict the four characters (Alice, The White Rabbit, The Mad Hatter, and The Red Queen) in a frame reminiscent of playing cards and gave them each their own suit.

We had a good crowd at the print station - as in Amanda and I never got to sit down - and it seemed like everyone that came over had a good time. There were also several people intersted in possibly doing the linocut process from start to finish, and I'm hoping that will translate into students for the next Not Your Mama's Print Workshop on December 2nd.