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.




Off to the Printers!

For the past month I've been working on designing the exhibition catalog for the Crealdé School of Art's next show, Keeping Haiti In Our Hearts: Interpreting Heritage in the Diaspora. I am relieved to say that after thirty-nine and a half hours of work, the PDF files were sent to the printers yesterday evening. I can now breath a huge sigh of relief and start focusing on my excitement about seeing the finished product.

The exhibit features both contemporary and traditional haitian art, and from what I can tell from the images I worked with for the catalog it is full of painting, photography, sculpture, and tapestry. Eight of the traditional paintings are from the Bryant West Indies Collection held at the UCF Libraries Special Collections Department. In fact, that's how I became the catalog designer. The two curators, Henry Sinn and Natália Marques da Silva, have been in contact with Special Collections for over a year while they've put this show together. Natália came by in July to take some photographs of the paintings and mentioned to the head of our department that they were trying to find a new designer for the catalog and voilà! I had a job.

The opening reception will be held on Friday, September 14th at 7:00pm in the Alice & William Jenkins Gallery on the Crealdé campus located at 600 St. Andrews Blvd., Winter Park. From 8:30pm - 10:00pm the festivities move to the Hannibal Square Heritage Center 642 West New England Ave., Winter Park and will feature a live Haitian musical performance. Lots of people have put a ton of work into this event, and I know they would all be grateful to everyone who can come to the opening reception.