A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mother

 

My favorite place to hang prints for drying - between my husband's and my guitars. Molly Chism's painting always improves whatever I put in front of it!

I took over the dining room table this weekend in order to print a linocut I've been working on the past week or so. My daughter is a little over two years old now (how the time flies) and I felt compelled to do a self portrait as a frazzled, sleep deprived mom. I don't enjoy doing self portraits, so to make it more bearable I decided to cut my face in half and really only focus on the hair and eyes. My goal was to experiment with some face shading and specifically highlight dark circles, splotches, and freckles. I don't often do the human figure, especially when it comes to relief carving, so I'm not surprised that I wasn't completely successful - but it was a great learning experience!

The result I call A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mother and yes, that is a reference to to James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Also, I can't think of a more fitting way to end this "studio" day than with a toddler smearing one of my best prints while it was laying out drying. So what's to be done? Hand it over to her so she can complete her masterpiece, of course!

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.




AffectArt Artists' Party at Taste

One of the patrons at my table was a drunk bee- the swinging bunny did not approve.

I had a table at AffectArt.org's Artitsts' Party at Taste in Winter Park on June 15th. I had a fantastic time and met a slew of wonderful artists and people. One of those people was Boone Fowler who set the whole thing up and did a great job of keeping all the artists happy and helping us set up.

Parker Sketch set up his booth beside mine, which meant I wouldn't have to be worried about boredom for the rest of the evening. That was a big relief. Thomas Thorspecken set up to sketch across the sidewalk from Parker and me, so I'm very excited to see that pop up on his blog since I didn't get a chance to peek at it the day of.

Richeson Baby Etching Press was there for print your own prints trying to drum up some interest in my next printmaking workshop. I had several people run prints and I'm hoping some of them caught the printmaking bug! Parker snapped a photo of some of the printing:

Boone is hoping to make this an every other month event, so keep your ear to the ground for the next one because I highly recommend going - whether as a patron or an artist with a table!

Richeson Baby Etching Press

 My foray into the personal etching press world continues. Some updates since last time: I sent back the school etching press from Jerry's Artarama and although I thought the press was poor quality the customer service was excellent. After receiving some birthday money I decided to go for the press that I've seen all the wonderful reviews on and bought this lovely piece of equipment- The Richeson 11" Baby Press. The sheer weight of it tells you it's quality! I especially love the pressure markings on either side and the fact that it doesn't need to be mounted.


I was first able to use my brand new press for some cards I carved and printed for my first Christmas with my husband. It performed beautifully. I still have to get used to using such a tiny little thing, but our future together is looking bright.



 

It's found the perfect home on top of the little cabinet in my little dining room at my little apartment.... making little prints!


Even though it was supposed to be a birthday present, this press sure did make my Christmas.

Merry Christmas! There is still one more day!