1000 Woodcuts: Goldwell Museum

Showing posts with label Goldwell Museum. Show all posts

Friday, April 7, 2017

Advancing on Two Fronts, Must Be Spring!

Energy! Two Studio Tricks

I love it when I'm full of energy...mostly because some (other) times I have to "make" myself work, ups and downs, you know...

Anyhow, I am fully enjoying a flurry of self-inflicted activity, and making progress on a long project and a short-ish project.

The Long: Ghost Town

About a week ago I finished carving not only the 20 small woodcuts for the Ghost Town project but also a medium size View block. The 20 4x6 inch blocks are ready to print and so I started mulling how to make a big project not so big. Turns out, a sheet of 22x30 inch paper will print 9 at a time with generous margins.

I have printed multiple blocks before, all this trick necessitates is a "jig" that holds the blocks in place while a large sheet of paper is placed on a few blocks simultaneously. The "lock" (in letterpress called a chase) has to be slightly lower than the blocks so that I can ink away without removing the blocks each print. I construct these from foam-board, mat-board and/or gator-board, whatever thickness combination gives me the ideal height to hold the blocks in place just above the jig surface.

Here are pictures, better than descriptions!

First laying out the blocks and finding the spacing

Some calculations on the sizes of spacers needed
(I'm good at math!)

Spacers cut on left, glue and square ready

I place the blocks as I go to make sure they fit

Each block held at the right height by gator-board

Presto! The completed chase, blocks in place
Ink and paper required, After the blocks are printed
I can trim the paper to size

The Short: Wings Exchange, the Flying Maple Seeds

Also made the final adjustments on the Seeds are Sown, Life is Grown print for the Barenforum.org 72nd print exchange. I will detail the complete process in next post, but here are the photos and the video:

First vs second proofs

block and print

Last few details and cleaning up
require my magnifying lamp

Detail of my tiniest tool doing some
delicate carving

Stay in touch!

1000woodcuts Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/1000woodcuts
Maria's Facebook Profile: https://www.facebook.com/maria.arango.diener
Maria's Twitter Profile: https://twitter.com/1000woodcuts
1000woodcuts YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/1000woodcuts/videos

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Ghost Town, Red Barn from the North

YouTube video of carving

This was fun! Not the video making, that is tedious and boring but I appreciate every YouTube video I see so much more after making a few of these slide shows. Carving was fun; always enjoyable to see the image "appear" as my knives take out the wood.
All done sweeping the wood curls too!

Views from North and East

Death Valley view

Endless road to Death Valley

On to the West, view from Death Valley road. First I have to "be there" if only in spirit. As I recall, this was my longest walk because the Westward road lost sight of the Barn almost immediately, so I had to travel the highway. Shortly, up a hill, the funky Welcome to Nevada sign and a perfect window to view the Barn. Point of curiosity: the signs have now been replaced with a more "modern" look so we are recording history.
Again, I mix man-made with nature and I may just enhance the current drawing with a few road-side flowers which are the highlight of the Death Valley roads.

Welcome to our state!

Can you spot the diminutive Red Barn?
How about the entire ghost town in the background?!

Stay in touch!

Monday, March 20, 2017

Ghost Town Progress

20 Sketches

The 5 sketches for each of the cardinal point walks have been carved and are waiting for me to print them. I am working on a "jig" that will hold a few of them at once. This way I can print a bunch at a time on a large sheet of paper and then trim to size. I am planning an edition of 100 for these smaller blocks. I will post update on the "jig" as soon as construction begins, usually I make these out of foamboard, just a bit below the height of the block.

Here are a few of the latest small blocks:

Walking to the North

Walking to the West

Walking to the West, Death Valley is just West of here

Walking to the South

South

On to the Views of the Barn

The next step is to work on the medium blocks, the views of the Red Barn from the four cardinal points. A while back I finished the View from the East, on deck are the Views from the West and North. In each case, I found a "window" natural or man-made from which a distant Red Barn could be seen.

Red Barn Viewed from the East

Red Barn Viewed from the North (left) and the West (right)

Stay in touch!

Friday, February 17, 2017

Back to the Ghost Town

The Red Barn (Part I)

Once upon a time (2008) I went to Rhyolite, a most fascinating Nevada ghost town. My quest was to complete a residency kindly offered by the Goldwell Open Air Museum. The setting was the Red Barn, a spacious studio set amid silence and ghosts in the town of Rhyolite, just East of Beatty Nevada, home to the Museum.

Orienting myself with a compass
I built with native rock at basecamp

Sanding my precious cherry blocks (en plein air)
by the Red Barn

Every day I would set off in one cardinal direction, sketching along the way directly on one of 20 little blocks. I would walk one, two, perhaps three miles off into the desert, mountains, washes and canyons and at the furthest point, look back to the amazing Red Barn.

A Simple Formula

My quest was to portray (in woodcuts of course!) the Red Barn as the Center of the Universe and so I ended up with four larger woodcuts (24x30 inches), four smaller (12x24 inches) and twenty tiny ones (4x6 inches). The larger four are views FROM the Red Barn looking out toward the four cardinal points, the smaller four are views OF the Red Barn, each from a natural "window" located at the four cardinal points. The tiny woodcuts recorded random observations along my walks.

Sketching the South
old ice house by my shoulder

Inside the "studio" sketching larger blocks
from reference photos

The eight larger blocks

Tiny Observations

And so I have (finally, finally!) begun carving the smaller woodcuts. There is a narrative too; I wrote a diary of my musings as I walked and later in the perfect silence of the desert nights. Once I have all the woodcuts carved and prints printed, a book will come together...this year, I'm feeling it!

Here are some of the sketches, 5 East, 5 West, 5 North and 5 South, for a total of 20 4x6 inch blocks.

The West, looking toward some of the ghost town

The North and the mysterious open mines

An old post office, looking at the red barn through
the window

Two of the medium "windows" blocks 24" x 12"
Left Red Barn Viewed from the North
Right Red Barn Viewed from the East

Top Bank building in Rhyolite at dusk
Bottom View of Rhyolite from the South

More to come as wood chips fly.

Stay in touch!

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Carving Goldwell blocks these days

While I was at my residency last October at the Goldwell Open Air Museum, I fell back to my old habit of taking a bunch of "sketch blocks" with me on daily walks.

Here are some of them. I favor Sharpie markers as my sketching weapon. No room for mistakes that way which makes me capture things in a very spontaneous and direct manner.

I made quite a few of these and plan to print them as sketches and bind them as a coloring book.

Here are some progress pictures of the smaller of the two East blocks. This one is the Red Barn as seen from the East.

One down, seven to go! Oh yeah, and all the little ones...

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Workshop at Goldwell Encore!

Once more I'm dragging a few unsuspecting souls out into the quiet of the desert for another workshop with all proceeds to benefit the Goldwell Open Air Museum http://www.goldwellmuseum.org/

In addition to joining their Board of Directors I have been ordained their Workshop Director? Organizer? Anyway, I will be recruiting instructors and attempting to put together a program of workshops and demonstrations.

The Red Barn Art Center is ideal for workshops because of its remote location. Participants can work in a great setting without distractions and the desert has a way of making us focus on what's important: ART!

For starters, here is the information on mine:

Intermediate Woodcut Printmaking Workshopwith Maria Arango
February 20-22, 2009, Red Barn Art Center Instructor: Maria Arango (2008 Artist-in-Residence)Members: $140 for both days Non-Members: $175 for both days Beatty Residents: $50 per dayAdditional studio time: $25 per day

Woodcut printmaking is a very simple and rewarding process. An image is drawn on a block of wood (or linoleum). The areas that are not part of the image are cut out, leaving the image in relief. Ink is rolled onto the block, paper is placed on the inked block, and pressure is applied to the back of the paper. When the paper is lifted the image is transferred, transformed by the cutting, fresh and beautiful.

This workshop will cover the essentials of relief printmaking and introduce more advanced techniques. Instructor will demonstrate various techniques to achieve multi-color woodcuts, including puzzle woodcuts, reduction woodcuts and multi-block woodcuts. Participants will be encouraged to complete a multi-color project during the workshop. Participants of every level can be accommodated. In the spirit of printmaking tradition, participants will create a minimum of one small edition in order to exchange prints with every other participant and walk away with a beautiful collection.

Two full days of dedicated instruction from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m, on Saturday and Sunday.To reserve your space, send an email to goldwell@goldwellmuseum.org with the word WORKSHOP in the subject line.Lodging is available in nearby Beatty, lunch, a Friday night arrival dinner and all basic supplies will be provided. For more information call 702- 870-9946.