Artist Residency in THE most beautiful place around these parts!

Artist Residency!

While all the excitement from the first puzzle prints exhibit was going on, I neglected to announce my upcoming artist residency.

Joshua Tree Forest, in Red Rock Canyon NCA

I am privileged and excited to have been chosen for the very first artist in-residence program offered by the Red Rock Canyon Interpretive Association in beautiful Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area very near Las Vegas, Nevada.

Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area

Just West of the city, this wondrous place has world-renowned rock climbing and geology, box canyons, water springs year around and more hiking and awe than can be absorbed in a short two weeks.

I will be frolicking about, making sketches, writing and leaving my wood-chips in various parts of the canyon. I will also offer two public and free workshops during my residency in which participants will help me make yet another puzzle print!

Details and Dates

My residency begins April 6th and ends April 19th.

WORKSHOP dates are Sunday, April 13th or Saturday, April 19th from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM
Call 702-515-5367 to reserve a spot, limit is 15 students each day.
We will be making a collaborative puzzle print with each student carving a tiny piece of a big image. Should be tons of fun!

The exact schedule of my wanderings will be available at the Visitor's Center so anyone can come up and find me on any given day. We can chat all about nature, the Red Rock areas, woodcuts and art!
Grab a map at the Visitor's Center and check the Artist-In-Residency display for days and locations.

I am planning to be on location on the following days and dates. Call ahead or stop by the Visitor Center for exact times:


Sunday April 6
Monday April 7
Wednesday April 9
Friday April 11
WORKSHOP Sunday April 13
Wednesday April 16
Friday April 18
WORKSHOP II Saturday April 19

Blog, Woodcuts, and Pictures

My M.O. when art-venturing in nature is to walk, drink the beauty, write a little, sketch a little and photograph a little. I will be faithfully recording the daily frolics in this blog, and on Facebook and/or Twitter as much as I can.
The plan is to make a bunch of "sketch" smaller woodcuts and write about the experience, later to be assembled in a publication of some sort.

Come on out and enjoy!

Marauding Metaphors

That is the title of a show I have been invited to make a piece for. The show runs during a book fair here in Vegas and when you get invited to be in a show, you show up. I had to interrupt my drunken bee print but I will get to it soon enough.

Meantime, here is my contribution, well, half my contribution!

 The plan (I know I know...) is to print this onto another block, then make prints of each of the mirrored blocks. The blocks then become the book "inside covers" and the prints are bound between.
When seen together, the web becomes a whole web and the books meld into the web both going and coming. People will actually be able to turn the pages, always getting a dual mirror image.

This image came to me because lately, images about books and technology that I have seen are all negative. Negative negative negative, sigh.
Well, I love books, and I love the web.

IMHO, technology, the web in particular, have made books more accessible, not less. Isn't the whole point acquiring vast amounts of knowledge until our heads explode? Well, that's my goal in life anyway, one of them!

And don't get me wrong, I LOVE real bound and printed books as four rooms of books in my house can attest. I have bookshelves against the ceiling, floor to ceiling shelves, books in my studio up high, down low...real books. I also collect and cherish old printmaking books, real gems.

But recently I've read about WordPress, wills and trusts, non-profit law, and caring for geriatric dogs all on my Kindle, or my Kindle app on my iPad. Because "those" books I just recycle after a couple of readings anyway. So now they live forever in my e-library.

Back to my image, I wanted it to be a positive marriage between books and the web and the web and books. There is some quirky symbolism there, using a spider web (reminiscent of the dusty and forgotten) as the symbol for technology. But then I'm kind of a quirky person.

Anyhow, here is the plan as laid out in a quick Photoshop sketch, except the middle "book" is a "web."

Now, what shall I name it? Anyone?

 

Tomorrow, I print and carve the other block. It's Shina ply so the carving goes pretty quick. Each block is 16" x 20". I can't wait to print and "bind" my book.

Three more yet (I confess I'm out of catchy titles)

Mary Johnson sends her block from Norristown, Pennsylvania USA

Julianne Kershaw from Woombye, Queensland AUSTRALIA writes:

I love crows - & enjoy photographing them – in trees, or as black silhouettes against the sky..

To me they’re outsiders – fringe dwellers to a certain extent – surviving on road kill & whatever else they can find.

When school’s out the crows come to feast on discarded food scraps – scavenging out of open bins & prying into plastic wrappings & containers to get at anything edible – snatching what they can & flying off with it..

Barbara Carr is from Salisbury, New Hampshire USA writes this:

 When I was first planning a subject for City of the World, I wanted to incorporate a sort of memorial to my younger brother Jack, who died in June.  After working up a bunch of drawings, this went nowhere, so I generalized the idea of “city” in my mind. My all-time favorite city is Rome and I remembered seeing many windows there with laundry hanging out and flowers on the sills. I opted to have a curtain billowing in place of the laundry, which was a little too earthy for what I wanted to show. The result is my vote for optimism and the positive aspect of we humans turning wherever we live into “home.” It turned out, after all, to be a sort of memorial to my brother, who lived in one of my other favorite cities, Cambridge.

Last three on the next post!

They are coming fast and furious! From Michigan and Ireland

Ruth Egnater from Okemos, Michigan USA, says this about her city block:

Didn't even do the image I had worked out all along.  Just changed it today and started and finished the block.  I have lived in Detroit and Chicago and travel as much as possible to other cities and love the well done graffiti and murals found on buildings,trains, and murals making our cities even more special.  One of my daughters lives in Baltimore,  took photos of one artists numerous love messages with a double loop on the O and a heart at the end .  She turned the images into post cards and I chose one that looks like an alley with a freight elevator with the love message spray painted on the door and of course the heart attached to the end.. 

Annamie Pretorious sent her block across the pond from Swords, Dublin IRELAND.

I guess I confess enjoying most the newspapers from around the world; funny to see the same advertisements in some of them and stories near and dear to the sender and the entire world. This project is turning out to be quite a global conversation!

I also, as you can tell from the pictures, very much enjoy the cards and notes!

Keep them coming home!

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Don't forget!
Deadline: December 31st 2011

Send Block Details/Information for the Colophon: http://1000woodcuts.com/forms/cityblockinfo.htm

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Citizens from Canada and Belgium

Virginia Sheehan from Ottawa, Ontario CANADA brings us a clever contribution. I like to share the cards and inserts that our citizens send me because I think they are unique and certainly enhance my experience.
I had to brush up on my French to read the paper but I got the gist of the enclosure.

And Luc VanQuickenborne from Brugge Sint-Kruis BELGIUM sends a delicately carved block which I hope to print faithfully. I thought the contrast between the block and the news was curious.

And I'm reminded I have another language to learn before I go to the great city in the sky.

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Don't forget!
Deadline: December 31st 2011

Send Block Details/Information for the Colophon: http://1000woodcuts.com/forms/cityblockinfo.htm

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