I spent the morning in the printshop at Wellesley College yesterday working on some quick experiments in monotype.  Teaching the monoprint workshop this past weekend got me motivated and excited to start working in printmaking again; it’s been a good 2 years since I’ve been able to work on prints.

I’ve been thinking for some time how to approach these prints to coincide with the work I’m doing in drawing. The first thought was to sand the surface of the plexiglass with coarse sandpaper to emulate the surface texture.  The printing ink catches on the sanded surface, creating an intaglio effect in conjunction with the monotype.

After the first print it became quite clear that I needed another few passes of sanding the plexiglass surface.  Additionally, I elected to roll the lower section of the image with the water to a pure black whereas the upper section with the figure would be rolled to a mid grey tone. This provided greater subtleties in the tones of the figure.

I had my first full day in the studio since school started in September, which felt great. I have a host of preparatory tasks in front of me before I really start the studio work, so I got a jumpstart on those tasks.  Primarily I had to figure out whether I could still achieve the 10′ x 4′ size I want with sheets of 8′ x 4′ Dura-Lar. After a lot of experimenting with small Dura-Lar drawings, and a lot of math, I figured out that I could achieve the extra 2′ in height if I attach some pieces together with monofilament wire and place the attached areas towards the bottom of the drawings.  At the bottom is where there will be heavy amounts of crayon due to the reflections in the water, which will make it easy to hide where the Dura-Lar is attached. It’s a relief in that the height and shape of these drawings is really important to what I’m trying to achieve.

I worked on some quick gesture drawings from my reference photographs to sketch out which poses I wanted to pursue in sculpture.

I also worked on some sculptures from last winter: there were 2 sculptures I never finished modeling and 2 others whose poses I never connected to.

This afternoon I instructed “Monoprint Marathon“, part of the Applied Arts Program at Wellesley College. The program offers a series of free workshops for the Wellesley community throughout the year. I teach courses in Drawing and Two-Dimensional Design in the Art Department, but I’m also a printmaker,  so it was great to have this opportunity to share my skills in printmaking here at Wellesley.

I’m taking this morning to completely clear my head in order to make plans for an upcoming exhibition in September 2010.  The new work needs to be completed and on site by the end of July, so I’ve been  looking at my calendar and trying to calculate exactly how much time I have to make the new work.

November: Prepare materials, sketches for sculptures
December: Make sculptures, compositional sketches
January: Preliminary drawings
February-July: Final Drawings

I’ve decided on 3 drawings, each with 3-4 layers depending on what is necessary.  Being conservative, I’ve figured out that I have approximately 12 full studio days per drawing.  This doesn’t sound like much time, but I’ve found that what’s most time intensive in my process is all of the preliminary stages leading up to the execution of the final piece.  The final works themselves are actually much less demanding in terms of time.   Additionally, I’m going to hire studio assistants to help me prepare the Dura-Lar surfaces for this project.  In the past the drawings were small enough that I could sand the surface myself, but at 4′ x 8′ the scale makes that impossible.

On top of this schedule, I need to make a stronger commitment to fully dedicated studio days. Often times I’ll drift into doing my teaching work on a day that really should only be for the studio. At times it’s tempting to “procrastinate” by doing my academic work. (and easy to justify, since it’s still work) This is a new focus that I’m going to work hard to retain.

After having practically four exhibitions simultaneously this fall, I’m looking forward to having some straightforward studio time for the next few months. At the same time, I recently found out that I’ll be in a group show at a major venue in September 2010 that I need to be thinking about and preparing for over the next few months.  This venue is providing me the opportunity to create the tall, large scale drawings that I’ve been dreaming about in the past year.

A week ago I was sitting in my office at Wellesley College and brought out a tape measure to see if the scale I was thinking about would work.  I dangled my tape measure off a a wall fixture in my office to measure out a 10′ x 5′ work.  Just looking at the tape measure made me feel instant fear-which convinced me that this was exactly what I needed to do in terms of scale.

The dilemma is that a week later I found out that the largest size the .020 mil Dura-Lar comes in is 4′ x 8′.  The issue looming before me is whether to simply go with the 4′ x 8′ size, or whether I want to consider overlapping sheets on top of each other to increase the length of the drawings.

On the studio end, I’ve been busy this week preparing photographs I shot this past summer at Walden Pond, from which I’ll make preparatory drawings for sculptures.

A review for “Where Are We?” at the Chazan Gallery at the Wheeler School came out today in the Providence Journal.  There’s a saying in the art world concerning reviews: “As long as they’re talking about you”.  What the saying essentially states is that a bad review is better than no review- if you’re not even being acknowledged, that’s worse than a negative review.

Read the review here.

Here are two more newspaper articles about the exhibition, “Evolution of a Shared Vision: The David and Barbara Stahl Collection” at the Currier Museum of Art. I have one intaglio print in the exhibition.

“Two critical eyes are better than one”, Boston Globe, Oct. 18, 2009

“Stahl Collection on view at Currier Museum of Art”, Nashua Telegraph, Oct. 4, 2009

“Le Cirque Amazone” by Georges Rouault, part of the Stahl Collection on display at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester.

This has been a busy week for exhibitions I’m in.  Tonight I attended the opening reception for a four person exhibition, “Where Are We?” at the Chazan Gallery at the Wheeler School.  It was Gallery Night in Providence, so we had a steady stream of people coming through the gallery throughout the night.

The majority of exhibitions I’ve participated in have been in Boston, so it was a change to show this work in Providence. Since I teach at RISD, I had a great turnout of both current and past RISD  students and RISD colleagues at this opening. It was a nice opportunity for my students to see my work in person; for these crayon drawings in particular, a lot of the surface texture of the drawings gets lost in digital images so it’s a huge difference to see them in person.

Last night I spoke at a gallery talk for the exhibition “Drawings that Work: 21st BCA Drawing Show” at the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts. The talk brought together 7 artists who had work in the exhibition: Andrea Evans, Nataliya Bregel, Karen Schiff, Suzanne Schireson, Jeffrey Marshall, and Andrew Fish.  Each of us spoke about our work and process in the exhibition for about 10 minutes and then Jose Luis Blondet, the curator of the Mills Gallery, moderated a dialogue and discussion about the exhibition at the end of the talk.

From my perspective, I think this was a unique exhibition for its emphasis on process over product.  One idea that someone mentioned during the discussion was the fact that art frequently has to be “dressed up” to be put on display in gallery.  There was discussion about the negative review in the Boston Globe two weeks ago; some people thought that the art critic seemed to be asking where the “real work” was in the exhibition, suggesting that the exhibition would have been more effective had the final pieces been displayed alongside the process pieces.   I found this exhibition to provide the rare opportunity to gain real insight into the creative thinking and process of an artist’s work.  This is a chance to see the raw visual evidence of one’s thought process, something that is intentionally hidden in completed works.

Showing an ink drawing and some intaglio prints that were the results of my sculpture models in the exhibition.  I like the idea of reversing the role of sculpture in my process; frequently sculpture is seen as the end product with two-dimensional works and drawings being used to lead up to the completion of a sculpture. In my case, sculpture becomes the departure point for drawings.

Tomorrow I’ll be doing a gallery talk on my sculptures in the exhibition “Drawings that Work: 21st BCA Drawing Show” at the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts.  The gallery talk is at 6pm, hope to see you there!

Opening reception for “Drawings that Work: 21st BCA Drawing Show” at the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts.