A couple more screenprints, long overdue

I've been a very bad blogger lately. It was a very busy semester, but I shant bore you with excuses.

Lucky for those of you who are interested in looking at the things I do, I was busy because I was making art. So here's some of that. I think instead of dumping everything into one blog, I'll just let this be with a couple of screenprints.
Number one, Maturation.

This is a print I'd been wanting to do for a long time, and finally got around to this semester. I remember the day in elementary school we had this lesson. Our parents had to sign papers to say whether we could go or not. It was all so terrifying.
This print was done with 7 layers. One of them (the pink background) was a watercolor monoprint layer. I repeated the same idea for each print in the edition, repainting every other print, but some of the backgrounds were ghost prints, and are much less vibrant. I like both looks just fine, but they certainly vary.

Number two, Bus Stop.

This was my final for my screenprinting class, and I figured, considering the timeframe and the amount of stress I was under at the time, that a portrait of me having a mental breakdown at a bus stop was perfectly appropriate. Surprisingly enough, I didn't burst into tears and make strangers uncomfortable at any bus or train stops as the semester came to an end. I expected to. It certainly wouldn't be the first time. But I managed to keep the breakdowns to less public places this time around.
Still, I'm really interested in how people react when we see other people suffering with severe emotional turmoil. Sometimes, it's the only way to make the connection you need to, I've found.
This print was also 7 layers, but in many of them I sponged off the ink and let the screen dry, then filled in areas with screen filler. I then printed the same stencil again with the same ink, making a darker shade of the same color, and giving some nice subtle changed that implied shadows and patterns.

I'll probably blog again very soon with some shameless begging for you to buy some art from me at deeply discounted prices, so keep your eyes open! I just may do that tomorrow. But alas, now it is time for me to sleep.

Jealous

I pulled my very first screenprint yesterday! Woo!

Screenprinting is different. It will take some getting used to, for sure. I like how immediate it is. I like being able to draw something and just have that be my print. I like it for a lot of the same reasons I like doing photopolymer plates. It suits my style well. But it's very different to print, and I've got a long way to go before I'm really comfortable with it.

So in general, I'm happy with the image on this one, but not so much the printing job. But I'm happy enough with the image and easy enough on myself for this being my first time that I'll show it off a bit anyway.

As far as what it's about and whatnot, I think I'm going to leave most of that unsaid rather than go into detail and share everything going on in my life like previous blogs. I think the little girl is a younger version of myself, but I'm not really sure. I wish sometimes that the people that mattered most in my life were more proud of the things I do that I'm proud of. But I'm trying too see more good and be more happy lately, even if I do want to talk about stuff like that. At least in this piece, I think I managed to do both, say something that's been on my mind heavily and not having the art be sad.

Spaces

This is a piece called "Spaces" that I did for my letterpress class. It's 2 photopolymer plates and a blind embossment of text (which you can't see), printed in an edition of 45. It's been done for a bit, but we just got them back and did an exchange of our broadsides today.

The assignment was to respond to an artist who does letterpress or bookwork. I chose Julie Chen. More specifically, I was responding to a line of text in her book "Panorama".

"Leave a space for the things that are gone so they will not be forgotten."

Something in that sentence that really inspired me. It almost made me cry the first time I read it.

The piece was first sketched out with the full quote, and the lone figure in the bed that you see a version of on the middle left. Originally, it was pretty obviously me. But after a really good discussion with my teachers about it, I changed it to be less about me, and more about an overall feeling that is shared throughout the human race. It was helpful, and I ended up with a much more successful piece because of this suggestion.

It was different for me. My work is generally so heavily autobiographical. And it still is here, but it's also more accessible, which I like. It's just hard for me to think this way on my own. I'm going to miss the sort of response and help I get with my art in school when I'm done.

I'd go on, but it's finals week, and I have tons of work to do.

Decades and Expectations

I am in an art show. It's opening this Friday, November 4th, from 6 to 8 in the Snow College gallery. It's an alumni show for folks that graduated there in the last 10 years, and from what I saw while dropping off my work yesterday, it's going to be really really good. You should come to the opening if you can. I will be there.

I've got two pieces in it. One of them is that "Things Used (Summer 2011)" book that I blogged about previously. The other is this.

  (I am really sorry about the image quality here. I'm planning to get a nice scan of it or something, and I'll update the image when I do. Just no time right now. Updated.)

It's a piece that, basically, is about how I feel like I can't expect anything from anyone or anywhere, and how, in contrast, the expectations people have for me are very clear cut and well known. It's one of those frustrations that hit me rather hard lately for several reasons.

I went to a place I expected to love and have had a very hard time adjusting. I finally had a space to do art and got the worst artist's block I've ever had. I basically ran out of money from my summer job, and haven't been able to find a new source of income. Someone I loved that promised to always be my friend sort of abandoned the idea, to the point where they suddenly stopped speaking to me for no apparent reason. And one person that I've sort of counted on having around in the future seems to have other plans.

They're really all separate issues. But as I wrote down my thoughts and feelings in my sketchbook, trying to figure out a way to visualize what I was feeling, I kept returning to that sentence. I just want to know what to expect.

I could go on, but I think I'll leave the commentary on my concept at that. I will say, making a piece of art I am actually proud of after so long made all the difference in the world. It's helped me adjust to where I am and come to peace with things. I feel much better now. Even if nothing really has changed, communicating the idea visually and getting it out there helps a ton.

"Expectations" is an intaglio printed photopolymer plate. It was printed in an edition of 5. If you have a chance to see it in person at that opening (or any other time) please do so. And let me know what you think of it.

Things

If everyone could just pretend I posted this an hour earlier and it was still September and I hadn't missed any months in my plan to blog at least every month this year, that'd be great.

Anyway, things are good. I guess. I've actually been having a really hard time being the new kid in a big city along with other more personal problems that I'll probably just share along with artwork about them, but it's getting better. At least, today was better. I drew a little comic, and that helped a lot. I've basically been working on this one project that was due on Tuesday for the last 11 hours. Finally getting something done with that was also good. Though I did have a bit of a breakdown and started sobbing at the train station around 4 this afternoon, things have improved some.

I've done some art, but haven't taken many pictures of said art. This photopolymer that I've been working on all day is what I thought I might post here for the month, but it's not done. Obviously. Thus the procrastination of blogging.

So the only piece I have a picture of is this one print that I started the semester off with and don't like much.

So this crappy crooked cell phone picture is of a print that I did about what I felt like I was doing for the summer by working for the government. I'm pretty far to the left politically, and it makes me sad that my country has a huge organization devoted to killing people. However, I know this is not how everyone feels, and I do not think any less of anyone who disagrees with me. Although that's what I believe, it's not something I generally find necessary to argue about. I don't think politics are worth offending people over, so I don't make art abut them usually, and I even try to avoid talking about them nowadays. This is why I don't like this piece. I feel like I can do better. I feel like I have more important things to say.

Technically speaking, though, I am proud of it. That's more colors than I've ever done in a single print before. It's pretty dang clean, and the registration's pretty decent for how quick I pulled it out. My favorite thing about it though is the colors. I sort of made them up as I went along, and doing the proof with these colors, everything seemed to be getting worse and worse. They looked awful together. They were all just garish and wrong, and I was sure that I would have to re mix all my ink, which really sucked. Then I pulled the keyblock. And with that black outline, magically, everything worked.

Printmaking is magic.

Things Used (Summer 2011)

 I love Letterpress. It's all the things I love about relief printing, plus it's easy, bigger edition sizes are more attainable, and everything is so much more consistent than it would be if I were inking by hand. I hope that I can own a really nice proofing press someday. If only they were still made.
 So, at the end of the summer, right as school was starting up, I did a workshop with the University of Utah's Book Arts program called Comic Relief: Alternative Letterpress Forms. It was delightful. We all made zines, then traded them among ourselves at the end. This was what I made.

 It's called "Things Used (Summer 2011)." It's a pack of cards rather than a more traditional book, and each card has an object that I used a lot over the summer. Included objects are a stamp, my comb, my laptop, my cell phone, my pillow, pencil and pens, toothbrush, plastic fork, shoes, glasses, bags, pants, keys, underwear, and my debit card. The process we used, using scratch film, allowed for a ton of detail, which was nice. (Sadly, now that I'm at the school, I don't have access to a good camera to photograph this detail. The light grey I printed with doesn't show well with cell phone pictures.) It was printed in an edition of 35, which is definitely a record for me.
 I'm taking a letterpress class now, and already enjoying it. The University of Utah is a good place to be for that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go proof some type.

This month

I said I was gonna do a blog every month this year, and dang it, it's gonna happen.

So, this month has been lacking in the art department mostly. Though for a little while I've been working on this.

It will, hopefully, someday be a finished 50 page comic. Unlike my last comic project, I'm trying not to rush it, and am paying attention to things like consistency and perspective. Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder was just a working title at first, but it'll probably stick. It's all autobiographical like February 4th was, though it covers a lot more time, and of course has a different structure.