Monthly Archives: May 2012

Les Montgolfiers

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Earlier this spring, I signed up for the La Calaca Press International Print Exchange. Print exchanges are a favorite activity among printmakers: you send in x number of prints to the coordinator, and you receive an equal number of prints back. Sometimes there is a theme, or specific size or style requirements. This one: Calacas, or Day of the Dead, interpretation up to the artist.

Well, who can resist a whole exchange of skull-related prints? Not me! And, as often happens, an image immediately popped into my head. I would do a print of a balloon!

For extra fun, I decided to do a reduction print. The clever part was using two different colors in the first run through the press, since the horizon line makes a handy demarcation line. Here’s the print, with the green/blue layer.
First layer, two colors

Today, I finished printing the second pass, being the black layer. Here is my inking station. And yes, that is a phone book. Phone books make the best inking pads. If you have any extra, let me know.
Inking the block

The hard part today was lining up the black layer with the green/blue layer. I had used a template when running the first layer through the press, which would have ensured that the paper and block would line up on the second pass. Alas! I was clumsy, and dropped an inky block smack dab face down onto the template, rendering it unusable until the ink dries. And, procrastinator that I am, there is no such leeway in my timing. The prints are due in Chicago by June 1. So, I used the tried-and-true eyeball and steady hand method to line the layers up.
Lining up the block and paper

Success!
Les Montgolfiers

I am calling this print Les Montgolfiers, after the Montgolfier brothers, inventors of the hot air balloon. And, appropriately enough, I have learned that their family business was making paper. Today, the Montgolfier Paper Company is known as Canson, maker of BFK Rives, the paper on which this is printed.

Here are the prints drying in the garage, ready for takeoff!
Les Montgolfiers drying

Explorations

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I am intrigued by the Arctic and Antarctic explorations of the early 20th century: their daring, their hardships, their hubris. While doing research (otherwise known as wasting time with Google) I found many photographs of men on the ice, and I was struck by how abstract their bodies became – the strong light, bright whiteness of the snow and ice, and the limitations of the photography of the time combined to make their bodies distorted silhouettes. And yet, despite the distortions, they were distinctly readable as humans. This was very intriguing.

I also liked how the snow became a blank canvas for these figures. Without knowing the context of the story, they could be anyone, anywhere, plucked out of context.
A photo from the Newfoundland Sealing Disaster
(This particular photo is from the 1914 Newfoundland Sealing Disaster.)

I decided to take a variety of these figures and make linoleum blocks from them. And then, rather than use the white canvas of the snow, I decided to create a whole series of ambiguous landscapes for them. Since these prints begin with images I found of Arctic explorers, and since they are experimental for me, I refer to them as my Explorations prints.

At first, I kept them in the context of a sort of imaginary Arctic, made by creating a series of monoprint backgrounds.
Exploration print

Then the space they inhabited became more abstract.
Exploration print

There is something going on, but what?
Exploration print

I experimented with different inks, line weights, and ways of making marks.
Exploration print

And I began putting them in spaces that weren’t at all arctic-like.
Exploration print

And back again, with more experiments in mark-making.
Exploration print

Now I’m taking this same concept and applying it to my prints about my pilgrimage last spring on the Via de la Plata in Spain. Except now, the figures are pilgrims, storks, saints’ day processions, sheep, and carved figures from the churches and other buildings along the way. And besides monoprints, the backgrounds are also photo transfers, solarplate etchings, and lithographs. Whoa! That’s crazy! Well, yes, in the best sort of way.

Stay tuned to see what comes out of it all…