Tunnel of Mortality (and much more) Friday night!

(Day 3 of the install)

Artisan Gallery 25th Anniversary Exhibition
June 8th – July 22nd, 2012
Opening Reception Friday June 8th 5-9p.m.

Group Show: 25th anniversary — We are excited to celebrate our 25th year in Paoli, the anniversary show will feature favorite work from many of our gallery artists.

In the Cooler: S.V. Medaris “The Tunnel of Mortality” — Printmaking from birth to slaughter and everything in-between. One season of life on the farm (in life-size tunnel book form), as told by S.V. Medaris of Market Weight Press.

Nick Wroblewski: Color Reduction Woodcuts — Wroblewski’s woodcuts entice the viewer through the use of vivid colors and hold their attention through his variety of distinct mark making. This exhibit will have many prints which showcase his unique style of reduction woodcuts.

More info at Artisan’s Facebook page and
Artisan Gallery website

Mount Horeb Area Spring Art Tour starts today!

Maps, artist list and more info at:
Mount Horeb Spring Art Tour

Twist and Print

Just finished printing multiple (4×8 ft woodblock) prints onto Tyvek by using my feet, doing something resembling the Twist. Best song ever for printing/twisting? “Jerk it out” by the Caesars. Don’t care what it means–it’s f-in’ awesome!!

More linos…

Listening to rebroadcast of the Cluck: From Jungle Fowl to City Chicks interview on Larry Meiller’s show (archives) that Susan Troller and I did earlier in the year, meanwhile drawing carcass for segment of Tunnel of Mortality that is upcoming solo show in June atArtisan Gallery.

Oh yeah, and my first reduction tees! (hint to you tee printing folks: if the lino is cut out in a shape, you can just line up color #2 by matching the outside contours of the block shape to the outside edges of the print shape) Just did 2 prototypes (pink thermal shown) to see if it would work…. It did!

Plucked lino measures about 30in. high. “Wallpaper” in background is lino on canvas duck cloth about 8ft wide, pigs are reductions on drill cloth, included in panels for ‘Tunnel’ installation

New woodcut

Based on the story from when Gracie adopted P-Biddy and brought her into the flock…

Peahen On Guard
37in x 26in
Woodcut on Rives Heavyweight

Side benefit to teaching artists’ books…

…I get to make lots of prototypes of book forms in many stages with which to teach students how to bind different types of books. Plus, a Fun with Book Forms! broadside, used as book cloth, small cards, clamshell box wrapper…. I’ll show those later, but for now, just the broadside, and a very small (soon-after-this-photo–leather bound) book sewn on cords. Done this past February and March along with a number of other books, boxes, prints that I’ll post after the latest deadline is past…

Book measures about 3in x 2in | I really like the textures in this (click on image to enlarge). Almost sorry to cover it up with leather. Almost.

'Fun With Book Forms!' | 22in x 17in | 3-color letterpress printed on French's Construction

 

Happy New Year with 1st leather journal

Leather bound, woodcut-printed handmade papered cover. Measures about 9 x 11 x 1 in

First leather binding since the NYC class in November. Soooo glad I remembered all the details, except this one is not without errors. Good news is I learned some new things not to do. Like do NOT pare down the whole piece of leather for spine! I pared it so thin that all the sewn signatures can be seen through the leather. Oh well. Anyway, leather is buckskin, darkened with a bit of linseed oil, and it’s full of cast off prints on handmade paper, grid paper, and pretty awesome for writing/drawing in. Looking forward to making more.

And now they are meat…

Took in the last of the season’s harvest this morn (turkeys and broiler chickens). This year (as in years past) we drove them to Twin Cities Pack in Clinton, WI (near Janesville). We left about 4:30am and got there at 6am. I pick the (frozen) birds up tomorrow! I did save behind 3 of these “super chicks” from the batch of broilers. They are from a shipment of chicks that were sent in June and arrived with many dead. Amid the sad bunch of dead babies were these 3 super chicks that acted like nothing was wrong–peeping loudly demanding water and food. I figure after that, they are meant for something else–maybe they’ll be good breeding stock for more meat birds?

Carcasses from 'The Meat Locker' (click to enlarge)

At any rate, they earned it. Let’s hope they are fertile and can lay some eggs. If not, oh well, they are a good addition to the bunch–calm, big, personable girls. And they’re not pecky. Instead, if they don’t want somebody near, they stand up tall, poof out their chest and neck feathers making themselves huge, and the wee little pesky polish (crested) turn tail and run.

Also picking up meat–pork– from Avon Locker Plant over in Darlington, tomorrow. I love this place–best meat processor around (and yes, we tried the others nearby). Incidentally, these are the guys that let me take photos of my hogs when they (as carcasses) were hanging in the freezer. And from which I made some 8ft woodcut of the carcasses. And who (the woodcut carcasses) then made it into a NYC show! Still can’t believe it. Awesome hogs (from feeder pigs I bought from Monson Show Pigs). Awesome carcasses courtesy of Avon Locker Plant.

NYC!!!

What an amazing place! I’ve never been before. When I found out my woodcut carcasses got into IPCNY’s New Prints/Autumn 2011 exhibit (see Press Release), decided it would be a great opportunity to see this city, take a leather bookbinding class at The Center for Book Arts, go to the opening to see my installation, and try to see as much of the city (Manhattan) as possible. It wouldn’t have been possible without my friend Alicia enthusiastically agreeing to be my guide and help teach me how to get around the city. She found a room in an apt. on the lower east side, and every morning we head out walking and taking the subway to my class in Chelsea. Then, while I take the class, she heads out to see her list of things to do. At 3 Alicia picks me up and off we go to see the city. Mostly on foot, but subway too, especially by nighttime…

So here’s a visual diary of Day 1 in the Big Apple (click any photo to enlarge somewhat):

Day 1, Nov. 1, 2011:
We leave our apartment around 7:30am, and walk down the street…

Our apartment on Grand Street, above the Restaurant: El Castillo de Jagua

…to The Doughnut Plant!

Just down the street from our apartment. How convenient for breakfast!

Amazing flavors!

Drooling yet?

Just a normal square donut, right?

Wrong! It's jelly-filled all the way around!!

Going to class (uptown) from our apartment on the Lower East Side

Near my class in Midtown/Chelsea: Flatiron

The Empire State Building from Chelsea

Washington Square Park

Some of the great personalities we watched at this great dog park near Washington Square.

This guy was huge! And very gentle--and patient with the not-so-mild-mannered little crazy dogs...

Brownstones near Greenwich Village

West Village storefront

We couldn't figure out how those cars got up in that "parking ramp." Nice signs too, huh?

Pretty awesome-looking cookies, huh? Amazingly we didn't stop

The Evolution Store in Soho. Most awesome store....ever.

Stuffed peacocks??!!? And so much more....skulls, many taxidermied animals (including rats). Check them out. They're online at The Evolution Store

...and man-eating piranhas...

...and of course, freeze-dried rats!!!

My favorite part of Chinatown are the storefront or outdoor markets. Here’s some pics:

Nightime fruit stands....

I love that ducks and chickens are sold/displayed wtth heads still on. You know what your's eating here..

More from the meat market

And we ended the night at Katz’s Deli (in the ‘When Harry Met Sally’ movie). Great visuals and the best reuben ever….

The famous Katz's Deli

Did you know you can have one of Katz's salamis shipped directly to you? Check out their website (katzsdelicatessen.com/)

Like I said, the BEST REUBEN EVER.

‘Birds in Art’ interview by Rob Duns at WAOW

Click on image to watch interview.

Marla Brenner and I were interviewed at the Birds in Art opening weekend. Watch the interview!

The part Rob left out of the interview was that the turkeys that I “liberated” were actually, originally intended for Thanksgiving dinners for friends and family. I raised the turkeys to use
as models AND for meat, just as I’d done years past with the Broad Breasted Bronzes and Giant Whites. But wild turkeys can fly (which I didn’t think about ahead of time), and they had a different agenda, so I started clipping their wings once I realized they were all going to fly away.

But then, through my own  need to have beautiful models, their wings were allowed to grow out (after a clumsy, unsightly wing clipping –hey c’mon, my models were escaping one-by-one daily!– that left my models looking like strange, ungainly, flightless birds that were not exactly fit for modelling). I decided then that wild turkeys flying off to be wild kind of made sense, and I sketched and photographed the birds like crazy once their wings grew out, knowing they were going to take off any day. And then, one by one over a few days they flew over the fence to freedom. They definitely earned it! Well, they also got a long, safe-from-predators, well-fed childhood before they took off.

And it was awesome the following spring to go on jogs with the dogs, when all-of-a-sudden we’d scare up a mama turkey and her rafter/gobble/flock of tiny little poults flapping like mad to follow her up into the trees. This happened often that spring. I felt proud–like they were my grandkids or something.