New Press

So the new (to us) press is finally installed. And I'm no where near it to take advantage, sigh. Ah, well, at least I have the baby press at home to play with, and I actually have some time this weekend to do some art, amazing though that sounds.

And I have some new ink colours to test drive, care of Faust Inks. They have asked me to give these new colours & new formulation a test and let them know the results. Well, unfortunately, the new inks have been sitting patiently waiting my efforts for at least a month, so it's about time I got off my duff and slapped some ink on that brayer!

So What's on Your Plate?

One of my WetCanvas! printmaking buddies has recently created a new blog called "So What's on Your Plate?" where he plans to post interviews of contemporary printmaking artists.

“So What’s On Your Plate?” will feature bimonthly interviews of inspiring printmakers, working in various printmaking media. It is intended, first and foremost, to inspire and inform printmakers and potential printmakers. It must also provide exposure of the interviewed artists to an audience that may be interested in their artwork or services - buyers, collectors, reviewers, galleries, and students. And finally, it should inform the public regarding printmaking.

Rick - So What's On Your Plate?

The first interview is of Erik Waterkotte, whose work Rick recently viewed at the SNAP gallery in Edmonton, Alberta. It's an extremely interesting look into Waterkotte's processes, inspirations and image development, and a very good read. Thanks Rick for the great new blog to keep an eye on!

Gallery in the Garden

Last Sunday, I participated in the Delta Arts Council's Art in the Garden this year, held at Wellbrook Winery in south Delta. The weather was perfect, the setting was fabulous, there were an amazing number and selection of artists at the event, and we had a pretty good turnout. They placed us under this beautiful copper beech tree, one of my favourites, and it gave us lovely shade all day long. I even managed to sell a couple of pieces! I demonstrated printmaking while there, setting up my new baby press and churning out little prints to hand out to people who were interested. I spent a lot of time explaining printmaking and the various techniques that I use, and specifically showing how relief printmaking works. I had a number of people very interested in learning, a few teachers who will probably contact me to do some in-class demos or workshops with their kids, and a few workshop and demo organizers for various art groups who were likewise interested. All in all, a delightful day, and I hope to be invited back again next year.

Dave spent the week before labouriously constructing these magnificent art display stands, and Mom came over to help out for the weekend, so we set her to painting them a flat, neutral grey. They looked so professional and really worked well for display, as well as standing up very well to the brisk wind that continued to blow throughout the day.

Blogging elsewhere

So you've noticed that I've been silent for a while. Again, mostly work related, and free time has been taken up with other stuff, being summer and all. And active work with the Federation, too (check out the new website, which is still a bit of a work in progress). But I have been doing some blogging elsewhere: tune into the Printsy blog on Monday, July 7 for my interview with Sarah Spooner & Jon Gregory of Lapwing Printworks. I've also been helping with a little blog admin on that site - anyone who's not so comfortable with blogging, I've been posting their interviews for them. That takes a surprising amount of fiddling, because I like to try to get the image links from their original locations on Flickr or other website, rather than re-saving the file & loading through Blogger. I also prefer to provide appropriate references (e.g. titles and alternates directing to the original site), to increase traffic back to that person, rather than looping in on Google's image bank (for those of you who don't blog, those last bits were likely a complete haze of nonsense).

Oh yeah. And I bought a press. Details to follow!