On Tuesday, I traveled. Five of my works had been included in an exhibit at the Dodgeville Public Library to coincide with a regional film festival called "Making it Home". I picked up the work, and thinking about the day ahead, I called Vesterheim, the Norwegian American Museum located in Decorah, Iowa, about two hours away. I hoped to show and make them aware of my work. I had my portfolio of small etchings with me. They would see me at 1PM. Arriving in Decorah, I had stopped at Magpie, the local coffee place, for lunch. In a past life, I had known it as Ronnie's Cafe. My meeting at the museum was productive, and I agreed to leave my portfolio with Allison Dwyer who wanted to share it with the museum staff at their weekly Thursday meeting. It will be interesting to see where it will lead.

I went to Phelps Park (see photo). I worked on an etching there that I began several months ago. This is the second state. I worked in sugar lift (as I did in the first state). I positioned myself on the steep hillside, which was beginning to feel familiar to me and worked, concentrating fully on my subject using a brush and india ink laden with table sugar. The etching initially had a few false starts, but now I think I have it to a point where the composition is strong. It is an important place to me with a history that goes back to my first year in Decorah as a freshman at Luther College (1969). I have made a few etchings of the bridge and trail. It was one of my first etching subjects as an art student. Each time, I try to improve on past efforts. I think this will be my best interpretation of the place. I needed to be in Spring Grove, Minnesota later in the afternoon to deliver work to Bluff Country Artists Gallery so my time in Decorah was limited, and I had to make the most of it. BCAG will have a show of my work that begins on April 5th. There will be a reception on Friday April 23rd, which will coincide with the Spring Art Tour. I will be at the gallery in Spring Grove for the art tour. It is a beautiful gallery in a town of about 1,300 people. It is a non profit gallery that is backed by an enthusiastic community. They asked that I include some of my earlier works so the show will be a mix of new and also a sort of "best of" with some etchings that go back to about 1990. When I left the gallery, I was taken by the look of the grain elevator behind Main Street. There was a juxtaposition of the elevator, street lights and power lines with the town's water tower. I had my sketch book, a pen and instinctively knew that I needed to draw this place. The sun was shining and there was (daylight savings) time.

Energized by this activity and the concentration that it required, I drove to Lansing, Iowa on the Mississippi. It is undiscovered by tourism. Fred Easker and his wife, Velga, live in Cedar Rapids but also have a place in Lansing. It overlooks the Mississippi. It is beautiful. They are both artists. Fred is an oil painter who I have become friends with over the last couple of years. They knew I was coming and we went to Milty's for pizza and a visit. It was close to 9PM when I departed, crossed the bridge into Wisconsin and drove the two hour drive to home in Mount Horeb. It had been a busy, productive and enjoyable day.

Recently...

Since my last entry, my life has been quite eventful. The early months of the year are a time that I am able to sink my teeth into working on new images. Some of the etchings have been in progress for a time, but there are others that are just beginning and also those that exist only in my mind. There are also quite a few studies that are done in my sketch book. This is a way of giving the ideas a measure of concrete form. It is also a way of determining if the ideas have a future. Not all of them do.

On the personal front, my mother in law died in January. It was sudden. She was eighty and in great shape. I will miss her. She had always been there, and she treated me like a son.

My brother is an investment banker from the twin cities. He invited me to join him on a business trip to New York. I have never aspired to be a part of that scene. Trips to NYC have always been for enjoyment. This time, however, I tried to set up some appointments to show my work. I did not have much success with the attempts, but I was able to show my work to a gallery called the Old Print Shop, which is located on Lexington and 29th. The gallery has been around for a long time...over 100 years. It is well established. Michael DiCerbo, the curator, liked my etchings. I recently shipped them a package of my work, and they will be representing me in New York. I am enthused about my new relationship with them. I took the subway around the city. I bought 24 hour fun passes so I could ride the subway or the bus all that I wanted. The woman in the ticket booth at the subway station told me how to buy the pass at the automat. She lost me after step 3. I went to the machine and started touching the screen and obeying the prompts. I messed up. Suddenly a booming voice started to instruct me. I thought it was the voice of God. It took me a few seconds to realize that the woman in the booth could see what I was doing, and she started to instruct me over the PA system. You had to be there. I thought it was funny though.

I also sent work to the Miller Art Museum in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. They are having an invitational printmaking invitational and included my work. I have been in one other show at that museum. I have four etchings in this exhibit. It will be hanging in the museum until April 20th.

On Tuesday, I will be traveling to Spring Grove, Minnesota. It is about three hours away. Bluff Country Artists Gallery will have a show of my etchings throughout the month of April. I will deliver the work on Tuesday. On the trip, I will stop in Lansing, Iowa to get together with painter friend, Fred Easker. I will also try to make it to Decorah, Iowa to work on the next stage of the Phelps Park bridge etching that I am doing.

Also...coming up in May will be a show of my work at Paoli House Gallery. It is located in a small town between my studio and Madison. It is a beautiful gallery. It is small, but is the kind of place that I will really enjoy being a part of . Mike and Bev Thom are the owners. I visited the gallery last fall and approached them about my work at that time. The exhibit will open on May 21st.

In February, I was in Milwaukee. My van had suddenly begun losing power, and it is the kind of van that not everyone can work on. I used my AAA membership and had it towed to a garage in Milwaukee for servicing. While there, bemoaning the repair bill that I was going to get, I visited Tory Folliard Gallery. It is my favorite gallery in that city. I can't say for certain, but I think they will be representing me there eventually. I was able to show them my work and they liked it. Their first commitment, though is to work for the artists that they already represent. The possibility is for me exciting. That is my life lately.

Dream house

Since the photos were done, I have been working on the sky for "Dream house". I mentioned that I am using four copper plates. Each plate is inked with a different primary color: red, yellow and blue. The fourth plate is inked with black ink. The challenging part about printmaking like this is the fact that when I am working on the etching, I do not see the results until the image is printed. I am working on copper plates, and that is what I see in front of me. I have to be thinking about the color (and how it will combine with the others) while working on one of the plates. If I want green I have to combine yellow and blue with varying amounts of red and possibly some black. It is possible to achieve an infinite number of color combinations.

People who work in painting become accustomed to painting a color and seeing that color as they apply it to the paper. That is not the case with etching. The color is finally seen after the plates have been etched in the acid, inked and pulled through the press combining colors from all of the plates. The uncertainty is great, but with years of experience, it is possible to anticipate a bit. This is not a medium for control freaks. There are those of us who have learned to take a good amount of delight in the uncertainties of the medium and work within that realm.

Back to the "Dreamhouse" sky. I have been etching the red plate using soft ground and textures. I have also been etching the blue plate using marbling and aquatint and the black plate using marbling and no aquatint. There is no aquatint used on the black plate, because I want to have layers of the dream like marbled shapes, but black (by its nature) can tend to overpower the other colors. With no aquatint, it will tend to be lighter and a little more ambiguous. All of these plates are being lowered slowly into the acid to get a transition of etching depth. The darkest, most intense colors will be at the top and will gradually fade to nothingness as they get closer to the horizon.

At last

Sometimes this profession feels like it works in fits and starts. Momentum is gained and lost. Any artist who is able to have momentum and hang on to it continuously has my highest regard. I convince myself that losing momentum is not necessarily a bad thing. When it is lost, there is the element of feeling frustrated, but there is also the desire to regain that which was lost. It is like a hunger that needs to be satiated. In September, I lost my momentum. I needed to prepare work for my November and December travels (see previous posts). It required that I focus on the printing end of things as well as preparing work for display. Now it is January, my studio has been reorganized, and I am diving into things again. I will not tell you how many etchings I have in progress. They have all been sitting there on shelves, but also in my brain (all twenty of them and of various sizes), and they have been occupying a fair number of my thoughts over the past couple of months.

One of the pieces I am working on, is an etching from the late 1980s. This may suggest to you a certain lack of new ideas on my part, but I insist that it is absolutely not the case. I have always liked the concept for this piece (it was originally called "Waiting"), but I was dissatisfied with how I executed it. It is a color etching (16" x 20"). It was done using four plates. My disappointment with it lies in the fact that I now believe that the execution of the idea requires that I use the colors with much greater intensity. My concept with the first 1980s incarnation of it lead to an anemic print. I am a better artist than I was then. Every aspect of my work has improved. I could go at those weak compositional areas with a scraper and "clean it up", but I think I will work it through as is. I think that with stronger use of color and greater visual interest, any compositional awkwardness or weakness will be minimized. The new title of the work is "Dream house". I will post photos of it as it progresses as well as a shot of the first incarnation. Please forgive my lack of skill as a photographer.

Winter in Blue Mounds

The holidays and their accompanying demands are over. I am looking forward to sinking my teeth into the creative side of my profession. This week, I have reorganized my work area, going through etchings that have been in progress, but were put on hold in the fall. When I make my trips to galleries, there is much time and energy that goes into the trip preparation, and ongoing projects are stopped. This can be good in that when I return to the pieces, it is like starting over. Works that seemed to have been at an impasse, I see with different eyes, and solutions sometimes seem evident. Jesi, if she is able to make it from Madison to Blue Mounds today (we are having quite a bit of snow as I write this), will assist me with regaining my artistic momentum. Jesi has been with me since early 2009. She is my current apprentice. She has been great at helping me with things around my studio. In exchange for her help, she works on her own etchings. I am eager to give her guidance whenever she wants it.

It began snowing last night. I woke up early this morning to the sound of snow plows outside of my Mount Horeb house. When I arrived at Blue Mounds, five miles down the slippery road from MH, I donned my snow shoes and went for a walk along the Military Ridge Trail. I commute on this trail in the summer on my bicycle. It is the source of many of my etching ideas, and I know it well. I had never snow shoed on it before. I took off in the direction of Barneveld, a town which is five miles further down the road. My instinct told me to stay put in my studio and get to work, but how can one resist anything this beautiful. Art is part of my conscious and my subconscious. I always look at things in terms of compositions. Today was a feast for my eyes. There are areas along the trail that I have noted before from the vantage point of my bicycle in the warmer months. These places were equally beautiful this morning. I will try to go out again tomorrow even though the snow will have passed. I will take my camera and post a photo or two. Even with two layers of gloves, my fingers got cold. I passed the state park entrance and decided to walk an additional half mile to a gate that I had looked at a number of times. I stopped at the gate to look before heading back. I had begun to sweat, and it trickled down my face. The tree branches were covered with snow. A squirrel was traversing the tree tops leaving clouds of disturbed snow behind him. The branches seemed to be impossibly small to carry him. He jumped from tree to tree and before long passed over my head, crossing over the trail. Before long he had disappeared from my sight, the only trace of him being the cloud of snow occasionally falling from the branches that he was disturbing. I have often seen wildlife while walking on this trail. When I am on my bicycle, I come up on them fairly quickly and often surprise them. On snow shoes, however, it is a little more difficult. I move slowly, and the sound of the large surfaces crunching through the snow alert any creature long before I get to where they are. I returned to my studio. The exertion and experience was refreshing. I will write more later. I hope you are warm where you are.