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.