7/20/10

Chapter 11, The double-show weekend started out rough…

Creating double inventory and two sets of show supplies is ridiculously complicated and time-consuming. We schlep and pack and prepare for days leading up to the shows, while trucking Sunny the cat back and forth from the vet with a serious bladder problem, juggling more than the usual amount of little family emergencies, and sweating through an epic heat wave with no A/C.

On the day we have to travel to Chautauqua we still have to mat, label and sleeve 75 prints, pick up a batch of framed art, get Bob’s car inspected, create a “quality family time” picnic supper with the kids, wrestle Sunny to the wall to squirt medicine down his gullet, and pack show, suitcases and a cooler full of gluten-free food into the van.

Sweaty and extremely grouchy, we finally finish at 10:45 pm, with a 2 ½-hour drive still ahead. But I hear muffled curses coming from beneath the van. Gearhead Bob, conducting a last-minute safety inspection, discovers the oil pan is kaput. Eek. I drive nervously, watching the dash for red warning lights.

At 2 am we arrive intact but dead-tired at the Chautauqua motel. Actual bedtime is put off til 3 am, however, due to friendly check-in clerk’s interesting but lengthy Dickey Betts story…

By 7 am we’re off to execute the shortest yet most difficult setup of all shows. In 3 hours we must check in, unload, configure tent and walls to straddle a curb, storm-proof the booth, set up fixtures, hang, stack, display and price the art, move the car to exhibitor parking in East Afghanistan and hike back to booth before the opening of show.

Whew. The setup finished, Road Crew Bob hikes back to retrieve “The Benz” (300D, 1985) and drives the 150 miles back to Rochester, where he repeats the entire exercise with booth #2, picks up Becka, and sets up for the Corn Hill Arts Festival.

After that, everything is a piece o’ cake. I am unfazed by Friday’s 2 ½- hour rainstorm.

Look closely to see the thin stream of water that flows continuously from my tent roof, blasting at least one unsuspecting customer right down the back of the shirt… In the end, both shows are mostly sunny and very successful! Yay. Bonus: I won second prize in the printmaking category at the Corn Hill show. Double yay! Thanks to all who helped, juried, attended, gushed and/or purchased. And apologies to the lady with the wet shirt.
  

And now, about the new block print in progress, “Golden Trees”…

Let me back up to the beginning. Last fall I was spending a blissful week with Bob and my brother Chris at the family summer house in VT. We were closing up the house for the season, in between long leisurely meals, scenic walks down the dirt roads, and trips to the town library to fulfill Chris’s online fantasy football mission.

One day we returned from town to find the telephone company truck blocking the gate to our house. They were putting up a new telephone pole, or maybe repairing the old one, I’m not sure and didn’t care, because as we got out of the car, I was STUNNED by the late afternoon light in a stand of golden-yellow trees right in front of us.

Oblivious to the marvel before them, the guys conferred about power lines and whatever. I grabbed the camera, climbed over the ancient stone wall and dropped into another world. I was standing in a shaded chapel with a confetti-covered floor, a stone pew covered with soft green moss, and a huge doorway of tall trees arching over me with a glowing golden foliage ceiling, framing the greenery beyond. Oh boy.

Must bring the deep happiness of this magical place home with me, recreate it my way, and share it.

So last week I carved and printed the first color, deep yellow.

Yesterday I finished carving for the second color, amber. I removed all parts that I want to remain yellow, the color I’ve already printed. The amber ink will cover everything except that, and of course the white areas carved out during the first round.

This is the first time I’ve ever attempted with such tiny detail in a block print. I really want the lacy effect of the leaves to come through, so with my new Extreme Precision cutting tools, I’m carving a lot of tiny pointy little stylized shapes that will hopefully look like leaves. Normally it would take me about 4 - 6 hours to carve a block; this time it’s about twice that much.

Back to the press.....

OK, lookin good.

Back to the block. Carve out all the parts I want to remain orange. After 3 days and a couple of books on cd, it’s ready for the next printing.

Back to the print shop. Bob will be out of town with boy scouts next week while I’ll be finishing this thing, so he lets me do everything, standing by to make sure the heavy machinery doesn’t try to dismember me.

The next color is light olive green. I mix up a color with an assortment of putty knives, digging gooey blobs of ink out of their cans and spreading and scraping them around on the marble-top island. I add a lot of opaque white, because if that orange shows through too much, it will look tan instead of green.

(My chicken arm gets very tired, and I cheat and ask burly Rhino Bob to finish kneading the ink. Next week the arms will get a workout.)

I ink up the press by simply spreading a tablespoon or so onto the rollers, and flipping the switch so the rollers start spinning against each other, distributing the ink evenly.

I do a few trial prints.

The green looks tan. Too much yellow in it, probably.

Bob cleans off the rollers while I add more opaque white and a little green ink I found on the shelf. Ink up the rollers again, do another trial print.

The green looks like mint ice cream instead of olive. yuck. Bob cleans off the rollers while I add back more yellow to the ink. Ink up the rollers again, do another trial print.

The green looks kind of tan again.

What if t we try running the print through twice, to get two hits of green? That works. After a few more prints are made and more ink is added to the rollers, it appears that two hits won’t be necessary after all. yay! …

Then we look at the registration. The green is not lined up with the orange. I have to tweak the placement of the block twice, and the placement of the paper about five times, before the registration is perfect. That’s why we always make about 20 extra trial prints, called “set-ups,” with which to work out registration problems with each color.

Finally I’m printing. DJ Bob plays a cd mix. Bob Marley, The Eurythmics, Coldplay. Good printing music. You get into a rhythm. Make 5 or 6 prints, add more ink to the rollers, swig of iced tea, make 5 or 6 more prints, add more ink, little dance, etc. Soon I’ve made 100 prints. Here’s how it looks now:

Not sure if you can see it here, but there’s a sprinkling of orange confetti on the forest floor here. I’m getting excited about the look of this thing.

Then I carve away all parts that should remain light green. Grass, bushes, leaf shapes.

Back to the print shop, mix up a nice dark green, start printing. About halfway through the 100 prints, I realize I’ve put too much ink on the rollers, because the dark green ink is taking on a texture on the prints. Oops. Wash off the rollers, start over, being careful not to trowel on too much ink.

Oh boy oh boy. The dark green really makes the yellow and orange GLOW. Lookie:

This coming week I will endeavor to finish this thing and post my progress on my Facebook Fan page, Laura Wilder Artwork.

Click here to visit my Fan Page 

I will try to always post the latest news there. It’ll show up there before it shows up on the website, which requires Webmaster Bob’s time and expertise.

Now back to the block to carve again. I need more books on cd to get me through this. Nothing depressing or scary. Any suggestions, dear blog-readers?

8/1/2010 Update

Hey, thanks to some of you for the book suggestions!

Well the week has passed and “Golden Trees” is not finished.

I carve again, this time removing all shapes that should remain the color I just printed, dark green.

On the block, the parts that have been freshly carved away are pale gray, the linoleum color. The rest is stained green from the last printing.

And then I printed color #5, a rich mahogany color, because the carpet of leaves on the ground is mostly that color…

Wow, the dark tree trunks really contrasts with the bright yellow and orange. Hmmm. Maybe too much. Hmmm. The bright yellow and orange don’t seem connected to those tree trunks….

Dang. There’s a mid-tone value missing from this picture. This bugs me. What to do? OK, I’ve decided I must carve a second block, creating more leaf shapes that will mix in with the orange, and print in a deeper orange-brown color, to connect with the very dark tree trunks (which in the end will be black).

So I lay a piece of tracing paper over this print, trace the tree trunk shapes and the outer border, and draw lots more leaves where new ones should be. Then I pull another block from a tall stack, which the ever-industrious Carpenter Bob had recently prepared for me, all cut to size and mounted for future prints. I grab a tube of dark blue block printing ink, roll some on my carved block, lay a piece of newsprint paper on it, and rub with a wooden spoon.

Then I take that wet print and lay it carefully face down onto the new block, and with the wooden spoon, rub the back of the paper, transferring the print of the carved block onto the new block. Now I have a perfect template for carving the next block.

Now I lay that tracing over the new block, backwards, to match the image on the block, tape it in place, and slide a sheet of carbon paper under it. I draw over all those new leaf shapes, transferring them to the block. (They look like little pencil scribblings.)

And I brew some tea and start to carve those dinky little leaf shapes. I finish a book on cd. Still carving. But I don’t want to get lazy and end up with big blobby shapes. I want little lacy leaf patterns.

Here’s a progress shot…  

More tea, another book on cd. “It’ll be worth it, It’ll be worth it,” I mentally chant…

Golden Trees...continued...