Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Relief Printmaking workshop



This past weekend I gave a workshop in relief block printing to 12 participants over a two day period in the town of Atikokan Ontario.
This was basically an introduction to linoleum block printing and for this each participant was given a 15 x 30 cm (6 x 12 inch) piece of softoleum, a Alvin linocutting knife kit, a 4 inch soft rubber brayer, a specially made foam core registration board with push pins, a variety of papers that included Kozo (mulberry), Frankfurt laid, Stonehenge, Subi block printing paper for proofing and also some Thai Unryu papers for chine colle application.
Due to the time constraints and the fact most were new to the medium I asked that their designs be fairly simple and limited to less than 2 or 3 colours. In addition to showing them a demo revolving around basic design, printing more than one colour block, cutting and printing techniques they also got demonstrations in how to apply collage using thin handmade tissues, rainbow roll and hand colour application.
We used Speedball water soluble inks to print with and each person then took home 100 gm (3.5 oz) plastic containers with lids filled with colour inks that included: black, white, red, magenta, yellow, blue.
The participants used hand burnishing to print their images from which a variety of tools for this purpose were supplied by yours truly.
All in all it was an exciting and productive weekend with many prints produced.





Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Wilderness - Exhibition opening


artist and his work

entrance to the Pictograph Gallery - in the lower level of the Voyageur Mall in Atikokan Ontario


This past Saturday (June 5) was the official opening of my solo show titled Wilderness at the Pictograph Gallery in Atikokan Ontario. I had the honour of hanging the show myself and given the amount of wall space available chose to work an arrangement that would allow each individual work some spotlight. I chose to tag each of the work with floating text by printing title, date and medium onto translucent laser labels. Unfortunately due to the low ceiling and closer proximity of nearby walls the regular glass picked up reflections a bit too well in the photos so I apologize if this makes viewing difficult of some of the work in the attached photos . It didn't appear to be as bad viewing these in person though.
Although the weather turned out to be a bit cool and wet about 40 persons dropped by to view the work and learn a bit about printmaking from this artist.
The show runs until Saturday June 26. The gallery is open Tues - Sat from noon until 3 pm daily. The gallery phone number is (807) 597-4344 or one can contact them via the website link above for more information.
My friend Luke who was in attendance took some video footage featuring a close up of each piece. You can view the footage by clicking the following links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqocGep9L1c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuGSZe1dglE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XASM8LsIyzA

installation of horizontal work

portable wall and end wall with view of vertical work



a fitting quotation that accompanies my work


a small wood engraving - one type of relief surface printmaking that is featured


a monochromatic study pulled from the surface of an engraved acrylic plate


Quetico French Lake
relief block print


finally... a big thank you to the hard-working staff and volunteers of the Pictograph Gallery (with the support of the Ontario Trillium Foundation) for allowing me the opportunity to showcase in this venue.

Also a sincere thanks to the  Ontario Arts Council again for providing the support that enabled public presentation of this series of work.

The Ontario Arts Council is an agency of the Government of Ontario