Visiting Artist Residency: Woodson Art Museum

Despite not having space to make linocuts right now, I'm certainly thinking about them a lot. I see potential images everywhere, mentally mixing colors and imagining print order while I explore my new surroundings.

But there have been a few opportunities to get a little "hands on" lately, since I'm preparing for a two-week artist residency at the Woodson Art Museum in February. (Yes, I know. Wisconsin in February. A winter residency in, say, Hawai'i or Arizona might have been a good idea, but the Woodson museum and staff are great to work with in any season.)

During my February 4-17 tenure I'll be making relief prints with students in grades 5-12, as well as teachers and other museum VIPs. The Woodson currently has two great temporary exhibitions installed, Wild Fabrications and Explorations in Wood. Our student project will draw inspiration from both of these collections, as we will be designing repeating patterns and printing quilt squares on fabric.

Fun, eh?

This past week I put my friend Sue to work as the project guinea pig. Classroom projects are, of course, constrained by time, so logistics can sometimes be a challenge. It was great to talk through the process with Sue as she worked to get a sense of materials, timing and the best way to success for students. And, look! Sue made something beautiful, too.

I saved a little block for myself that I'm hoping to work with this weekend, but wow! I'm still spending a lot of time meeting people, galleries, teaching venues. It's all great stuff, and when I finally have a work space I'll have more than enough to do to keep me busy.

In the meantime, if you find yourself in central Wisconsin... well, ever, really, do stop in and see what they are up to. The exhibitions are always stellar and admission is always... free!

A warm post from the frigid coast

As I type this it's afternoon here on the coast of Maine. There's a deep blanket of snow from our "bomb cyclone" blizzard earlier in the week and everything looks picturesque and lovely... a veritable treasure trove of potential linocuts.

Until one goes outside. At noon our temperature had risen to 0 degrees F. (That's minus 18 for you Celsius types.) Except for that brief respite when it warmed up enough to drop a ton of snow we've been in subzero lows and single-digit highs since Christmas. 

As a result I've had to curtail my wandering in the woods or scrambling on the rocky coast. It's a good time for catching up with other projects, though, including an "introduction to reduction linocut" video. The spectacular landscape painter Tim Deibler shot the raw footage just days before I moved away from Colorado. His daughter Rachel, the project editor, sent me a rough cut just before Christmas, and yesterday I finally had time for a first review.

We had just one day to do all the filming... in the midst of towers of boxes and half-packed belongings. In true Sherrie fashion it was essentially a seat-of-my-pants endeavor and the intended 3-color demo turned into five colors. (It could have been six or seven, of course, but... time limit.)

It is a little strange to watch the process unfold in a studio space that no longer exists (for me), especially when my search for suitable space here in Maine has not yet met with success and my press is still in storage. Yes, it's a test of my patience. But the video project reminds me who I am, even when I'm not able to work the way I'd like just now.

Between Rachel's travel schedule and mine it will likely be late spring before the video is finished and ready for prime time. Hopefully these few screen captures will whet your appetite for the completed project. 

There is one important aspect of the video that hasn't been decided yet, however, and I need your help!  Assuming we end up with about 2 hours of instruction, if you were interested in the video would you prefer to receive it packaged as a physical DVD or delivered online behind a paywall? 

Personally, when I purchase a class online I rarely watch the entire thing through, or I forget that I have access to it and it languishes. But I'm starting to fall into the dinosaur category for that sort of thing, so I'm curious to know what Brush and Baren readers think. Let me know!

In the meantime, stay warm... and if you have a favorite manufacturer of snow pants, send me that information, too! Needless to say, I'm shopping....