What's-It-All-About Wednesday! "Dinner Party"

 

"Dinner Party," reduction linocut, 18" x 18", edition of 18

Well, hello there! I'm a little bit leery about making the following statement, a little superstitious about "jinxing" things, but I think I am finally coming out of the long, dark tunnel that has been the last few months. 

In a making-art-for-a-living life there are always ups and downs. Ideas, and enthusiasm for them, wax and wane. But this year? Wow. This year there has been a whole lot of wane. 

The good news is that I've started to kick around some new ideas and putter around in the studio again. In fact today I started to draw up a new lino and prep the paper for it. That hasn't happened in a while. 

There's nothing yet to show for the effort, however, so while I'm stirring that particular pot I thought it would be nice to thaw out the periodic "What's-It-All-About Wednesday" posts. And since I've been seeing a lot of buffleheads around lately... well... let's take a look at Dinner Party.

This piece is a couple of years old, but it remains a favorite. Two pair of buffleheads have come together to ride the swells and search for a meal; in fact one of the females has already found a tasty appetizer. 

Small and feisty, buffleheads are constantly in motion. Back in Colorado I always had a heckuva time deciding exactly how many buffies were overwintering on my local pond, since I could never be sure I was seeing all of them on the surface of the water at the same time. Pop up! Down! Up! Down! Constantly.

It's challenging to suggest all that busy-ness in the sort of stop-motion view of an image on paper, but I tried to do so by ramping up the color and texture of the water and by giving the birds very alert postures. They could all dive back down to the underwater buffet line at any moment. 

Interestingly (I think), buffleheads are cavity nesters. That's right. A bird that spends all of its time on and in the water... raises its young in holes in trees. And if you've never watched day-old ducklings leap out of a tall tree... well. You owe it to yourself to spend some time on YouTube, at least. 

Because they are so small they can (and do) take advantage of old flicker holes, and they will also use nest boxes. Here in the United States most of us have to be content with seeing them only in the winter, however, as the bulk of their breeding range is in central and western Canada, up in to Alaska. But this time of year you should be able to spot them in fresh or salt water across the entire lower 48 and down in to Mexico. In fact, I've been entertained by a number of rambunctious dinner parties in my Maine neighborhood recently, both off the coast and on inland ponds. 

It's been a while since we've been able to engage in similarly energetic human parties, but those precious gatherings will return. And when they do, I imagine they'll feel just as celebratory as a gathering of buffleheads. 

What's-It-All-About Wednesday: Homeward Bound

The snow/woods/woodpeckers linocut is SO CLOSE to being finished, but unfortunately Monday's ink was still too wet to print the last bits on Tuesday. One day. That's all I need to finish it, one day! It's very hard to be patient.

I've pulled the drying rack in front of the fire in the sitting room to try to speed things along a bit, so while we're waiting I thought we'd take a look at another favorite from linocuts past.

"Homeward Bound," reduction linocut, 8 x 10", edition of 17

You probably recognize at least a portion of this image, since it's the background of the header here at Brush and Baren. I could have called this the second print I made after I got Presston, my Takach etching press, except that my first run at this concept was a disaster and I scrapped the entire edition. I was still getting used to working with the press, and I had problems with pressure setting, bad color choices, and fumbling attempts at masking. You know... it was one of those @#$% "learning experiences" that people get so excited about. The end result was that the prints were sub-standard and they went into the scrap pile.

I walked away from the image, and didn't revisit it until a year later. I still liked the concept, and after a year had gone by I felt a little more confident in my press technique. I'm glad I tried again.

In my mind the title "Homeward Bound" has always been deliberately ambiguous. Is it sunset and are these geese going back to a lake or pond for the night? Maybe it's migration and they're headed to breeding or wintering habitat.

Or maybe it's the viewer who is headed home, watching the sky change and anticipating a cozy evening in front of the fire. (With or without a rack of linocuts.)

What's It All About Wednesday: Telling Fish Tales

"Telling Fish Tales," reduction linocut, © Sherrie York

It's been rainy the last couple of days here in midcoast Maine. The mainland vegetation is lush and green, but the sea reflects the overcast skies and the world seems a little muted. The ochre and rust of seaweed and the grays of granite ledges dominate the palette in Muscongus Bay.

While the humans scurry about in wellies and rain jackets, the animals carry on with business as usual.  Cormorants, comfortable in or out of the water, congregate on rocky ledges. Who knows what information they may share with each other at times like this, but I like to imagine the bird in the center talking about the fish that got away. "It was THIS BIG."

What's It All About Wednesday: Midwinter Debris, Underfoot Series

"Midwinter Debris," reduction linocut © Sherrie York

Our first real snow of the season came to my new stomping grounds in midcoast Maine this week. It was a dozy! Here at my temporary digs on the Pemaquid Peninsula we had about 8" of heavy white stuff. I know it was heavy because I had to shovel it off the deck four times. Once when the snow stopped falling, but three times more after the sun came out and huge melting sheets sloughed off the roof and right on to the porch. (Note to self: When you finally find your own place, be sure it doesn't have a steep roof right above the front door.)

If you've been following Brush and Baren for any length of time you're aware that I like to wander around outdoors... and that I divide my time between staring down at my feet and gazing up at birds when doing so.

The "looking down" behavior prompted an ongoing series, Underfoot, to which I add another image or two each year. This piece, Midwinter Debris, was one of the earliest linocuts in the series. It was hand-rubbed on Hosho paper, during a time when I was still using mostly opaque inks. (Unlike my current practice of using transparent color almost exclusively.) This view included the needles and cones of the ponderosa pine, a signature tree of my former home in Colorado. When I look at this piece I am reminded of montane slopes, bighorn sheep, Steller's jays.

Here in Maine there are no ponderosa pines. No bighorn sheep or Steller's jays. Instead I'm learning to identify white pine and red spruce, their seed structures very different from my western trees. I also have deciduous trees! In this area the woods are dominated by oaks whose first names I've yet to ascertain. Yes, the landscape underfoot is quite different. Plenty of new material for when I can get back to work... which I hope will be soon!

What's it All About Wednesday: Gaining Ground

With my studio and living space piled high with boxes, getting a new linocut finished... or even started... has become a far away dream.

But that just means it's time for another chapter of What's it All About Wednesday! Today's lino: Gaining Ground.

"Gaining Ground," reduction linocut, 9" x 6"
Edition of 20

Since I'm headed to Maine (in three weeks! ack!) it seemed natural to take a look at one of the most engaging bird species of the northern Atlantic coast: Puffins!

Long-time Brush and Baren readers will know that since 2008 I've spent part of each summer as an instructor and Artist-in-Residence program coordinator at Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine. Originally envisioned as a place for teachers to come and learn about nature, the camp opened in 1936 with such luminaries as Roger Tory Peterson heading up the staff.

Fast forward to 1969, when a young biologist named Stephen Kress joined the camp's instructional team. Surprised to learn that Maine's coastal islands had once been home to the nearly-extirpated Atlantic puffin, Steve wondered if there were a way to bring the birds back to their former breeding grounds. It was a question which led to the launch of Project Puffin in 1973 and subsequently to the development of seabird conservation techniques that today are employed around the world.

Project Puffin and Hog Island Audubon Camp remain closely connected, and one of the highlights of every camp session is a boat trip to Eastern Egg Rock to see puffins at the site of their first successful reintroduction.

The puffin in "Gaining Ground" is one of Egg Rock's current residents. The title refers both to this individual's waddle towards the highest point of rock, and to the slow but steady increase in the Maine puffin population overall.

While it's wonderful to celebrate the successful return of the species to its historic breeding grounds, we can't just wipe our hands, pat ourselves on the back, and walk away.

In 2012 the northeastern US experienced its warmest March on record, and temperatures remained high throughout the breeding season. The Gulf of Maine is heating up faster than almost any other marine environment on earth, and warmer waters mean changes in available food species. A water temperature rise of just 3 degrees meant puffin parents couldn't find enough small, slim, cold-water hake or herring to feed their chicks. Instead, they found warm water butterfish... which are too fat and round for chicks to swallow. Only 31% of Maine puffin chicks survived to fledging in 2012. The others starved to death with fish at their feet.

The long-term future of puffins in the Gulf of Maine remains uncertain. Good fisheries management has led to increases in the population of the once-endangered Acadian redfish... a good food source for puffins. But the continuing volatility of ocean temperatures can lead to disaster at any moment.

Perched at the border of the US and Canada, Machias Seal Island hosts the largest puffin breeding colony in the Gulf of Maine– 5,500 pairs. But locally warmer surface temperatures in 2016 again created a lack of sufficient food, resulting in almost complete nest failure across the colony.

Monitoring, protecting, and researching the lives of puffins and other seabirds helps us understand the larger changes in our environment, and I am proud of the efforts of my friends and colleagues at Project Puffin and other research projects across the globe. Of course puffins are fun subject matter for a linocut, but for me part of the joy of creating this piece was celebrating the hard work and dedication of biologists everywhere. Thank you all!

What's it All About Wednesday: Wave Runners

"Wave Runners," reduction linocut
16" x 12," edition of 12

Birders use the term “life bird” to describe their first encounter with a species that's new to them. (There are also year birds and state birds and county birds and yard birds and, well... you get the picture.)

My lifer northern gannets were spotted almost 20 years ago in the Firth of Forth, off the coast of Scotland. I was in a little crab boat, headed for the Isle of May Wildlife Sanctuary, five miles from the mainland. The weather was wet and windy; our boat crossing was a bit rambunctious and our landing particularly sketchy. But my strongest memory of that adventure was a sudden splash off the port side, which turned out to be not a compatriot tumbling overboard, but a diving gannet. Several more birds plummeted into the sea around us while I stood there gaping at the spectacle.

Not far from the Isle of May is the Bass Rock, breeding ground for 150,000 northern gannets. On this side of the Atlantic, the largest colony is at Bonaventure Island, Canada, but I've caught glimpses of one or two individuals in the Gulf of Maine. Thousands of gannets pass the Schoodic Peninsula near Acadia National Park in the autumn, headed to southern waters for the winter.

My own experience wasn't nearly as dramatic as this clip from Nature's Great Events with David Attenborough, but it was memorable nonetheless.  (The footage is spectacular, but be advised that it ends on a somber note.)

As subject matter for prints and drawings I find gannets extremely challenging. The shape of the head alone has given me hours of consternation. But when I think about gannets I think of the word wild: They are at home in wind and waves; they raise their young in huge breeding colonies on rocky cliffs. The surprising and strange aerodynamic shape of their wings, folded back for dives of heart-stopping intensity, seems otherworldly (and distinctly uncomfortable).  What better inspiration could there be for a linocut than the memory and mystery of these Wave Runners?

What's it All About Wednesday: Willow Tapestry

After three months of head-down focus on deadlines for exhibitions and illustration projects I had hoped for a little break, but now that my entire summer has to be sorted out before the end of May, well... Instead of a coming to a full stop I've just skidded around a corner and headed off in another direction.

Which might be why I find myself thinking wistfully about "simpler times." (I'm old enough to know that what I think of as simpler times were often just clueless times, but, hey! I'd take clueless for a while if I had to. But I digress.)

Simpler times, simpler linos. That's where I was going with this thought.

Willow Tapestry, linocut, 12" x 12"

There's an active group on Facebook called "Linocut Friends," with many of its more than 2,500 members posting new work on a daily basis. It's fun to see the wide variety of subject matter and technique tackled by artists throughout the world, and the group has been very welcoming to newbies and pros alike.

I posted my complex reduction linocut Treasured Path to the group a few weeks ago and received some interesting push back from printmakers who felt that the point of lino was simplicity of color and design. A lively discussion ensued, surprisingly respectful and fun, given the usual tenor of internet "conversations" these days.

Since Presston the Press came in to my studio I've been having fun pushing both the medium and myself to see what is possible, but I have my more "spare" moments, too.

Willow Tapestry is an older piece... executed long before Presston was even a twinkle in my eye (although not before he was manufactured in 1999). I was already living in Salida, and making a regular habit of walking along the Arkansas River at the edge of town. I remember the moment the I saw the potential of these branches as a block print. It was one of those "aha!" experiences in which I realized how much I love the spaces in between objects. Relief prints are all about negative space, since one has to carve away areas that will not print.

From time to time I still go back to the basics and carve a single color lino. I guess it's like brushing my teeth after a rich, heavy meal. The meal was satisfying and engaging, but a little clearing of the palate (or palette, as the case may be) can certainly be refreshing.

What's it All About Wednesday: Usurper

"Usurper," reduction linocut

The vernal equinox has come and gone and bird geeks like me are eagerly scanning the skies and the shrubbery for arriving migrants. A couple of weeks ago I made a quick trip south to the Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge to enjoy the spectacle of sandhill cranes on a migration stopover. It's an annual rite of the season, but while there's nothing like the calls, dancing, and flight of cranes, it's the arrival of swallows that says "spring" to me.

Once or twice as I drove around the refuge I thought I caught a glimpse of a swallow, but I was never certain, since much of my attention was focused on avoiding a run-in with other bird-gawking drivers.

I haven't yet seen a tree swallow here at home but I expect them any day now, swooping, chattering, and generally bringing a ruckus back to my winter-dormant walking route.

They'll also be creating a little drama for folks who have put out bluebird nest boxes, because such boxes are often usurped by tree swallows.

Bluebird (intended) Box 03, of which you see a corner here, is attached to a fence post on my walk route, and while there are plenty of bluebirds around I have never seen it host anything but tree swallows. The male swallow stands guard and his chatter – half cheerful, half scolding – is a daily confirmation that regardless of human intention he is exactly where he is supposed to be.

What's It All About Wednesday: Snow Shadows

Well. I had intended to make an overdue run to the Front Range today, but the forecast calls for snow everywhere. It's a 2-3 hour drive for me each way (depending on where I'm headed) in GOOD weather. Forget trying to navigate mountain passes when the weather's questionable.

Staying home means getting other things done, though, so be prepared for an update on the linocut-in-progress tomorrow. And in the spirit of a snowy day, I'd like to share a little bit about "Snow Shadows II."

First things first (or maybe that's second things second): It's called Snow Shadows TWO because I did a smaller black-and-white version back before I started making color reduction prints.

One of my art heroes is Francis Lee Jacques, who worked as a fine artist, illustrator, and painter of  dioramas in the 1920s-40s, first at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and later at the Bell Museum in Minnesota. Jacques was a great painter, but it is his black-and-white scratchboard illustrations that knock my socks off, particularly those he did to illustrate several books by his wife, Florence Page Jacques. I went on a major eBay binge in the 1990s and bought everything I could find, since all of Florence's books were out of print. Several of them have since been reissued, but I'm quite fond of my 1940s-vintage first editions, thank you very much.

Jacques was a master of design and a consummate draftsman. He was, in my opinion, the king of negative space, making fantastic choices about what to render and what to suggest. Florence was an equally charming writer, documenting her adventures as the new bride of an avid outdoorsman. Here's a little snippet from Canoe Country to give you a taste of both.

It's simple but dramatic images like this one that showed me the design possibilities of water ripples and snow shadows. And Jacques' trees are darn lovely, too.

So what's that got to do with my linocut? Eight or nine years ago I was out driving with a friend on a sparkling, post-snowfall morning. We came around a bend and I shouted STOP! and was out of the truck in a flash. There... right there! was a shadow pattern worthy of Jacques. I snapped a few quick photos and vowed to "do something with them sometime."

My first black-and-white effort to "do something" showed promise, but once I started to feel more confident about reduction prints I gave it another try in color. It's no Jacques, but I like to think he'd approve of those snow shadows.

Welcome to "What's It All About Wednesday"!

"Early Snow - Ponderosa Pine"
reduction linocut, 18 x 12 inches

Or maybe I should call it "Why'd You Do That Wednesday." Either way, get ready for a little side trip down memory lane on Wednesdays in 2015. (Not every Wednesday, mind you. But some.)

For me the most important part of an image can be the story behind it. My work is frequently inspired by experiences I've had while hiking or camping or just hanging out along the river. I like to imagine the "whys" of observed animal behavior, or the "what happened here" of a newly-fallen tree or other anomaly on my regular walk.

But this particular linocut started with an idea and became a quest to create some larger images of iconic western trees. "Early Snow - Ponderosa Pine" was the fourth in the tree portrait series.

The funny thing about these tree portraits is the length of time it can take to find "the" representative tree for each one. Take this one, for example. I had in mind an image of the quintessential ponderosa pine: solitary, tall, and graceful with an arched crown. Such trees are everywhere, right?

HA! Not once you start looking for them. Our forests are full of ponderosa pines, but until I started looking for the "perfect" tree I didn't realize how few of them fit my stereotype. Many of our local pondos don't have the arched crown, or their crowns are broken, or they are part of a dense group and the character of the individual tree is hard to discern.

Worse yet, the "best" trees were often frustratingly out of range for me in my little, not-particularly-practical-for-mountain-living car.

The Quest for the Perfect Trees expanded to include a couple of friends, one of whom kept his eye out for weeks and then sportingly took me on a couple of four-wheel-drive expeditions to visit potential candidates. I am sure I heard triumphant music when this particular tree emerged from the gray of a light snowfall and seemed to say "you looking for me?"