Rara Avis... the third!

"Rara Avis III," linocut, 4 x 6

You might (or you might not) recall that last fall I was commissioned to create a small linocut as a surprise gift for an unnamed museum's docent program. Now that the surprise has been delivered, I'm happy to share some more information!

Presentation of "Rara Avis" was made in December to the wonderful volunteer docents of the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin. The Woodson Museum is home to the fantastic and prestigious international exhibition Birds in Art and was the site of my unbelievably rewarding artist-in-residence experience last year. (You remember... the one that involved a steamroller!)

For reasons rather long to describe I ended up creating two slightly different editions for the folks at the Woodson, and for reasons less long to describe I now have a third edition available to the universe at large. "Rara Avis III" was printed on a warm white Fabriano paper in a dark brown ink. This edition is a "bleed print," with the image printed to all four edges of a 4" x 6" sheet. And it went up on my Etsy store, Rio Salida Art, this morning.

I was happy to be asked to create this image as a thank you for the valuable service of the museum's docents...and since I'm also happy to celebrate the readers of Brush and Baren, how about this: From now until February 16th you can use the code BRUSHBAREN20 at Rio Salida Art to take 20% off your minimum $20 purchase. Thank you all for reading, commenting, sharing, and laughing with me here! I appreciate you!

UPDATE: Apparently dopy me only listed one of the edition in my Etsy store, and it already found a new home. If you're one of the folks who went looking for it and were confused when it wasn't there... my bad. But it's fixed now!

Studiowork Saturday! American Robin linocut

Okay then!

I've been feeling a bit punky the last few days– a combination of changing weather and physical and mental tiredness, I think. I feel as though I've been packing and moving forever.

So none of that on Saturday! I did a couple of tasks first thing in the morning and then went off to spend the day in the new studio. No surprise, I guess, that I felt better than I have all week.

I finished carving the little robin and decided to go ahead and print it. Elvis (Press-ley, the baby press) got into the act because it was a large (for me) edition of 65 and only a single color.

The image was printed in a dark brown on a cream-ish Rives paper. The drying prints all show a frame, but that will be trimmed off once they are dry. I don't usually work this way, but it seemed prudent to have this extra material all the way around to support the press roller evenly across the block.

Here it is all trimmed up:

Technically these prints are a surprise, commissioned by an organization that shall for the moment remain nameless. (To help preserve the surprise.) They aren't going to be presented until December, so I'm hoping that if an intended recipient happens to be reading Brush and Baren now they will have forgotten all about this post and still be surprised when the time comes.