Coming up at the Wendell Gilley Museum!

Yes, indeed! It's time for live, in-person printmaking workshops at the Wendell Gilley Museum in Southwest Harbor, Maine!

Friday, August 6, 9:00am-3:00pm: Two-color Reduction Printing

Saturday, August 7, 9:00am-noon: One-color Introduction to Relief Printmaking

All materials will be provided! We'll be working with the easy-to-carve "speedy cut" type of block material, so classes will be appropriate for ages 10 and up. Details on the Wendell Gilley Museum website "Events" page.

Printmaking workshop and presentation at the Wendell Gilley Museum, Maine

The 2020 edition of the Woodson Art Museum's flagship Birds in Art exhibition is on national tour, and hooray! It's in Maine at the Wendell Gilley Museum in Southwest Harbor. My linocut, A Tern of the Tide, is included in the exhibition, so I am delighted to be presenting some workshops and a talk about my process at the Gilley on July 16 and 17.

July 16: Single color intro to relief printing workshops. Choose either 9:00-noon or 1:00-4:00. 

July 17: A live presentation about my process that will also be streamed via Zoom. 7:00pm

Details and registration information available on the Gilley Museum's website.

Upcoming Reduction Linocut Workshop at the Farnsworth Art Museum

"Treasured Path," reduction linocut © Sherrie York

We woke to some soft frost this morning on the midcoast, so there's no denying the autumn anymore! 

I've got one more workshop on the schedule before the snow flies and the deep dark season arrives. Actually, it's the weekend WHEN the deep, dark season arrives, since the time will change overnight November 2.

So, quick! Join me for a two-day reduction linocut class at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. 9:30-4:30, November 2 and 3. Once you've had experience with a couple of new skills, your winter will fly on by in a whirl of printmaking! Well, it could. 

Time Out for Filming!

Me... trying to get comfortable with the idea of being in front of cameras. EEK!

Sorry to leave you all high and dry with the sparrow linocut-in-progress, but things were just not dry enough for me to tackle the last color pass before I went to Florida.

Florida! Where spring is so far along that the sandhill cranes already have good-sized chicks. I spent two weeks working with filmaker, photographer, and (IMHO) technical genius Drew Fulton, who is producing a complete Learn Linocut online course for me. There is still much to do: editing the 5+ terabytes of footage, writing the accompanying course document, organizing the online community for course students to interact with each other. We anticipate a mid-July release... don't worry, I'll tell you all about it when it's ready!

A three-block multi-block linocut demonstration for the course...

This morning I'm back in Maine, trying to catch up with all the tasks that accumulate whilst one is away from home and studio. Tomorrow I have to drive up to Rockland to take down a show, so it will be the weekend before I can wrap up those darn chipping sparrows, but they WILL be done before Monday.

The surprisingly nice thing about being back in Maine, where it's still gray and brown and snow lingers in the shadows is that it feels like I get a second spring. This is good, because from now until October things really ramp up.... and being in Florida, where it's practically summer already, was making me a bit panicked about time.

I've got three exhibitions opening in the next three weeks and fresh work to get to galleries in both Maine and Colorado. Plus I'm preparing for a solo exhibition at the Museum of America Bird Art in Massachusetts! Drew was kind enough to include an interview with me in our shooting schedule, which will narrate a video piece for that show. We shot it the last day of my trip, delightfully outdoors instead of in the studio. Well, it was delightful until the bugs started biting. Thanks for not being perfect, Florida. It could have made my return to Maine a bit awkward if you had been.

Filmaker Drew Fulton, lured into position in front of the cameras for a change.

PS: Lest you think we were all work and no play, we did take breaks to go birding in some of the great forest and park spaces around Gainesville. And of course we saw 'gators. Because, you know. Florida.

Black-crowned night heron

Common gallinule (formerly moorhen, formerly gallinule)

American alligator. A big'un.

Coming up! Intro to Relief Printing workshop at the Museum of American Bird Art

Museum of American Bird Art
(No, it's not snowing there yet! This photo is from my visit there last spring.) 

Just because I woke up this morning to the prospect of a relatively easy-going week doesn't mean it's going to stay that way. In fact, if you're in the Boston area in early November and would like to get your printmaking feet wet with a relief printing workshop, have I got a deal for you!

Intro to Relief Printing
Saturday, November 10
Museum of American Bird Art at MassAudubon (Canton, MA)
9:15am-12:35pm

Participants will design, carve, and print two small blocks inspired by natural forms: plants, animals, insects… anything! Armed with newly carved blocks, we will explore printing them singly and in combination… overlapping, turning, and repeating to discover new designs.

For more information and to register, check out the MassAudubon online program catalog here.

58th Art & the Animal at the James Museum

Wheee! I'm just back from a quick trip to St. Petersburg, Florida, for the Society of Animal Artists' 58th Art & the Animal exhibition, which debuted this year at the James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art.

Part of the beautiful installation at the James Museum

The James is a brand new museum and Art & the Animal is their first "special" exhibition beyond their permanent collection. They did a gorgeous job of hanging the show, and the staff and docents were a delight to work with. My heartfelt thanks go out to everyone involved with putting the show and the weekend events together.

Find the linocut in great company. I'm surrounded by the work of fabulous
artists: Bill Alther, Cindy House, Chris Bacon, Sue Adair, James Coe.

I admit to some trepidation about making the journey to Florida. Two previous visits were less than stellar experiences (one qualified as absolutely wretched), and the weather forecast called for 90 degrees and humid.  But I'm happy to say that my misgivings quickly vanished, particularly since I was able to spend time with good friends and colleagues.. AND even meet a fellow printmaker I've "known" online for several years but never met in person. Ain't that grand?

One morning I was up well before daylight to join friends on a birding expedition. Bird artists gotta look at birds sometimes, right? But seriously. How are we going to find any birds in this?...

Um. I thought we were going birding "in the morning." How come it's
so dark out, guys?

The early departure was to travel to a location where it might be possible to spot the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker. Local information said dawn gave us our best possibility of success, so off we went in full darkness in hopes of arriving just at sunrise. We were successful in travel but not in woodpecker-finding. Still it was a great morning to be out in the Florida pines.

Birders in their natural habitat

At a second location we found a few more birds, but more importantly we found gators. Alligators, that is. We were standing on a bridge looking down a waterway when I realized with a start that there were alligators on the shoreline. D'oh! Florida. I forgot about them gators.

This photo can be embiggened a bit to find the gators. There are two.

I hadn't brought my "real" camera along on the trip, so unfortunately I don't have any pictures of birds! Ah, well. It's possible I'll be back down that way in December and next time I'll be fully outfitted for bird-finding expedition.

So what's up for the remainder of this week? I'm planning to be back in the studio tomorrow and Friday, and Saturday I'll be teaching a short field sketching workshop at Gilsland Farm Audubon Center near Portland. The workshop is sold out, but I do have an exhibition of over 20 linocuts installed at the Farm right now... so stop on by if you're in the neighborhood.

A little of this and a little of that...

The loon linocuts are still drying on the rack... getting close, but we've been really humid here this week so the last ink layer is still a little bit tacky.

In the meantime I'm keeping plenty busy! This past week I gave a quick Intro to Linocut workshop at the Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge's headquarters in Rockland. The workshop was a nice wrap-up for my show there, which came down on Thursday.

The workshop was sponsored by the Friends of Maine Coastal Islands, a local non-profit that supports the Refuge's mission with education and outreach programs. 

We were sold out for the program, and the participants did such an amazing job creating small prints in a VERY short amount of time (about 90 minutes) that we're looking at scheduling another workshop this winter.

In the week ahead I'll be spending a lot of time up in Rockland, facilitating a week-long field sketching workshop through the Farnsworth Art Museum. If you've never visited the Farnsworth, you owe it to yourself to do so the next time you find yourself on the coast of Maine. The museum has an extensive collection of work by the Wyeth family and hosts spectacular visiting exhibitions as well. (Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals is there right now... I think we'll spend a little time drawing them at some point this week!)

Back in the studio I'll be working on small, temporarily secret linos for Project Postcard at the opening of Birds in Art at the Woodson Art Museum in early September. What to do, what to do?

Girls in Science at Herring Gut Learning Center

It was my great pleasure this past week to work with the great staff at Herring Gut Learning Center to present their Girls in Science event.

Sixth grade girls from area schools spent their day learning from scientists and a certain natural history artist/illustrator you may know. (Ahem.) Guest speakers included a local kelp farmer, renewable energy and water quality experts, an algae curator, and... me.

The young scientists built wind machines, identified and handled different types of seaweed, fed baby lobsters, dissected squid, looked at phytoplankton under the microscope, and did some drawing and printmaking based on their observations. I spent two action-packed and fun days at Herring Gut, and enjoyed watching these young women exercising their curiosity and exploring possibilities.

Field sketching

Studying stones below the Marshall Point lighthouse

Printmaking!

Lost in transition

My search for a place to live and work here in Maine continues. It has been a frustrating process, but my friend Sue encourages me to stay calm. “Maine challenges you the first year,” she says, “to test your resolve.”

Okay, Maine. Bring it. 

There have been several bright spots lately, though!

Green Lion Gallery

The Green Lion Gallery in Bath. This gorgeous space is owned and nurtured by artist/printmaker David Morgan. The Green Lion represents mostly (but not only) printmakers and artists who create work on paper. The space has a great vibe, and it has an Ettan press in the back. Dave was kind enough to offer me some press time a couple of weeks ago, and I managed to create three small (4x6”) blocks. I printed on 300# watercolor paper and then hand-painted them. I was reasonably pleased with the results AND the feeling of shaking out a few cobwebs. 

Green Lion Gallery

New linos!

Inspiration for the new images was the March 11 Mass Audubon Birders Meeting in Boston. It’s still a bit surreal to me to realize that I can now drive to Boston in about the same amount of time it took me to drive from Salida to Denver. The scenery is certainly different, and the traffic once one hits Boston is worse (which hardly seems possible), but it's totally doable. 

Linocuts all set up and ready for visitors at the Birders Meeting

The Birders Meeting is a one-day event, but I arrived a little early and stayed a little late to have the opportunity to catch up with colleagues and friends at the Museum of American Bird Art at Mass Audubon. 

Evening comes to MABA

MABA is a small museum with a big heart and a collection that packs a big punch. Part of the reason for my early arrival was an opportunity to hear Paul and Alan Singer, the sons of artist Arthur Singer, speak about their father's work. The brothers have recently released a comprehensive and lovely book celebrating Arthur Singer's life and career, and MABA hosted the lecture, book signing, and an exhibit of some of Singer's original works.

Additionally, the museum's current main exhibition is "Waterbirds," featuring paintings, prints, and sculpture from their permanent collection. Selections include work from Audubon to Warhol... bird art aficionados will also drool over pieces by Frank Benson, Sir Peter Scott, Don Eckelberry, Barry Van Dusen, Keith Shackleton, Anne Faust... and my design hero Frances Lee Jaques. It's remarkably difficult to find a centralized online location for Jaques' work, but trust me, you need to Google for images. The paintings are nice, but the black and white illustrations will knock your socks off. (The Jaques Art Center in Minnesota has a little blurb about him, but not many images.)

Nubble Light at Cape Neddick, Maine

On my way home from Boston I stopped at the Nubble Lighthouse / Cape Neddick in southern Maine. The day was windy and cold, alternating between bright sun and clouds, but I was on a mission! I had heard the Cape could be a place to find dovekie, a cute little auk which I had never seen. I identified two other life birds, thick-billed murre and black scoter, before I finally spotted the stubby little critter bobbing around offshore. I snapped a couple of photos that were horribly distant and blurry but contained enough information to later confirm the ID. Hooray!

Yes. Dovekie has entered the queue for new linos.

The next day we had our third nor'easter in less than two weeks, with our second blanket of about 20 inches of snow. Enough already!

So what next? I'm still on the hunt for home and studio, but life and work have to move forward no matter what. April 19th I'll be presenting a program at the Camden Library for Midcoast Audubon. Also, registration is now open for a leather journal-making workshop at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, April 27. Also in April, I'll have some work presented by the Green Lion Gallery at the Boston Print Fair. I'm also deep in image design for posters for the International Loon / Diver Symposium coming up in Portland in 2019. I may be unsettled, but I'm certainly not bored!

Drawing Workshop in Salida, Colorado

I'm delighted to announce a 4-session Drawing Essentials class at the SteamPlant in Salida, Colorado. Class will meet Tuesday mornings in October, and all materials are included in the $125 class fee. Such a deal!

Register at the SteamPlant in person or by phone: 719-530-0933.

Print fun in Massachusetts!

It's my first morning back in Maine after almost a week at the Museum of American Bird Art (MABA) in Canton, Massachusetts. This past weekend ten inspired and inspiring participants joined me on a journey into reduction linocut; we had a great time and they did some great work!

Before that workshop began, however, I got to spend a little time working with students at MABA's Wild at Art Summer Camp, a program for kids age 4-13. They had been using pollinators as their creative inspiration, so butterflies, bees, bats, and birds were the theme for collagraph prints.

The following morning the over-18 set arrived for an intense two days of linocutting. Most had never tried linoleum block prints, and those who had done block prints before had generally not picked up a tool since high school. (Except for one who hadn't picked up their tools since they worked with me last year. Ahem. JP, I'm looking at you. ;-))

We spent a half day getting acquainted with tools, carving, inking, and printing by creating some linocut "samplers."

These were great fun, and it was fascinating to see the variety of marks and textures everyone achieved.

Armed with a little experience and some new ideas we jumped on in to reduction printing. It pleased me to watch the smoke coming out of my students' ears as they wrestled their brain cells into the world of inside-out-and-backwards that is relief printing.

The only disappointment to the weekend was that the instructor (ahem) did a lousy job of photographing everyone's work! But here are a few images that show the range of approaches, from geometric abstracts to intricately textured seascapes.

Many thanks again to the staff at the Museum of American Bird Art for hosting the workshop and to the fun and enthusiastic participants. I hope to see you again next year!

Still on the road... or on the sea... or in the woods...

Picture a window seat long enough to sleep on, one that looks out into the thick and richly textured green of the Maine woods. Now picture me, cozy under a puffin-themed quilt, laptop perched across my legs. Rough life, ain't it?

Ah, but it gets worse.

Atlantic puffin on Eastern Egg Rock, Muscongus Bay, Maine

We've been on break this week at Hog Island Audubon Camp, so I've been spending some time with my friend Sue, who is the Assistant Manager of the research islands maintained by Project Puffin. Some of our time has been spent picking up, dropping off, and provisioning researchers, who spend two weeks at a time living and working on one of seven small islands where seabird conservation projects are underway.

Eastern Egg Rock on a calmer, sunnier day

On one of these days we made the logistics run to Eastern Egg Rock, home to the southwest-most Atlantic Puffin colony in the US, and site of Project Puffin's first restoration success. The way it usually works is that we pile people and supplies into a motorboat, make our way out about 9 miles to the Rock. There is no dock and no way to get a large boat close to the island, so we pick up a mooring and someone from the island rows out to us in a small rubber boat. Personnel and supplies are shuttled back and forth, then we drop the mooring and head back to the mainland.

On this day, however, the island personnel had reported a problem with their electrical/solar system, so we were going ashore. Their problem became my gift, as I got to spend about an hour in an observation blind while they worked on the system.

The trip out had been a wet and wild adventure. The seas were very choppy and we were surrounded by rain squalls. We arrived at Eastern Egg Rock soaking wet and very cold... but who cared? We were surrounded by nesting terns, puffins, guillemots, and gulls!

Another rain squall approaches Eastern Egg Rock.

Panorama from my perch in the west observation blind, click to embiggen

Common Tern eggs

Tern chicks demanding a meal

Adult tern responding to the call for food

Laughing gull pair

Black guillemot showing off its bright red feet.

Speaking of guillemots.... this past week we also celebrated International Guillemot Appreciation Day! The endearing faces of puffins attract a lot of attention and adoration, but what about its equally important and intriguing cousin? Mark your calendars and join us next June 27 by donning your black, red, and white attire and whipping some some treats like this 7-Layer Guillie Dip.

Check out that stunning beak interior! Guillemots are something to shout about!

Up Nest... I mean Next.
Some of this seabird ogling will have to stop soon, but other adventures will soon appear. I'm off to Massachusetts on Wednesday, gearing up to present a 2-Day Reduction Linocut workshop at the Museum of American Bird Art in Canton, and then it's back to Hog Island for Educator's Week. Wheeeeeee!