Here... and gone.... and then back!

I arrived home late last night– twenty hours, two planes, a shuttle, a truck, and a car after I left Maine. Not a case in which getting there was half the fun. And of course I'm blowing out again day after tomorrow to exhibit at the Crested Butte Arts Festival. (Come on up!)

As always, my time in Maine was spectacular. Our Educator's Week workshop at Hog Island Audubon Camp was great fun, although the first two days we had uncharacteristically hot and humid weather. This arid interior dweller thought she was gonna die. Or at least melt.

But I survived... we all did. No, I take that back. I didn't survive, I flourished. And I think our campers did, too. One of them made this video of the experience... Thanks, Paul... I love it.



Sharing Nature: An Educator's Week from Paul Stoutenburgh on Vimeo.

In other news... I came home to the announcement that "Wave Runners" was selected for the traveling exhibition of the Society of Animal Artists' Art and the Animal, which means it will be on the road through 2014. Yay!

 

The Shy Rabbit Print International opened last weekend in Pagosa Springs. But, hey! Look whose piece ended up on the invitation! Another nice surprise.

But for now it's laundry and email triage, so I'm going to get back to it. 

Fieldwork Friday: Alpine Meadow, Valley Floor, Island Bound

I wish I could say it's been a week of highs and lows... and I guess it has, if you count some time spent at timberline on Monday as the high. The rest of the week, indeed all of July so far, has been personally challenging. Hence the quiet at Brush and Baren.

But the brand-new journal got a little exercise... here's a page from timberline and an unfinished page from the edge of Sands Lake here on the valley floor.

This weekend I begin my journey eastward to Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine, where I'll spend a week as a staffer for Educators' Week and then a few additional days collecting reference sketches and photos to help keep my lino tools in motion this coming winter.

Home away from home, here I come!

When I return I'll have a scant three days to pack up my goods and head over the Continental Divide to participate in the Crested Butte Arts Festival. After that? Well. Let's just say there's nothing so constant as change... and I'll be right back in the thick of it.

Island web access can be sketchy, so I'm not sure when I'll be able to post, but I'll try to get at least something up during the next two weeks. In the meantime, carry on everyone! I'll catch up with you in August.

Still here... sort of

I see that my last post had to do with being somewhat overwhelmed. Clearly I haven't gotten past that sensation, since two weeks have somehow evaporated. Poof.

A few items have been ticked off my list, a few new ones have been added. I had to change my mind about hand delivering work to the Shy Rabbit Print International in Pagosa Springs because until yesterday the road between here and there was closed by the West Fork wildfires. That piece went into a crate and out the door on Friday. Today my piece for Birds in Art headed the opposite direction, towards Wisconsin. Tomorrow a box of materials will head out to Maine for imminent adventures in teaching at Hog Island Audubon Camp.

I'm getting to know my local shipping agent pretty well this week.

Needless to say, there isn't much printing going on. This past weekend we enjoyed our annual Salida ArtWalk... I talked to lots of linocut admirers and am pleased to report that a couple of pieces have gone on to new homes. (No shipper involved THIS time.)

But a girl has to do SOMETHING besides admin or she'll go a bit bonkers, so last night I set about making a new journal.

And WHY did I have to make a new journal? Because the one I had more than half filled with sketches and travel notes went on walkabout at O'Hare Airport in May. Yep. Lost.

On my way home from my residency at the Woodson Art Museum I had to change planes in the madhouse that is Chicago. In the hour I was there our gate assignment changed FOUR times, and it was during the last migration that I stopped by the restroom and apparently set down my book. When I returned to the gate the plane was boarding, and it wasn't until I was in my seat that I discovered my journal missing. The flight attendant overheard my dismay and astonishingly encouraged me to get off the plane and run back to find it... but in those few minutes it had disappeared.

I filed a lost item report when I got home, but of course nothing ever came of it. I was fairly certain my email address, at least, was written in the book... but... it's off having adventures without me now.

It took me a while to drum up the courage to build a new one... but here it is. All ready to see what happens next. I'm thinking of chaining it to my backpack while I'm in transit, though. Or maybe I should wear it around my neck...

Exhibition News: I am officially overwhelmed!

"Shower with a Friend," reduction linocut, 15" x 15"

If you are an artist, or if you hang around with artists, you are probably familiar with the phenomenon of The Juried Show. Artists submit "slides" (usually digital images these days) of their work for consideration by a juror or jurors, who review all submissions and select which pieces will be included in an exhibition.

Juried shows can be, if you'll excuse the expression, a bit of a crap shoot. Even well-established professionals with consistently fine work and impressive exhibition histories can, and do, get "The Small Envelope" (rejection notice). So when I decided to enter a few "new-to-me" shows this year I had high hopes but moderate expectations.

Um, well. As of this afternoon I am officially six-for-seven on The BIG Envelope.

"Ripples," reduction linocut, 12" x 9"

This is wonderful news, of course, but logistically overwhelming. I have two delivery deadlines in the next two weeks and four more in August... all of which have have different requirements for framing and shipping. And did I mention I'm going to be out of town from July 8 through August 6?

Upping the ante this week:

The Wildlife Experience in Art, Rocky Mountain Animal Artists at The Wildlife Experience, Parker, Colorado. Show opens September 28 with a "Wildlife Art and Wine" event.

Shy Rabbit Print International IV, at Shy Rabbit Contemporary Arts, Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Show opens July 27.

More details of the ever-evolving show schedule are on the Exhibition Schedule page here at Brush and Baren.

Linocut in progress: Columbine final step

Okay then! One final step put a little more interest in the lower left corner of the columbine reduction linocut, and I'm going to call it finished.

Step 10: Adding back a bit of dark.

Finished!

Working a large edition like this one was a good experience. On the one hand I felt I had more latitude to experiment with color, but once I settled on that color it was harder to maintain over a long run. In the end I think I'll have an edition of 40 from the original 50.

Work in the print studio is liable to be a bit erratic over the next couple of months, for reasons both personal and professional. I think it's safe to say there won't be ANY new prints in July, as I'll be on the road for workshops for most of the month. I'm aiming to get something underway here through the remainder of June, but we'll see how it goes. I've got contract work in process, an art fair to prepare for, and a few tasks far more odious which will require energy and attention.

But stay tuned! If nothing else, it might be time to start posting a bit more fieldwork than I have been lately. My friend Debby Kaspari is in Panama with her sketchbooks right this minute and the images she's posting are making me pretty darn twitchy to get after it myself. You can see what Debby's been up to over at Drawing the Motmot. Tell her I said hi!

Linocut in progress: Columbine Part 4

Still poking along here with the columbine linocut.

I decided that I wanted more color variety in some of the stems, so I took a deep breath and put another lighter color over the existing dark.

Step 8

Looks a wee bit scary, doesn't it?

But never fear, most of it went away in the next pass. I carved a few stems and then printed a dark blue-green to light yellow-green pass to get the image back on track.

Step 9 (Sorry about the wet ink glare.)

Might just be one pass left, I'm not sure. I like the feeling of the background blend now, but I would like to define some more foliage in the lower foreground. Could be just a partial blended roll will do the trick.

What a difference a color pass makes.

Linocut in progress: Columbine Part 3

Who was it that said, "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans"?

There's a lot of "life" happening here at the moment, which is putting a bit of a damper on my studio time and focus capacity. I had hoped to have this columbine linocut finished by now, but it's just poking along. Ah well...it is what it is, I guess.

Step 6

Here's a second darkish pass to start defining the background. I've decided that the upper background isn't going to have much more activity than it already has, although there will still be some darker bits in the lower background. Still have to sort that out.

Step 7

It's not particularly "normal" to go back and add a lighter color over a darker, but I neglected to work the centers of the flowers before I moved on to the background. It's okay, though... I rather like the tonal variety I got here. If I wanted a more solid yellow I could put a second layer here, but I think they'll be okay as is.

I might be able to wrap this up in two more color passes... it all depends on how the next one plays out. The background feels a bit too bright to me, so I'm going to try to tone it down. We'll see!

Linocut in progress: Columbine Part 2

Carrying on with the blue columbine reduction linocut. Not a lot to show in terms of steps, but plenty of drama...

Step 4

Difficult to tell here, but this was a third purple-blue color. And then? Whoosh! Big change!

Step 5

It took a few tries to hit the right tone with this step... a blended blue-green to yellow-green. I'm still a little worried that it might have been too much dark too soon, but I'm hoping it's okay. We'll find out on the next pass.

The surprise here is that I'm doing a big (for me) edition. I'm starting with 50+ prints, a far cry from my usual 15-20. It's a small image, just 5x7-inches, but fifty is a lot for me to print with a baren.

It IS awfully fun to see them all lined up (back-to-back, even!) on a full drying rack, though.

Linocut in progress: Columbine

There's been a bit of steamroller postpartum here at Brush and Baren. I've been looking through sketchbooks and photos on a quest for a new, strong linocut image and coming up short. It all seems so... pedestrian.

When I'm feeling a little "stuck" like this it sometimes helps to work on something smaller, less intimidating. Something I can experiment with and stumble around with until I get my groove back.

Enter the columbine, in 5 x 7 format.

Step 1

The blue columbine (Aquilegia coerulea) is Colorado's state flower and the namesake for everything from bike shops and dental offices to a high school and its tragedy. I hadn't considered that when I started this piece, but given that it's Memorial Day weekend here in the US perhaps it's appropriate for more than just a creative jumpstart.

Step 2

Step 3

Where were we? Oh, right. Magpie linocut demo.

So 'way back in April... almost exactly a month ago, in fact... I started a demonstration piece to work on during my residency at the Woodson Art Museum. Do you remember it? Magpie? Fencepost? Swoopy background?

You can go back and look at the steps in the April 22 post if you like, or you can be satisfied with this "steps-up-to-the-point-at-which-it-went-in-a-box-and-got-shipped" photo.

Remember it now?

All that was left was the final color, which for reasons of practicality I decided would be plain ol' black. Fortunately it worked out to pull a couple of prints during the demos, but I still had the rest of the edition to finish when I returned home.

Here's the completed piece. I didn't really have any expectations for it, since I threw it together rather quickly, but I like the way it turned out. A bit "designier" than I've been doing lately, and only seven colors! (What?)

"Magpie Waits," reduction linocut, 6" x 9"

 I may go back and mess around with the gerenuk demo piece some more now, or I may just put it aside and start something new (more likely). It will be good to get back into a working rhythm again.

Fieldwork Friday: Mesa Verde road trip

The view from Park Point, Mesa Verde National Park

Summer almost always escapes before I get a chance to appreciate it. Exhibitions, workshops, and contract projects fill the calendar May through September, and when October arrives I feel like a kid who spent their summer vacation with a fever and only got better when school started.

Thank goodness, then, that we managed to squeak in a quick camping trip earlier this week. Mesa Verde National Park is about 4.5 hours from Salida, and centuries away from my busy daily life. I hadn't been there in at least 15 years, so it was time to get acquainted again.

Everywhere!

Spring has been slow to arrive there, too, although leaf-out and bloom seemed to accelerate through the three days we were in the park. I love Mesa Verde for its dramatic landscape and wildlife (we saw snakes and lizards and bats, lots of birds, and heard coyotes) and for the opportunity to contemplate the long history of our continent's native peoples.

Cliff Palace. Guided tours take visitors through the remains of this
spectacular construction. Let's just say one begins the tour on the mesa top
on the left side, climbs down to explore the ruins, and climbs out via
ladders and narrow stone steps on the right. How do I always end up
in places that challenge my discomfort with heights?

Centuries before Europeans arrived in North America, the ancestors of today's pueblo peoples settled in the Four Corners region, where Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona meet. Around 550 CE the Ancestral Puebloans lived and farmed on the area's mesa tops, eventually moving into the alcoves of the canyon walls below around 1200. By 1300 they had abandoned all of it and the area was deserted. Why they moved from the mesas to the cliffs and then dispersed is a matter of mystery, study, and speculation.

Coming into Cliff Palace.

Exploring the site.

I enjoy turning puzzles like this around in my head, coming away with questions rather than answers, and with a renewed sense of awe. A few days of watching and wondering are my kind of reality check.

Of course really good sunsets help, too.