[Baren]: The mailing list / discussion forum for woodblock printmaking.

Baren Digest              Friday, 19 November 1999      Volume 09 : Number 787

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From: Jack Reisland <reislandj001@hawaii.rr.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 07:49:34 -1000
Subject: [Baren 6678] Re: joining Baren 

> Hi, Jack--I feel like I should know you, since the printmaking community
> in the islands is small--what island are you on?

Ahh... I'm right here on Oahu, Aiea Heights, but, you shouldn't know me
because...
   1. I just moved here less than a year ago, and
   2. I cannot by any stretch consider myself a current printmaker. Although I am
a baren member, I am really an art conservator with a strong interest in Japanese
style printmaking. I am learning very much from all the baren members, but my own
attempts at printing are constantly interrupted by the swirling chaos of
parenthood and self employment. Although I have a strong admiration for all the
baren members for their artistic talents and technical skills, I am filled with
even more wonder at their ability to prodigiously produce print after print. How
do they do it? Where do they find the time? Don't any of you have small children?

> Do consider joining
> Honolulu Printmakers ...

I will when I have something to show.

> I don't have our current newsletter in front of me, but I think
> we may have a relief process workshop coming up soon. I'll double-check on
> that. It's true that there's a lot of emphasis on litho and intaglio--and
> a definite counterculture of digital print-folks (but that's another
> thorny topic...)

Not too thorny for this forum, I assure you. I was bemused to see at the last
Honolulu Printmakers show, mixed in with the members hard won efforts at the
presses, a few too many "prints" popped out of the ink jet printer, like some
instant toaster confection passing for a real breakfast.

Jack

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From: "Philip Smith" <smithart@pacifier.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 11:25:31 -0800
Subject: [Baren 6679] Re: joining Baren

You said a mouthful Jack,...time, where do you find the time?,..it all goes
so fast,...enjoy the kids Jack,...they'll be out of the house and gone
before you know it,.. I think the key is to be a master of planning those
hours everyday,...it'll all work out you know,..it's just a matter of
keeping at it and staying focused,...but I don't know if that good weather
you have is friend or foe,..  all I think about these days with all of the
rain we have, is putting my feet in some warm sand,... best regards,..
Philip

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From: "barebone" <barebone@pacifier.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 11:45:06 -0800
Subject: [Baren 6680] Re: Baren Digest V9 #786 

A hearty welcome to my fellow new-comers! You Hawaii folk may be interested
in checking out the Northwest Print Council; Dodie Warren and Wayne Miyamoto
are both members - they can give you info. (I'm currently the Pres.,
therefore pushing the organization full time!) Artists residing in OR. WA,
ID, MT, Alaska, Hawaii, Alberta & British Columbia are eligible for
membership which is by jury process the 2nd weekend in April. Associate
Members can live anywhere they like. Membership for both is $50 per year + a
print of your choice. (Artists do special editions for this purpose). We do
8 outside exhibitions per year, an exchange with Croatia is in the works
right now, our last exchange was with the Peoples Republic of China,
National Academy of Art. If you want more information contact Marjorie Hagel
at <nwpc@pacifier.com>, and she'll send you everything you need to apply. Or
ask me - all questions answered cheerfully.   Well, back to cutting my block
- - I'm enjoying the chatter.  I'll add my thanks to Barbara Mason, too - she
went above and beyond and the party was wonderful!  Sharri

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From: "Philip Smith" <smithart@pacifier.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 11:57:02 -0800
Subject: [none]

I got a neat little book in today called "Sharpening with Waterstones" 
by Ian Kirby,..from Empire Pub. 3130 US 20, PO Box 717, Madison, NC 
27025-0717,...they are a bookseller,..but it was on sale for $5.00 
...they don't have a phone business,... but there are alot of good 
photos and it looks like alot of info in the 112 pages,....you might 
want to write them,...       Philip

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From: Jack Reisland <reislandj001@hawaii.rr.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 10:45:08 -1000
Subject: [Baren 6682] Re: joining Baren 

Philip Smith wrote:

> You said a mouthful Jack,...time, where do you find the time?,..it all goes
> so fast,...but I don't know if that good weather
> you have is friend or foe,..

I do remember being able to get more done when I lived in the North West,
specially in winter! Of course, an awful lot of it involved fire wood.

Jack

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From: David Bull <davebull@woodblock.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 07:28:29 +0900
Subject: [Baren 6683] Updates, info ... etc. 

The 'Show & Tell' board has been updated with the first photo from the
get-together in Portland last weekend ...

But I don't know who we're looking at until somebody sends me a caption
for it!

http://woodblock.com

***

An extensive listing of the activities and schedule for the 28th Annual
Southern Graphics Conference to be held next March in Miami has been
received.  If you're interested, mail directly to LISE DROST
<Ldrost@aol.com>.  They will have a web page up later this week with
information ... 
http://www.as.miami.edu/art

***

I'm way behind in offering 'welcomes' to all the recent new members, but
as usual, others have filled in for me ...  Hello everybody!

Bryan's project ...

> This year I finished a 20-year project, of 50
> portraits of fellow citizens in Dunedin, 

... sounds extremely interesting, and I certainly hope that we'll be
able to see some of these prints soon.  

***

For me, the countdown to my annual exhibition has started (it'll be from
the 20th to the 25th of January), and this afternoon Sadako-san and I
will be pasting up and preparing 400 copies of the first media flyer.  

The 'theme' of the exhibition will be 'Under Edo Light', and I'm
planning to have all the gallery lighting switched off, with the only
illumination for the prints coming from behind a long bank of paper
shoji screens that I'll be setting up down the length of one wall.  

The prints will not be in frames, but will be mounted on card, and
simply placed on a slightly angled stand just in front of the screens. 
Each card will have a label 'Please touch ...'

It's going to be a lot of preparation, but should go a long way towards
showing people just how to look at prints properly.

***

And although I don't like to end postings with bad news ... I'll be
off to Tokyo this afternoon for another in what is turning out to
be a continuous series of funerals this year.

Sato-san the printer (I never knew his first name) has passed away.
He wasn't one of the men so close to me that I could call him a 
personal friend, but he _did_ have quite an influence on me.  The
first was through a series of prints that he worked on, which had
a tremendous impact on me twenty-odd years ago, and the second was
something he said during filming for that documentary program last
year (but which didn't make it into the final 'cut').

I had asked the group (during a little get-together around a table
full of beer and snacks) about the differences between carvers and
printers. It seemed to me that the physical strength requirements 
are so different for the two, that it must sort of attract different
types of people.  I also thought (out loud) that carvers seemed to
'last longer', while printers seemed to 'wear out' a couple of decades
earlier.  (This was just from simple observation of the apparent ages
of the group members ...)

They all vigorously resisted such a categorization, and Sato-san spoke
for the printers.  "It's nothing to do with your physical age.  Look at
me, I'm past eighty now, and _I'm_ still working.  If you're a real 
printer, you don't need lots of physical strength; the baren will do
the work for you ..."

That statement make quite an impact on me at the time, and a couple of
months later, I called him up one day to see if I could come over and
see him work and chat with him.

His daughter answered the phone.  "No, he's in hospital."

I asked if I could perhaps visit him there, that perhaps he would be
appreciative of some 'company'.  (I said this with real mixed 
feelings - my own selfish desire to 'steal' his knowledge and 
experiences, and an honest desire to mitigate his presumed loneliness
in there).

"No, that's impossible."

End of conversation ...   It was of course impossible to press further,
and indeed perhaps he was too ill for any communication, I have no
idea.

I then heard nothing more until the phone call from another member of
the association last night - "Sato-san has passed away ..."

But whatever chances for communication were lost here, there _is_
still that one sentence left - and perhaps that one sentence does
indeed contain all that he needed to teach us ...

"... the baren will do the work for you ..."

Dave

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From: Julio.Rodriguez@walgreens.com
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 17:09:32 -0600
Subject: [Baren 6684] Re: Sato-san 

Dave;  very sorry to hear of the passing of yet another master and friend. The
videos  you have in your possession with all the cutting floor footage of these
great men in action/dialogue is becoming more of a treasure with every passing
day.

Live each day as if it was your last......

Cut!  Print!

Julio

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From: David Bull <davebull@woodblock.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 09:58:29 +0900
Subject: [Baren 6686] Re: 'Cross-Posting' etiquette 

Josephine asked:
> Hope I am not breaching some listproc ethic by forwarding 
> stuff? I feel if its useful, why not? Dave, is this OK?

Well, as you can see by the scrambled way the message turned out, using
your 'forwarding' button isn't the way to go ...

For those of you who think that any of the material you find elsewhere
is useful to members of this list (many, if not most, of whom are also
on 'PrintsL'), it's usually better to clip the parts you feel are valid,
and simply 'quote' them in your message.

Or alternatively do it the way I did this morning, by simply telling
everybody _about_ the news, and where they can get more info.

In general, 'cross-posting' is not the best way to do it - followed to
its ultimate conclusion, the two lists just become the same list ...

Thanx

Dave

P.S.  Re the recent virus attack: Yes, John is aware of it, and is
holding off the list until he gets 'fixed'.

P.P.S. As for the 'frames are a no no for sightless people who use
software that reads the site to them' point, I don't think it has much
validity for us.  I find it difficult to believe that many sightless
people are interested in what we do!

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From: "Philip Smith" <smithart@pacifier.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 22:38:47 -0800
Subject: [none]

Graham,... in school today, in the computer world, anything produced on 
paper is a print, not a reproduction,.. a copy of anything printed on a 
piece of paper out of a Deskjet is a Giclee,...  I think this 
homogenizing of terms is something the galleries and publishers do to 
put themselves in a better income level,... maybe it's because the 
craftsmanship of printmaking as we know it hasn't been where it once 
was,.....and Maybe one of the next next Baren Exchanges that might be a 
factor to incorporate, craftmanship! I get a publication called Art 
Business News,.. they sell "prints" by the carload,.. printed offset, 
just like a page out of a magazine,... for prices I can't believe,.. to 
a unknowledgeable public,....   Sorry gallery owners,..you know it's 
true!
I think all of us have a responsibility to point out these differences 
at every opportunity,.....don'tchaknow?              Philip

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From: Graham Scholes <gscholes@home.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 23:05:13 -0800
Subject: [Baren 6690] Re: Print is a print is a print..... 

>I think all of us have a responsibility to point out these differences at
>every  opportunity,.....don'tchaknow?      

Yes Philip it unfortunately is all too true.
My swearing was out of place, however, the frustration of hearing that a
Print Society sanctions Inkjet prints into the organizations was more than
the soul could bare.....as in handle.
Yes I do feel very strongly about the elevation of this hi tech stuff
infringing on the legitimate business of hand made prints.

We must all take a stand and educate the public to the reality hand made
prints.
We must never again allow the individuals and publishers to hood wink the
public that mechanically produced prints are anything more that Sofa
Art.....

Thanks for letting me get on my soap box  .....  again.

Graham

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From: Gary Luedtke <GLuedtke@compuserve.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 07:43:43 -0500
Subject: [Baren 6692] Re: Print is a print is a print..... charset=ISO-8859-1 

> We must never again allow the individuals and publishers to hood wink the
> public that mechanically produced prints are anything more that Sofa Art.....

Well, I apologize that only the first lines of my last posting made it
through cyberspace, but maybe that's just as well.   This gives me an
opportunity to clean it up some and recap.

Graham, I agree and disagree with you.   And I'm not quite sure where to
draw the line.   There is art as in an image, and there is art as in the
media that goes along with the image.   When we see one of Dave's surimono
on the internet, we can appreciate the design, the color, and some of the
other aspects of the print.   When we see it in person, we of course can
see more of the quality of a handmade print.   If you take that print and
print it off on an inkjet printer, you have something less than the
handmade version.   True.

If you are looking at it strictly from an image standpoint, whatever media
can convey the image becomes a valid one.   If a giclee print is sold as
nothing more than a computer print, it is as valid a  sale .   It is not
handmade, but that's alright if the buyer knows what he's getting.  If he
wants it just for the image, that's fine.   As to whether that makes it
"sofa art", I have mixed feelings on that too.    Any piece of art someone
puts over their sofa is sofa art.   If a Graham Scholes woodblock print
gets stuck on the wall over a sofa, because somebody thinks the coloring in
it goes well with the rest of the room decor,  your art has just become
sofa art.    

Maybe another point would illustrate this.    Photography.   We know there
are good photographers whose work is an artform.   We don't demean that at
because the photographs themselves are mechanically reproduced.   The depth
of what they can capture communicates itself through that media to the
viewer.   A good artist can use his media to convey his artistic vision to
an audience.   I contend that even computer images can be means of such
conveyance.   Period.

Gary

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End of Baren Digest V9 #787
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