Baren Digest Wednesday, 26 June 2002 Volume 19 : Number 1877 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mike Lyon Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 14:11:14 -0500 Subject: [Baren 18479] Re: membership in Baren Wow! Loved what you wrote, Maria, and couldn't agree more! I am so sorry to have mis-addressed what was intended to be a 'private' message so that it was broadcast it to the BarenForum list instead of the address I intended. But maybe some good will come from my mistake... I sure love BarenForum, too! Sincerely, Mike At 11:10 AM 6/25/2002 -0700, Maria Arango wrote: >Dear beloved Baren members, > >I like it here. In life there are few places where you feel you belong. >Baren is a wonder full place. > >Health to all, >Maria Mike Lyon mailto:mikelyon@mlyon.com http://www.mlyon.com ------------------------------ From: "Bill and/or Lynda Ritchie" Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 16:28:55 -0700 Subject: [Baren 18480] Re: Helen Frankenthaler Regarding the works of Frankenthaler and collaboration, I was one of those art professors who was almost taken out in handcuffs, but I skipped out before they could finish dialing the campus police. It was a good thing for the art school, because I was advocating collaboration not only among artists and the musicians next door and dancers three buildings removed, but also the engineers, physicians, nurses and dentist on what they call at the UW, "the lower campus." Boy, was it fun! But, like all things fun on a campus, it appeared to be too exuberant. Now I have the whole world as my campus. And what I talk about, and walk about, is a world that is trying to be born as an old world is dying. This is the age, as I like to say, of digital reproduction. Maybe the rules are such that collaboration in the arts means some art forms--especially those the roots of which are in printing images from templates (hands make good templates, for example)--are better for the way they relate to other art forms, such as music and oral traditions. Performance, in other words. I loved working on the Music portfolio, for example, for I was able to refresh my thoughts about music and printmaking as similar to one another, the act of repeating an image again and again being like replaying music, and making your own instruments, or using your own voice, either solo or in accompaniment with other living people or those who have been long since gone from our lifetime. I think baren is a great listserve. I thank everyone--present and past--who thought to start and maintain it through all this time. - - Bill Mailing address: 500 Aloha #105 Seattle WA 98109 Professor's page: http://www.seanet.com/~ritchie Virtual Art Gallery: http://www.myartpatron.com First Portal to Ritchie's Game: www.artsport.com Telephone: (206) 285-0658 ------------------------------ From: "M. Pereira" Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 23:52:44 -0300 Subject: [Baren 18481] Re: membership in Baren I agree with . LOVE, Murilo ------------------------------ From: "Jean Womack" Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 21:04:26 -0700 Subject: [Baren 18482] Re: Baren Digest V19 #1876 I have heard some discussion about paper to be used in printmaking, specifically Hanga printmaking. Why should it worry me about which side of the paper I should print on? My professor at San Francisco State said to print on the rough side. Graham says to print on the smooth side. It occurs to me that the Americans like to print on the rough side. The Canadians, and perhaps the British and Australians as well, favor the smooth side. I don't know which side of the paper the Japanese print on. Is there a Japanese person on this group who can share that information with us or who would even want to? Why would anyone care about this? Does it really make a difference to a collector which side is printed on, whether or not there is a deckle, a tear, or cut kento edges? I don't know. I only knew one collector who collected my work and he died. He was John Haley, who used to teach at UC Berkeley. He used to buy my paintings for a doctor who ran the county clinic. I see Haley's work hanging in the local Kaiser Hospital every time I go to the doctor. Haley got old and died and I never got to know him very well. I don't know why I didn't try to get to know him better while he was alive. The only collector I know now, collects oil paintings, not prints. I am a collector, but I cannot afford to buy anything over $50. Obviously I am a collector because that's one reason I participate in exchanges. When I want to make alot of money selling art, I paint watercolors and oils. Not everyone can be Maria Arango. I just want to be able to keep some of the art work I do. Now I have hundreds of prints, good, bad and indifferent, piled up everywhere, so I am starting to get over it. Perhaps collectors worry about whether the art is real or just a digital image. That's one reason we give brown bag demonstrations and write them up for a printmaking journal. My cartoonist friend occasionally used to sit in the local bars, drawing and inking his cartoons. There was no doubt about his genius and his ability. However he could not protect himself against the low prices art collectors were willing to pay when he was desperate for a drink. What a tragedy. But I digress. There has to be room for black sheep in our society, lest we become the master race. Anyway, it seems to me that the rough side of the paper would reflect more light, as it bounces among the rough edges. That's why watercolorists like the rough paper. We should be sensitive to regional differences. If this is a regional difference and not an absolute value, like clean margins, we should try to identify it as such. In such a case, a paper seller might be inclined to supply paper with the attributes that are favored in the area of the world he (or she) is selling to. (Dirty margins would indicate that it not machine-made, wouldn't they?) I began by making woodcuts at the Richmond Art Center, here in California where I live, in the 1960's. Sorry I cannot remember the name of my teacher now. I was pregnant at the time and my attention was very much on myself. I did not think that woodcuts would loom so large in my life as they do now. We made prints on pine wood. The ideal that was presented to us were the woodcut prints of Gauguin. I didn't even know about Japanese prints, except that they influenced Van Gogh. Black and white prints on pine wood were good enough for me for years and years. I do not have a great desire to print with the precision that Graham Scholes teaches. However, I do have a great desire to know how to do it. I want to be able to do it if I want to do it, and not just not do it because I can't do it. My ideal is much looser printing than I am doing now. In a way, that is a greater challenge than being able to register blocks correctly. For that, I will need another teacher or environment--just get back to basics, I guess. Sorry for the long, rambling message. I guess they will be taking me out in cuffs pretty soon, if I don't edit my copy better. Jean Eger Womack ------------------------------ From: Legreenart@cs.com Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 00:15:20 EDT Subject: [Baren 18483] Re: Baren Digest V19 #1875, Print Exhibit Stonemetal Press is exhibiting work by Leslie Koptcho this July and August. The hos id called Next to S(k)in. I think these prints, though not woodcut, are incredible and invite anyone that visits the San Antonio, Texas, USA area to come by. The gallery has rather limited hours, 1-5 Fri - Sun., but we live close, and will be glad to meet you there 9am to 9pm most any day. Hope to see some of you visit, Le Green ------------------------------ From: "Lee and Barbara Mason" Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 02:49:49 -0700 Subject: [Baren 18484] large prints I opened the large print box today and what a great bunch of prints! I denfinitely will do this again, even though I suffered with problems with my block. Some how I damaged it in the press, unheard of by anyone I know. Just a fluke thing but it made the second half of the edition different than the first half with the inking. You would would think that after 20 years of printmaking I could do an edition without damaging the block... What a great bunch of prints. My only sadness is that I have too many prints and too few walls. Guess I will rotate them. Thanks to all who participated and especially to Rudolph who had such a large mess in his studio trying to send them out to everyone. Three years is a good aim for doing this again....lets start now so we can meet the deadlines! Ha. Wonderful work by all! best to you all, Barbara ------------------------------ From: michael schneider Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 11:59:48 +0200 Subject: [Baren 18485] Re: Baren Digest V19 #1876 Jean Womack wrote: >I have heard some discussion about paper to be used in printmaking, >specifically Hanga printmaking. Why should it worry me about which side of >the paper I should print on? My professor at San Francisco State said to >print on the rough side. Graham says to print on the smooth side. It >occurs to me that the Americans like to print on the rough side. The >Canadians, and perhaps the British and Australians as well, favor the smooth >side. I don't know which side of the paper the Japanese print on. Is there >a Japanese person on this group who can share that information with us or >who would even want to? > > I am not A Japanese printmaker, but if you allow, I would like to say some words to the interesting topic. The Japanese regard the smooth side of the paper as the front side and the rough side as the back. I never saw anybody in Japan printing on the back side. When you look at traditional japanese books you will see that the pages are folded before the binding, so the sheets are only used for printing on the smooth side. The difference comes from the production process. The smooth side is the one that is press to a smooth surface, either wood or steel, for drying. The sheets are pressed against this drying plate using a large brush. Therefor you can see the brush strokes on the backside of the paper. In Europe many printmaker do use the rough side of the paper to print on. I did also before I went to Japan to study. The reason is that I found the rough structure appealing and interesting. As do I believe many printmaker. At that time I never thought that the smooth side could be the front. Only when asked by my professor in Japan, why I use the backside of the paper to print on I realized that I never cared but followed what I thought looks good. But I always had a problem when using the back side of the paper. The surface is not so compact and fibers start to stick on the plate and after pulling some prints, the fibers pile up and inflict the quality of the print. This problem gets worse when using oil color to print. In general you can say that collectors collect what they like, no matter on what paper , with what margin , etc. Some collectors of course take a close look on the material and way it is treated. Rough margins are regarded as sign of quality paper when using western paper, not necessarily when using japanese paper. Kento registration marks are never a reason to doubt the quality of a print. The best way to produce a print appealing to a collector is to work as careful as possible, have no fingerprints on the margin, no visible overlapping of colors that obviously were not planned and so on, I am sure everybody on baren knows what I mean. I hope I could contribute to answering your questions. michael schneider PS: I do not feel intimidated, but I would like to remember you that even though the language of use in baren is English, it has become a world wide forum that consists not only of Americans, Canadians, British and Australian members. ------------------------------ From: "Lee and Barbara Mason" Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 03:14:43 -0700 Subject: [Baren 18486] smooth vs rough My own experience with japanese paper, (pretty limited), is that the smooth side of the paper has more paste or sizing. It seems to hold the color better without any bleeding. Maybe this is true of both sides, but I seem to print on the smooth side, even though sometimes I like the other side better for asethetic reasons. Maybe it is like the woman who always cooked her hams cut in two pieces and cooked in two pans, as her grandmother and mother had done. One day she asked the grandmother why they used two pans in their family and the answer was because the grandmother did not have a pan large enough for a whole ham....... Maybe either side is fine, depending on preference of the artist. Anyone with more knowledge here on this????? Best to all, Barbara ------------------------------ From: michael schneider Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 12:53:36 +0200 Subject: [Baren 18487] Re: smooth vs rough The paper is made out of the same material and composition through out. There is no difference between the front ( smooth) and the back ( rough) side of the paper. The difference comes from the drying process as described in my replay to baren digest V19#1876. Usually printmaker do apply the dosa to the paper by their own. In this case you can choose the side. But the smooth side will always be better for printing. ( for the reason see the mentioned post) When you buy washi that has dosa already applied, the dosa will always be on the front side. The front side will hold then color better and does not show bleeding. In my last post I forgot to mention that hand made washi is never perfectly white. A washi without any darker spots or darker fibers can not be hand made. Hand made wshi has a natural tone, if not, it has been bleached with chemicals. michael schneider Lee and Barbara Mason wrote: >My own experience with japanese paper, (pretty limited), is that the smooth >side of the paper has more paste or sizing. It seems to hold the color >better without any bleeding. Maybe this is true of both sides, but I seem to >print on the smooth side, even though sometimes I like the other side better >for asethetic reasons. > >Maybe it is like the woman who always cooked her hams cut in two pieces and >cooked in two pans, as her grandmother and mother had done. One day she >asked the grandmother why they used two pans in their family and the answer >was because the grandmother did not have a pan large enough for a whole >ham....... > >Maybe either side is fine, depending on preference of the artist. Anyone >with more knowledge here on this????? >Best to all, >Barbara > > > ------------------------------ From: Mike Lyon Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 06:52:15 -0500 Subject: [Baren 18488] Re: Baren Digest V19 #1876 Dear Jean, The rough/smooth side thing has to do with the way the paper is made and sized. I print on the smooth side. The sizing (smoother side) helps the pigment stand up on the paper and not 'spread out' as much. The more heavily sized, the 'crisper' the impression. Without size the ink soaks into the paper more and the edges tend to be fuzzier and details can be 'lost'. Washi can be purchased unsized, sized on one side, sized on both sides, heavily sized. You can make and apply your own sizing, too. You can read about sizing in the encyclopedia at http://www.barenforum.org/encyclopedia/entries/016_02/016_02_frame.html Mike At 09:04 PM 6/25/2002 -0700, Jean Eger Womack wrote: >I have heard some discussion about paper to be used in printmaking, >specifically Hanga printmaking. Why should it worry me about which side of >the paper I should print on? Mike Lyon mailto:mikelyon@mlyon.com http://www.mlyon.com ------------------------------ From: "April Vollmer" Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 08:23:45 -0400 Subject: [Baren 18489] Board Support Shireen, you are right about the excitement of shared ideas in printmaking, an important part. Thank you. And I wanted to thank Maria, too for writing about the nature of Baren. I am not sure if newcomers realize the extent of the investment that our Board has made in making Baren Forum what it is today. It didn't just happen. I know the hours it takes to maintain the website, the store and the other activities of Baren. So when the board 'bans' someone it is not without reason, and I am happy to trust their judgment. If it makes their job easier, let's say okay! April www.aprilvollmer.com ------------------------------ End of Baren Digest V19 #1877 *****************************