[Baren] Daily Digest

Today's postings

[Baren 34309] Re: Fairy Tales exchange and other stuff... (Julio.Rodriguez # walgreens.com)
[Baren 34310] Re: Fairy Tales exchange and other stuff... ("Mike Lyon")
[Baren 34311] Re: Fairy Tales exchange and other stuff... (Dave Bull)
[Baren 34312] Re: A Ray Hudson Print (Annie Bissett)
[Baren 34313] RE: Adhesives ("Maria Arango")
[Baren 34314] Baren Member blogs: Update Notification (Blog Manager)
[Baren 34315] Re:Blogs and Woodcut/Woodblock. ("Mark Mason")

Message 1
From: Julio.Rodriguez # walgreens.com
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:31:59 -0500
Subject: [Baren 34309] Re: Fairy Tales exchange and other stuff...
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Mike,

Thank you so much for sharing that video and congratulations on your
colaboration project with Lawrence Lithography.....quite amazing and very
cool indeed !!!

I been admiring your work for many years now and indeed you do claim Baren
as a valuable asset....I think it was a post on Baren a few years back
that opened the door for you to the CCP Miniature Exchange (Center for
Comtemporary Printmaking) and as they say...the rest is history !

One thing I find terribly amusing is the fact that the CCP Miniature
required a very small image size (4X4" ?) and how now all your work has
taken on a very very large scale.....I find it funny in a good way ;-)

a very well deserved congratulations......Julio

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Message 2
From: "Mike Lyon"
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:52:22 -0500
Subject: [Baren 34310] Re: Fairy Tales exchange and other stuff...
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YUP! Tony Kirk, master printer (intaglio) at CCP has been an ANGEL to me,
really! I learned about the mini print competition at CCP from an April
Vollmer post to Baren, of course - sounded like a fun challenge, so I made
some prints and entered.

What's even FUNNIER than the tiny scale of the CCP mini-print competition is
that the run of 'good luck' began when my prints were REJECTED from the CCP
competition! Tony felt sorry for me, I think, and asked to exhibit them
'adjacent to' the show as a sort of consolation prize. Later, he invited me
to teach moku-hanga at CCP and pretty much seems to me to have made it his
life work to make me feel real good.

Of course, I've been lucky to have had several such mentors and great
teachers over the years. Fred Osborne (currently president of the Lyme
Academy), Rackstraw Downes, Neil Welliver, Mike Eisenmann, Stan Lewis,
Wilbur Niewald (especially Wilbur!), and Hiroki Morinoue all really
influenced me quite directly.

And that doesn't mention David Bull to whom I owe a great debt of thanks, of
course (too numerous to mention ALL the reasons), but one kinda humorous and
involuntary debt to Dave is from a vacation I took with my Mom, Dad, and
sister to Japan. Because we were going to Tokyo, I packed a bunch of my
woodcuts to show Dave when I visited and get his comment and advice. That
was all well and good (my dad did most of the talking, of course), but
because I'd taken the prints to show to Dave, when I visited Kyoto I still
had them with me. That got me my first solo exhibition at Go Yamao's
gallery, Ezoshi.

Anyway, I suppose that half of luck and coincidence is preparation and
decision - but the other half is. Well. LUCK and COINCIDENCE, of course!

I think it's all very funny, too!

Enjoying laughing with you, Julio and all,

Mike

Mike Lyon
Kansas City, MO
http://mlyon.com

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Message 3
From: Dave Bull
Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 08:05:03 +0900
Subject: [Baren 34311] Re: Fairy Tales exchange and other stuff...
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Mike wrote:
> And that doesn’t mention David Bull to whom I owe a great debt of
> thanks

Mike is very polite ... a bit too polite, I think! :-)

Sure, it's possible to build these 'chains' ... Dave starts Baren, Mike
joins Baren, Mike visits Dave with prints, Mike gets offer of
exhibition .. . etc. etc. but what Mike is skating over here is the
one single factor that underlies his success/progress through these
endeavours - the guy never stops working and innovating! Mike's got
ideas ... yeah, we've all got ideas and plans ... but Mike turns them
into real stuff, and _good_ real stuff. Without that, all the rest is
just noise!

(But thanks for spreading around the love, Mike - you're one of the
people I most respect in this field, both for the things you produce,
the work you do, and your all-round 'good-guy' attitude ... (Wow!)

Dave

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Message 4
From: Annie Bissett
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:59:56 -0400
Subject: [Baren 34312] Re: A Ray Hudson Print
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Julio asked if the Ray Hudson print I saw was the print that was in
the Baren calendar. No, a different one. Turns out that the store I
was in is owned by the same family that runs Snow Farm, a nearby
retreat center that offers art workshops. Ray sometimes teaches
woodblock there. Here's a link to Snow Farm and a print that looks a
bit like the one I saw at the outdoor store:
http://www.snowfarm.org/rayhudson/index.html

Viza, congratulations on your show. You're in great company.

Mike, hope you're feeling better.

best,
Annie

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Message 5
From: "Maria Arango"
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:43:19 -0700
Subject: [Baren 34313] RE: Adhesives
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Hi Lee,

Thanks for your very complete answers!

I haven't had any problem since I started using a little PVA with my rice or
wheat paste (usually wheat). The main concern is, well, actually rain! No,
seriously. Almost all my art festivals are outside in very diverse weather
conditions. Even though I protect my artwork with awnings, the cool mornings
turn into hot days and sometimes the mountain gods send rain our way. Add to
that the vibration of being inside a moving trailer for about six or seven
hours and you can see I'm looking for extreme durability in as archival a
package as I can compromise.

I have only had one mount fail and it was a very hot and humid festival. For
hingeing delicate papers I usually use precut Japanese hinges from Daniel
Smith or my own scraps of various Japanese papers for my hinges with wheat
paste/PVA. Otherwise I use linen tape.
For indoor displays I use straight wheat paste and have had no problems.

My concern regarding reversibility comes when I mount very heavy and
irregular hand-made paper (unsized) in a float mount, where the entire piece
is adhered to an acid-free backing. Since the edges of the paper are heavily
deckled and the paper very textured, I adhere the entire sheet of paper to
the backing, leaving the edges free floating. This becomes more of a
permanent mount and so I have been searching for strong yet reversible
adhesives that don't fail in the conditions described above.
I'm making even larger works next year, yikes!

Thanks again,
Maria

Maria Arango
www.1000woodcuts.com
www.artfestivalguide.info

>>>I don't think anything in the art world is all that far apart - what
works well in a museum should work fine anywhere (well, except in the rain.)
Which adhesive is best really depends on what you are looking for. In the
museum we are looking for the hinges to let go (break) before the art work
tears so we want them to be weaker, I would never use PVA for this purpose,
it is simply too strong and would strengthen the hinge paper as well as
stick permanently to the work. Paste/PVA mixes separate on the basis that
the paste is water soluble but depending on how well they are mixed the PVA
usually stays behind in 'lumps' that have to be scraped off mechanically.
To cope with the texture I would paste out my hinge on blotter to partially
dry it then gently 'tap' it into place with a brush then, if I thought the
paper was cockling I would use a piece of felt and weight to press it. It's
not a quicker way but it is 'archivaler.' (snipped)

Can you give me more information about what happened to your previous
hinges??

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Message 6
From: Blog Manager
Date: 19 Oct 2007 03:55:42 -0000
Subject: [Baren 34314] Baren Member blogs: Update Notification
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Message 7
From: "Mark Mason"
Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 09:20:15 +0100
Subject: [Baren 34315] Re:Blogs and Woodcut/Woodblock.
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Aine wrote:
I agree about the blog label being kept more open, i.e. that we should use
printmaking as opposed to just woodblock.

Hi Aine,
The solution being discussed to focus blog notifications on Baren Forum to printing issues allows you to decide whatever label YOU want to use on your Blog. It isn't a case of deciding on one label for everyone to use.

So yes, you could choose the label "printmaking", and add that label to all the posts you write that you'd like Baren Forum to catch.

Then email/contact Julio (our Blog Manager) and give him the following information: your Blog address and the label you've decided to use.

I don't know if it matters, but it wouldn't hurt to decide if you're going to use a capital letter: "Printmaking" or not. Either way keeping it constant would be important.

I hope this helps everyone.

Woodcuts or Woodblocks...
I'm from the UK too, and I wouldn't call the Japanese water based method of printing a Woodcut Print. I'd call it a Woodblock Print.
I suppose it's interchangeable for a lot of people (English artist and printmaker John Platt called his book "Colour Woodcuts"), but I've always viewed European oil based prints, cut on the plank, printed using a roller and press and usually only monochrome (like the work of Durer and members of the English Arts and Crafts movement) as Woodcuts and water based prints, colour or monochrome, printed by hand with a baren as Woodblocks. It's a fuzzy area though as a lot of modern Japanese print artists from the 1950's used oils on their woodblocks but still used a baren.

Things get more interesting when for a while in Europe to brighten up early printed children's books, monochrome oil based engravings (using endgrain blocks) were coloured using water colour plank woodblocks!

Cheers,

Mark.

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Baren Archives

[Baren] - the International Forum for Woodblock Printmaking

Volume: 41 / Number: 4085

Friday, 19th of October, 2007

Today's postings

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