Andrew Stone Santa Cruz, California USA
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'The espresso genie grants just ONE wish...'
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Artist's comments ...
Andrew Stone (Santa Cruz, CA, USA)
"The espresso genie grants just ONE wish..."
Location: Santa Cruz, California
Block: alder keyblock; one white oak backround block; 7 shina blocks
Ink: (Guerra) Pigment Dispersions/sumi/rice paste
Paper: Kizuki Hanga 135g/m2 from McClains
Edition: open; 40 printed in this color combination
If a genie showed up one morning while you were getting ready to go to work what would you wish for? Lower carbon emissions? World Peace? Food and jobs for those that need them? Boatloads of money? Or just the immediate gratification of being able to go back to bed for another hour?
I'm an espresso drinker and the dark oily beans and elusive and fugitive crema of a good cup were the origins of this print coupled with an interest in and appreciation for Italian and French advertising posters of the early 1900s with their very bold designs, minimal lettering and vibrant colors and drawing. This was also an attempt to try and get vibrant color into my prints using pigment dispersions and less paste. I had some of the usual technical problems of the thick paper picking up some spotting on the keyblock and the bigger problem of having sumi from the keyblock offset onto all the later blocks during printing. This is seen best by the murky pink lips that started out as a lovely jewel tone magenta and in the coffee cup that should have been much whiter/less gray. This was offset by the thicker papers better stability which allowed me to get pretty tight registration despite lots of repeat impressions off multiple blocks.
"Espresso Genie....just one wish"
9 blocks, 13 colors, 17 impressions. Moku Hanga print with water based pigments and rice paste.
I printed 40 in this color version and its as close to an "edition" as I'm capable of..there's a fair amount of variation in the success of the bokashi printing to the table and the genie's head but it wasn't a true E.Varie where I was attempting different variations but the best efforts at uniformity of an amateur printer.
P.S. I intended to trim the finished print down to the required 3X9 inch format but cut one down and felt it really needed the white border to accent the color...but feel free to trim your copy down if you need to...