Skip to main content

The Things I Notice

Posting has been light lately due to all kinds of other stuff, like travelling and writing for Hyperallergic. As an addendum to the piece that I wrote about The Roy Lichtenstein retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago, here's something I spotted that didn't fit into the article.

In examining his seminal pop art pictures from the sixties, I noticed that the way they were painted was not completely flat, machine like, and artificial. Not only could you see variation in the brushmarks, but the sides of some of the pictures retained drips:


See that blue drip at the top left of the painting? Now look at one of the shaped canvasses that Lichtenstein was making in the last decade of his life:


Almost exactly in the same spot. It could just be a coincidence, of course. Or it could be one of those apparently insignificant things that an artist remembers, and tries to formalise in his studio practice many years after the first accident happens. In the first case, Roy must have seen the drip over the edge, but decided to leave it there precisely as a sign of human activity. Then much later, he is trying to get his shapes not just to the edge of the frame but beyond, so he constructs the shape of the stretcher to incorporate into the design what was once just a random drip.

Popular posts from this blog

Restoring my Printing Press

I've just finished restoring and assembling my large etching press -- a six week process involving lots of rust removal, scrubbing with steel wool, and repainting. Here is a photo of the same kind of press from the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative: And here is a short YouTube video of me testing the press, making sure the motor still works after nearly seven years of lying in storage:

Brancusi in Plastic

Artist Mary Ellen Croteau is showing these columns made from recycled plastic cartons and lids in the window of the Columbia College bookstore on Michigan Avenue. They are a playful homage to Brancusi's "Endless Columns", with a serious environmental message for our times: Image copyright Inhabitat.com and Mary Ellen Croteau Mary Ellen also runs a wonderful experimental art gallery in a window space in west Chicago, called Art on Armitage . I will be exhibiting a mixed media piece there during August 2012.

How to etch a linoleum block

Linoleum as a material for printmaking has been used for nearly a hundred years now. Normally, you cut an image out using special gouges similar to woodcut tools, cutting away the lino around the image you want to print. This is called relief printmaking, because if you look at the block from the side, the material that remains stands up in relief from the backing material. You then roll ink with a brayer over the surface of the block, place paper over it, and either print by hand or run it through a press. You can do complex things this way (for example, reduction linocuts), but the beauty of the process is that it is quick, simple, and direct. Incised lino block, from me.redith.com Etched lino block, from Steve Edwards A few years ago, I saw some prints that were classified as coming from etched linoleum blocks, and I loved the textures I saw in them. In the last few months, I've been trying to use this technique in my own studio, learning about it as one does these d