Praeterita

Here is another method of making a collagraph with the inexpensive aluminum flashing tiles I talked about in a previous post. It's very simple and effective. The little movie included in this post illustrates it step by step, but here's a summary: Draw directly on the plate (aluminum flashing tile) with Elmer's glue, or a brush dipped in the glue. Shake carborundum grit over the wet glue. Tip the plate up to shake off excess grit. When the plate is dry, seal it with a layer of acrylic gloss medium (I realised after I made the movie that I missed out this step!). You can then ink and print the plate in the regular way: Use a brush or piece of card to drag ink across the plate. The carborundum grit holds the ink very well. Wipe away the excess ink using a piece of tarlatan. Place damp printmaking paper over the plate, then run it through the press. For the slideshow, I inked the plate "a la poupee", which means to use different colours of ink on the same ...

A contact monoprint by me from 2007 One of the techniques that we'll start with in the Interlochen printmaking workshop is called contact monoprint. It's a very quick and satisfying way to make a print. What you do is roll out a thin layer of ink on a sheet of glass or plexiglass, place a piece of paper over that, then draw on the paper. This brings the paper into contact with the ink - the heavier you draw, the darker the impression will be. When you lift the paper and turn it over, you see a unique 'fuzzy' style of line that is very much a printmaking mark. Here are some contact monoprints from a class I taught a few years ago - only one of whom had any prior art experience:   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Here is another artist's book that I made at the end of last year. It's called 'Coalyard'. 8" x 15", accordion book, bound in brown bookcloth. Method: take eight images of industrial buildings and mineworks. Print on tan Hahnemuhle printmaking paper using paper-litho transfer. Write a short remembered instance relating to my miner-grandfather and the local mines where I grew up. Print narrative in continuous line across middle of the images:   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

This week's Meditation is on a piece by Indonesian artist Dadang Christanto that combines installation and performance:    Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Deborah Doering talking about a show of her own work at Finestra Art Space What's it like to be a working artist, and also to run your own gallery? I posed this and other questions to Chicago artist Deborah Adams Doering. In addition to having an impressive exhibition record, Deborah has run a highly-regarded gallery out of the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue, Chicago, for a few years. This is the first in a series of interviews with artists and gallery owners who reflect on what makes them tick. Philip : Tell us a little about yourself. You're an artist who runs a gallery, yes? Deborah : Yes, first and foremost I consider myself a visual artist. I create three-dimensional installations, based on my two-dimensional drawings, paintings and prints. In the past few years, I have used a "core language of form," which I also call "Code" as a point of departure for both 2D works and the installations. My installations evolved from having rente...

I just finished making a new artist's book. It's a project book to accompany the two-person exhibition  I did with Patty last year, based on her missionary-grandfather's letters and photos from the early 1900s. It's 4 inches high x 11 inches wide, covered in brown book cloth, Japanese stab binding with beaded side tail: The pages inside contain images of the source material, plus the prints that I made out of that material: I've been making more of these artist's books in the last few months, and I might post images of a few more.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

As I said in my first post on the subject, Patty and I started this class after seeing how certain artists and writers used another medium – a writer who drew, or an artist who wrote. There are some writers whose drawings and paintings are well known – the nineteenth century English writer of nonsense verse, Edward Lear; Winston Churchill; D. H. Lawrence. After doing further research, we turned up some names that really surprised us. A lot of authors from the nineteenth century left behind paintings and drawings in their notebooks and archives. Some of them, like a competent watercolour by Charlotte Bronte, probably came about because middle class women of the time were expected to be able to paint a little, play music a little, sew a little, instead of getting a formal education. Now that time has raised Bronte far beyond the intellectual level of her male peers, we can look at the painting not as a genteel diversion for a Sunday afternoon, but as a form of expression that was relat...

My wife, Patty, teaches in the fiction writing department at Columbia College Chicago. I am co-teaching a specialty class with her called Journal + Sketchbook: Ways of Seeing, and quite often in the classes Patty tells the students to slow down. The students are required regularly to read aloud from their journals, and if they are reading too fast, Patty says: "S-l-o-o-o-o-o-w, down!" If they ask whether they can use their laptops to produce work, Patty tells them that it's better if they write longhand, in their journals. Why? Because this forces them to s-l-o-o-o-o-w down, to think more about what they are writing, to feel more connected to their process. In the drawing and sketchbook part of the class, I generally start the students off with quick, gestural drawing, beginning with 10-second drawings and only gradually working towards giving them more time. But I agree with the order to s-l-o-o-o-o-w down. Making visual art can be about the quick, spontaneous gestu...