Just thought I would point out an up-and-coming project in the works.

The Dirty Printmakers of America is a collective of printmakers founded by members of Drive By Press and other accomplished printmakers promoting the education, awareness and democratization of printmaking to the masses. The DPA board has been arranging a portfolio exchange, called States of the State, surveying  artists who specialize in certain print techniques. I was invited to participate in the relief portfolio. This project will consume the rest of my free time from now until mid-October, so I’ll hopefully blog some progression posts (keyword is “hopefully,” I might want to keep it a surprise until the very end).

Anyway, explore the site, check out the other artist participants and stay tune to other updates in the near future.

*Exhibition announcement taken from this page . Also,  I’m dealing with weird formatting issues that’s probably due to the copy/pasting and the wordpress code clashing (the weird misplaced red text)… I’m making due with what I’m able to fix. -Megan

‘SHY RABBIT Print National 2′
A National Juried Exhibition

September 4 – October 17, 2010

Juror:
Yuji Hiratsuka
Professor of Art, Oregon State University, Corvallis

Please join us for an Artists’ Reception on:
Saturday, September 4
5:00pm to 8:00pm
Several of the artists will be in attendance

Featuring 90 fine-art prints by 45 Printmakers
representing 21 states, Canada and the U.K.
using traditional to contemporary printmaking techniques

Also showing works by:
Juror:  Yuji Hiratsuka
(in the SHY RABBIT Foyer Gallery)

SHY RABBIT Print National 2′ SHY RABBIT Art Center is honored to announce the opening of the Second Annual SHY RABBIT Print National 2: A National Juried Exhibition.

This prestigious Juried exhibit came about as the result of an enormously well attended and highly applauded Inaugural Exhibition – the SHY RABBIT Print National, 2009, Juror: Michael D. Barnes – an event that was so successful that the decision was made at that time to continue it as an Annual event.

Local artist and renowned Printmaker, Ron Fundingsland stated when asked about the 2009 show,”I would call it an exceptionally impressive gathering of prints executed by an equally exceptional group of seasoned professors and emerging independents from across the country.”Fundingsland went on to say what a rare opportunity it was to see such high quality prints exhibited in the Four Corners area.

The Juror selected for SHY RABBIT Print National 2, 2010 is Yuji Hiratsuka, Professor of Art, Oregon State University, Corvallis.

Hiratsuka’s work is represented in numerous collections including: The British Museum, Tokyo Central Museum, New York Museum of Modern Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Library of Congress, Cincinnati Art Museum, Portland Art Museum and the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, San Francisco.

The Call for Entries for the Print National 2 resulted in the receipt of 505 submissions from 150 artists located throughout the U.S and abroad.

After a painstaking and often difficult review process, Hiratsuka selected a total of 90 prints for inclusion, representing 45 fine-art Printmakers.

Hiratsuka writes in his Juror’s Statement:

“I was very honored to have been invited to serve as the juror of the Shy Rabbit Print National 2 Exhibition. I would like to thank Michael & Denise Coffee for providing me with the great opportunity to view the wide spectrum of the contemporary printmaking taking place in the USA.”

“Overall, the prints submitted were of very high quality and were visually impressive. It was a difficult task to trim the exhibition to less than one hundred pieces out of the approximately 500 works submitted for this year’s competition.”

“The criteria I set for inclusion was based on technical execution, presentation, originality and consistency of the work presented. In other words, regardless of color or b/w, or any printmaking media used I selected the print if it had a compelling visual message or had intuitive, intriguing elements which drew my attention.”

This exhibition is FREE and open to the public.

For more information on SHY RABBIT, please Click Here.

I’ve been taking an undergraduate class this semester. I’m allowed to take up to three if I choose in my graduate education. This Artist’s Book class is the first one. Every class opportunity before this I  somehow rationalize not taking it or had a sneaky way to learn the techniques without spending 5 hours a week in a class. This class I couldn’t refuse. It’s been rewarding to finally learn to correctly make books. It gets frustrating to learn from books and tutorials. I learn the majority of what I know myself, but not the little essentials that make the book expertly crafted. The biggest lesson had to be the paper grain, which is not covered anywhere I looked. Now my folds don’t look so shoddy and my covers don’t bow.

Above is a box/book that was collaborative assignment as well as the meander accordion book (below). I made my own book as well, but I’m saving it for its own post later.

-Megan

Okay, so I bought one of those Chartpak blender markers last year when I was attempting transfers. Since it didn’t go so well with the first trial, I gave up on the technique and worked with wintergreen oil. I’m starting a linocut for a book and wanted to shortcut some of the drawing. I’ve done gel medium transfers as well as wintergreen oil and found both to be either finicky or disastrous when it came to the printing. I’ll argue that those failures could have been my own fault, but I decided to give the Chartpak blender another go. It worked pretty well. I used a spoon to help the transfer along, so that might have been the secret all along. The one part that annoyed me however was the marker’s juice was almost depleted by the end of what you see in the photo. I hardly used the maker, maybe three or four times. Kind of wasteful financially in my opinion. Oh, also the marker is very fume-y, even in a spacious room. Gag.

Anyway, I guess I would only recommend this for small projects, sketcbhooks, and stuff like this.

Helpful link: click click