It is officially summer and already temperatures are in the hundreds here in Texas. As a result, I am spending much more time inside and actually getting some work done on my blocks. Through no conscious decision-making, my next design turned out to be another member of the Avian Class of mammals. This time, however, I chose to focus on one of the most popular of birds, the Peacock.

Interestingly, my inspiration for this piece originated in the border of the design. The border is based off a Pencraft Ornamental Border design that I discovered in the 1925 Barhart Brothers & Spindler Type Specimen Book.

I am planning on vectorizing the border and putting up for download, but for now, the above image will have to serve as a place holder. It is a scan from the Specimen Book (p. 385).

The rest of the image followed the border. The border is Art Nouveau and inspired the style of the bird. The peacock is stylized, stressing flowing, curvilinear lines.

The remaining inspiration, Japonism, is only fitting given its popularity among Impressionists and other artists working during the 1880’s-1905 when Art Nouveau was popular. From April 25-May 22, 1890, the École des Beaux-Arts featured a survey exhibition on the history of Japanese woodblock prints.* Many artists, including Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), and James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), were profoundly inspired by these prints and began to incorporate elements of East Asian art into their works. This trend proliferated and continues today. The cherry blossom tree in the background of this piece pays homage to the Japonism movement.

Finally, here is the final sketch for the block:

*Source: Elizabeth Hutton Turner, et al., Pierre Bonnard, Early and Late, (Washington D.C.: Philip Wilson Publishers in collaboration with The Philips Collection, 2002), 190.

Has it really been a year since my last post?! With graduate school and my thesis almost finished (crossing fingers!) I finally have more time to devote to my art. Long, long ago I began work on a tri-color flamingo print. I can now say that I have finished carving the blocks! Now it is time to print.

I had a little mishap with the blue block and had to re-carve it. Silly me, I cut on the outside of the line, not the inside, so of course it was not going to register properly. Yet another reason why it has taken me so long to get this project going.

But hopefully this time it will work. More updates after I print them!

Here is a short video I shot of my exhibit. It is just a quick walk-though of my show, but it gives a sense of the space, which is missing in the photographs. The space really allows the groupings I created to shine on their own and to interact with the others. The video also shows how a viewer is supposed to walk through the gallery.

I cannot believe that it has been almost a year since my last post. In the intervening period, I have been very busy and I finally have something to show for it. Recently I designed and installed a print exhibition at the Blanton Museum of Art. The title of the show is “Ave Maria: Devotional Prints in the Age of Martin Luther.” Here is the blurb as a description of the exhibit:

“Long a pillar of Christianity, devotion to the Virgin Mary was transformed by Martin Luther’s challenges to the papacy begun in 1517 and recorded in the profusion of prints churned out by newly established presses across Europe. This exhibition, featuring examples by Albrecht Dürer and Marcantonio Raimondi, explores the changes Marian imagery underwent in the 1500s and the role devotional prints played in worshippers’ lives.”

Essentially, what I did was to create a few groups of 3-4 prints each, which would highlight different aspects of Marian Devotion in the late medieval and early modern periods. Those groups are: (1) The Young Virgin’s role in the Incarnation as shown through Annunciation scenes, (2) Saint Luke Painting the Virgin, (3) The Virgin in Pilgrimage, (4) The Virgin as Mother shown through scenes of the Holy Family and Rest on the Flight Imagery, (5) The Virgin as Compassionate shown through Pièta imagery, (6) The Virgin as an Object of Devotion, and (7) The Virgin as Queen of Heaven.

The show is up from March 21 – July 5. The Blanton Museum of Art is located at The University of Texas at Austin, MLK at Congress, Austin, Texas 78701.

I took some photographs and a short video of the show. I will post the video later, but here are some photos along with a list of prints on display.

Albrecht Dürer
The Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels, 1518 —————>

Marcantonio Raimondi
The Annunciation, circa 1506, after Albrecht Dürer

Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio
The Annunciation, 1536-1537, after Titian

Egidius Horbeck
The Annunciation and the Heavenly Glory, 1581, after Cornelis Cort, after Frederico Zuccaro

Michael Wolgemut
Saint Luke Painting the Virgin and Child, from the Weltchronik, or Liber Chronicarum [The Nuremberg Chronicle], 1493 ————>

Dirk Vellert
Saint Luke Painting the Virgin, 1526

Jacob Matham
Saint Luke Painting the Virgin, 1614, after Hendrick Goltzius

Anonymous
Italian (?), 16th century ———————————————>
A Devotional Virgin

Copy after Marcantonio Raimondi
Holy House of Loreto, circa 1575 ———————————————>

Michael Ostendorfer
The Pilgrimage to the Beautiful Virgin at Regensburg, 1519 ———————————————>

Lucas van Leyden
The Holy Family, circa 1508

Hendrick Goltzius
The Holy Family with the Young Saint John the Baptist, from Meisterstiche, 1593

Camillo Procaccini
Rest on the Flight into Egypt, 1587-1590

Jan Muller
Rest on the Flight, 1593, after Gerrit Pieterz

Giulio Bonasone
Il Silenzio (The Madonna of the Silence), 1561, after Michelangelo

———————————————————–>

Hendrick Goltzius
Pietà, 1596

Jean Mignon
Pietà, circa 1537 – 1540, after Luca Penni

Giulio Bonasone
Pietà for Vittoria Colonna, 1546, after Michelangelo

CENTRAL CASE:

Heinrich Aldegrever
The Virgin and Child at the Foot of a Tree, 1527

Albrecht Dürer
Madonna by the Wall, 1514

Hieronymus Wierix
The Virgin Suckling the Child, before 1619

Anonymous
Coronation of the Virgin, circa 1498

Daniel Hopfer I
Christ Blessing the Virgin, circa 1518-1520 ——————————->

Marcantonio Raimondi
The Virgin and Child on the Clouds, 16th century, after Raphael

My current printing project is a three color print of a pair of flamingos. I got the idea for this print from a photograph that I took at the Atlanta Zoo. 

I don’t know if anyone is going to be interested in this bird, but when I saw this photograph I fell in love. This is not the bright pink plastic kitsch on your neighbor’s front lawn. These creatures are so much more than that. They have crazy habits like tucking one foot under their bodies when they stand. Their coloring comes from the tiny shrimp that they eat in the wild. While there are no species listed under the Endangered Species Act, flamingos are becoming rarer. This is the bird I am trying to capture in my new print (a drawing is shown below):

I have never done a three color print before, so it is going to be an adventure. I am going to have a black line block, a pink block for the birds, and a blue block for the water. I found this new water-based ink called Akua that I am going to try because I want to get a specific effect with the blue. I want to give a gradient to the blue so that it looks like it is fading from the blue of the water to the blue of the sky. I hope I can get it to work the way I envision it.

While we actually got our Christmas/Holiday cards sent out on time, I have just gotten around to posting something about them. This year was the first year we sent out Holiday cards together. Instead of spending lots of money on ugly, generic cards, we decided to create our own. We laid it all out and printed it in 2 colors, red and green, on an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper. This way we could then fold it up and have a nice little card with a back, front, and interior.

Here is what it looked like before we folded it in quarters:


I did not get a chance to carve a block specifically for the card, so we settled on using a preexisting metal block. It was a ship with a large sail saying “Seasons Greetings.”

Doug and I set the type in a mixture of fonts. For the front, we used a 48 point Italic font that we got for free with all the other stuff. For the inside, we used 18 point Caslon. The “and” on the inside is a single block. We printed the card in 2 colors, green and red.

Here are some pictures of what the card looked like when all folded and finished: