That Is My Tool Box.

That is my tool box.

on the sides it has two little slips of paper one says "you are a good person" the other says "you are a fucking tool" the bottom has one of my prints that says "FUCK" printed on brown paper.

inside is: a strop, my speedball carving tool, a couple of X-acto knives, what's left of the fancy carving set  I bought when I realized I was going to be doing this for my BFA (note to the world: never loan out your tools, even if you think not loaning out your tools makes you look like an asshole, nobody notices your name carved in the handles and they will not give them back) other things: my engraving twist which is unsurprisingly nice for working up scratch board, my scratch board tool, a lump of eraser, some utility knife blades, some mechanical pencils, some mechanical pencil lead, an eraser and an Altoids Small's tin where I keep my tool-bits. (I like to think of it as the Altoid's sharps tin) the box interior is also decorated with a couple of these silly librarian-themed temporary tattoos.

I felt like showing some progress pictures today of something simple. I'm trying to get back into the swing of making things and what better opportunity for that than a three day weekend?

I am making several more of these simple herbaceous prints to be ready for my show at Dandelion Botanicals in April. it always pays to have a range of prices available, somebody who won't drop $200 on a piece might still want something for $20.

"She Was Not Always A Wolf"

18" by 24" linoleum block print, black ink on white paper, edition of 3, May 2012.

this is a weird one, made for my BFA show to add more drama and interest and less moping and psycodrama to the show. one of the first instances where I used and purposefully manipulated the false printing in the background. I like the implication that it's these whispering spirits or a noise on the wind.

it's simple and I like that, not everything has to be a giant frenzy.

christ but this is a bad photograph though. will be replaced eventually.

Cat of the West,

(part of my guardians of the four corners of the world series)

edition of ~5 linoleum print with handcoloring

showing you all this one today because I have just sold my last physical print of this edition. (whoo hoo for cash! people like cats, what can I say) it is part of a set of four I made out of hotdog-cut halves of the large linoleum blocks I use. they were partly inspired by the houses of Hogwarts, the cat, of course, is a miniature Griffindor lion. this is about as close as I get these days to fan-art and it's pretty well removed.

slavish dedication to a franchise at the expense of your own creative imagination can be just as limiting as insisting on being absolutely original at all times. take your ideas where you can, and try to do them as best you can.

alright, in my last post I talked about how I get different kinds of support from the people around me. my art friends are of the opinion (mostly anyways) that anybody can do anything and that's good art, as long as the artist does that thing with skill and care and can then explain why the choices they made were necessary.

non-art (aka: normal) people can be more of a mixed bag, they can't critique you effectively on technique because they have little idea of how you made what you made, and so there is more of a direct attack on the ideas.

my sister dislikes my deer girl series for a number of reasons, first, because it's really very hipster to have women standing around with either antlers on their heads or branches made to look like antlers. (I can explain that I'm tapping into the collective unconscious mind and the current zeitgeist, but this is dismissed as an excuse for copying an already unoriginal idea)

secondly, because they are self portraits of me showing me as a person who has stupid and vulnerable feelings. Kenz views this as worthless and self indulgent narcissism.

third, at times my work is either trite or visually unappealing and I am derided for being insufficiently appealing and commercial. not that I will ever make enough money at it and why don't I have a job yet?

my life and my work are thus deemed worthless and immature, like Freud who opined that the artistic urge ultimately derived from an infant's fascination with their own feces and the corresponding urge to smear poop on the wall.

haters gon' hate, as they say.

but credit for these two skulls goes to Mackenzie and her critiques of my work, I asked for inspiration because I was in a rut and she said, "I'm bored of your whiny bullshit. draw me some skulls or something and you'd better make it look cool" and lo, an idea did come upon me and I did make it, and it was good.

I consider these two to be a diptych, and the only complete pair is now in private collection. (so HAHA I already found it a good home bitches, ya'll can just be envious) I only printed two of the deer skull on the black before carving it away to make my colored prints, and one of them was destroyed. it's weird for me to have unique art and there is always a printmaker-ey fret that I should always have backups of my art.

the plants are aconite and creeping blackberry. the skulls are from a wolf and a deer.

edit: added some old photos from when I first printed this image to show some of my process

The Moths Were, As Always, Fatally Curious.

linoleum block print, edition of 3, May 2012 for my BFA show.

this is actually the last large Deer Girl print I have made, it is for a transition to another chapter in her story and because of this it doesn't really fit within the established antler-chronology (she has two antlers, loses one, grows new tree-antler, tree antlers bloom) presumably antlers fall off and grow back new. presumably I'm not that interested in being able to lay these all out end to end and saying here, this is the story, this is how it goes. it's better for everybody if I keep it a mystery.

I have told one person the proper order for all of the prints and the plot of the story thus far, that person was my BFA show partner Chris Popek and it was because I had every print I had made right there and we were figuring out which ones were going to go where for our show. also I think he asked nicely. such things could happen.

anyways, the title obviously has a double meaning of the moths we can see immolating themselves on the lantern, and a potential decision by Deer Girl to go explore the lighted cozy looking town. oddly enough I modeled the town on Bellingham even as I was graduating and preparing to leave.

when I had my show up and I was taking my tun minding it, this very cute old couple came in and chortled happily at all of my work and decided to buy this one because they liked the title so much.

you can't really see it from here, but all of those stars have five points. all of them.

alright, so we talked before about how the relief printmaking class I took was an unending anxiety nightmare for both me and my professor/adviser Ben Moreau. this piece here is one of the reasons why.

it is an eight-color suicide block in an edition of somewhere around 15 depending on how many of the messed up ones you count.  it was my first time working with Medium Density Fiberboard (or MDF as I will call it) as a carving media, and my first time working with wood instead of linoleum.

lemmie tell you right now, carving-linoleum cuts like butter in comparison to this compressed weetabix wafer made of sawdust and glue. everything about working with MDF was painful and it did nothing but fight me the entire time. add on top of this, the problem that I absolutely could not come up with an image that I needed to make in color.

voices yelling at me at the time, both real and imagined, were nothing but tormenting whispers of "aren't you so glad you're working with wood now like a real relief printmaker? I mean linoleum is a good student media, for beginners, but wood is so much more professional" and "don't forget everything you do this year has to be focused on things for your BFA show, so this would be a good project to make a nice colorful centerpiece for the whole thing"   with a heaping lump of  "fucking up on this project will mean you don't belong in the program, you didn't deserve to get in anyway, and you're not good enough to stay, you do nothing but create filth for other people to clean up and destroy equipment in the process"

so yeah. whenever I managed to get a little sleep (and mind you this was also when my back was starting to really have problems as well, so it was hard enough to sleep) I would dream the same horrible anxiety nightmare. I would be in the print lab trying desperately to make prints and every time I did anything I destroyed everything around me and also disappointing my friends and angered Ben. I would dream of being screamed at as I pulled print after ruined print, each wrong in a different way, each fucking up the equipment in a different way.

I talked to Ben at some point about this and it turns out he was anxiety having nightmares about me ruining everything too. (and I did end up accidentally printing on the blankets, but they weren't exactly ruined [unlike some other parties who will remain Drew, who accidentally shredded a blanket trying to Chine-collé on the wrong press] so whatever)

for all that though, this is not a bad print.

the idea was a gift from Christine who is much better both at color and catchy titles than I am. the title is "she brings the rain" and is a commentary on my Debbie Downer tendencies.