Steamroller print day

These are some photos from the Under Pressure steamroller print event at Western Michigan University at the end of October. Participants carved  60" x 40" woodblocks which were printed with the aid of a steamroller.

The theme of the event was "Call and Response." This the print I did with the help of fellow printmaker Donna Groot. In this shot it's drying on the floor.

And here are some of the many prints hanging in the atrium of the fine arts building at Western.

Reformation Broadsheet

This is a large (36" x 16") etching I did to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. The artist's statement reads:

"This is a copperplate etching commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. It is inspired by a Reformation Centenary broadsheet produced in Leipzig, Germany in 1617. As a printmaker, I've always been cognizant of the role printmaking played in the modernization of society when it was still a new technology in the 16th and 17th centuries. Most scholars credit the success of the Reformation in part to the use of this new technology to disseminate information. 

Reformation era broadsheets were complex, crowded, compositions filled with historical, political, and sacred figures, and my broadsheet follows this tradition. It is based on the Biblical passage Matthew 25: 31-46 (Christ's separation of the sheep and the goats) and the social justice issues implied by this passage. The 'do -it-yourself'' sheep and goat masks at the bottom of the composition invite viewers to contemplate their own place in the scene."

Below is the 1617 print that inspired my work.

The etching is currently at the Battle Creek Center for the Arts, in the exhibit The Reformation Remembered- Artistic Expressions of Faith. I was honored to receive an award, "Best Interpretation of Theme." Here's a  link to the Art Center: http://www.artcenterofbattlecreek.org/exhibitions.html

Allegan County Historical Print Shop 2017

Here's a shot of me working at the Chandler-Price press during the Allegan County Fair this year. The Allegan Historical Society Print Shop is open during the Michigan FiberFest in August and the County Fair in September. Every year we have a few more improvements and another piece of equipment functioning.

Updates

I was very honored this spring to have Shingebiss included in the West Michigan Area Show at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, and to receive the Southwest Michigan Printmakers Excellence in Printmaking Award.

It's also been a busy winter and spring working on the Alchemy collaboration. My broadside with Elizabth Kerlikowske's poem is in a previous post. Below is the piece I contributed to the book and the Kerr Gallery exhibit at Western Michigan University.

And here's the linocut broadside I did for the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center Poets in Print series:

I've also been doing some experimenting with wood lithography-- I'll upload some images with my next post.

Alchemy broadside

Here is a scan of the broadside I did for the Alchemy suite; part of a collective project of local (mostly Kalamazoo) writers and artists. Elizabeth Kerlikowske wrote the poem and I was trying to capture the sense of humor within it with this illustration. It's an edition of 40, an etching with letterpress text. I set the text last summer at the Allegan County Fair as a demo and printed it a few weeks ago at the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center. The element abbreviations on the roulette wheel are placed so that their atomic numbers match the traditional roulette wheel number placement. The exception is gold, (Au)  placed in the traditional 00 winner's spot. I'm not a gambler so I had to do some research on roulette wheels. All the Alchemy broadsides will be signed by the poets and printmakers and we'll be having a number of exhibits over the next few months.