SGC Exchange Prints: Gnomish Hills

"Gnomish Hills," by Cynthia King

Finally getting around to documenting the edition of 12 plus about 5 proofs and a few paper tests. One of the proofs is going to the Evanston Art Center benefit, so if you want one and didn't get it in your pack, that's the first place to look. (I'll do a second series of this plate at some point, as long as the aquatint holds up -- it's a zinc plate after all).

Here's the original mockup:



I reversed and rescaled the original drawing, printed it out, and worked out the tones with charcoal (yes, actual dirty-finger charcoal, not the computer stuff). For you non-printmakers, I had to reverse it, since you have to work with a reversed image on the etching plate itself.

It went in and out of the acid bath probably 6 times, stopping out at intervals from about 5 seconds to the final one (the doorways) about 4 minutes total.

For comparison, here's the original drawing as sucked into my Darkdevil County demo. (I'll probably go back into it with color at some point):



And here's the line etch. For some reason I added an extra mountain:



I copied the drawing at Kinkos and transfered it to the plate using a gum transfer, supplemented with graphite where the image was too light. All this manipulation skewed the image this way and that way a bit. Luckily, I'm not being graded on it.

Here it is at the show, top right on the 2nd display wall from the left (click to enlarge):



Here's the whole edition:



And what I looked like after finishing it. Oops, forgot the apron.

Labels: art, Darkdevil County, etching, printmaking, SGC, writing

- posted by Cynthia @ 10:39 AM | | | Link |

 
SGC Exhaustion
Conference done, am trying to sort stuff out and get back to "normal".

So many images, so many people talked to. Volunteering was great, but meant I didn't actually see a lot of the conference, if by conference you mean panels and keynotes and demos, since I spent much of time checking in everyone's exchange portfolios and acting as bouncer outside the rooms where demos were being held.

And drinking a lot of reception wine. Thank god for reception wine. And food, of course.

Still unloading the swag bag (good and useful itself). Don't want to see my official volunteer red sweatshirt (and by sweat, I really mean it -- P.U.) again for a long long time.

I should have taken a picture when I had the chance (speaking of reception wine), but congrats to our very own Tom Warchol for having a piece selected by Warrington Colescott himself for the Southern Graphics Council 2009 Traveling Exhibit. I will try to provide links at some point.

One of the high points for me was seeing the "History of Printmaking" tableau vivant, performed by a group of Columbia College alums. It was less a tableau, and not at all stills from Colescott's History of Printmaking series (on view at Perimeter Gallery, BTW, along with his more recent work) than the personal history of Colescott himself, with images, actions, and fabulous music.

It was a complete theater experience, close to the short playlets presented by the "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind" group. Will see if I can get better credits for this work. I spoke to the director who said the group is a fan of silent theater and miming and all those things and collaborates from time to time on theater pieces. I was the volunteer for the first showing of this event, and Colescott himself was in the audience. I can't imagine what it might be like to see your life laid out like that.

UPDATE: Printeresting had been blogging from the conference and has a really good rundown on the panels and keynotes, and other stuff, plus lots of pix. I'll get mine up Real Soon.

Labels: art, printmaking, SGC

- posted by Cynthia @ 10:14 AM | | | Link |

 
Southern Graphics Council Meeting Set to Begin
As a prelim, download the Bad at Sports preview and interview with various people here.

Have been basically offline this past week as a volunteer for the SGC or preparing the exchange portfolio for it (DONE DONE DONE!!! Signed and freshly glassined this afternoon).

Will be spending a hefty amount of time at this thing, so if you see me (real name is Cynthia King, if you hadn't figured it out by now), say hi.

Will try to twitter a bit from the conference, but am sure that with 1,500 people registered, others will do a better job on their 3G iPhones etc. Yes, City of Chicago -- this is the pre-registration count -- art packs them in. Venues run from Evanston (where we have a big show called "Handmade" covering 2 floors at the Noyes Cultural Arts Center -- 30 something artists, 60 something prints -- show is up and is gorgeous) all the way to Pilsen and out to DeKalb, plus everywhere in the middle.

Am so excited to see all this stuff -- almost all of the exhibits are free to outsiders, and many are up now and will be for at least a few weeks more.

If you don't know what contemporary printmaking is all about, you must must must check out some of these shows.

Good place to start is at the Columbia College/Southern Graphics Council website.

Labels: art, printmaking, SGC

- posted by Cynthia @ 3:50 PM | | | Link |

 
Chicago Is Site for Southern Graphics Council March 25-29, 2009
I've posted links on the side to the Southern Graphics Council and Columbia College/Anchor Graphics, the host of this coming year's conference, March 25-29, 2009. This is a very big deal for the Chicago art world, in particular the printmaking world -- sort of like getting the Olympics or World Cup.

We at the Evanston Arts Center/Noyes Cultural Arts Center will be hosting an exhibit curated by Julian Cox. The call for work isn't ready yet, but you can check back here or go to the Anchor site above for updates.

Shops that I know for sure are hosting exhibits/demos/shows are Spudnik Press and Chicago Printmakers Collaborative.

Printmakers: if you know of other events, please let me know.

Labels: art, EAC, printmaking, SGC

- posted by Cynthia @ 11:01 AM | | | Link |