Reverse Graffiti

I just discovered this new art form and I think it's pretty fabulous. It's reminiscent of reductive monotyping and it also draws attention to environmental concerns. The "graffiti" is created by cleaning dirty walls in strategic ways to create art reductively.

Though the police are seen harassing these artists in the video, I can't see anything illegal about cleaning a wall. Even so, it seems the powers-that-be saw fit to wash off the work before it even got an extended viewing. Luckily there was a videographer on hand to document the piece before it was washed away.

And here is a link to the Reverse Graffiti Project which shows another video using stencils and a powerwasher: http://www.reversegraffitiproject.com/. This time, the artist got obvious sponsorship. Again, the technique is pretty cool, though I find the prominent product advertising, unfortunate.

Best Blogs by Printmakers

Spider Ink Studio blog has been listed as one of the 50 Best Blogs by Printmakers. Please go to http://www.interior-design-degree-online.org/printmakers and see all the great listings they've got for all you printmakers out there.

Thanks to Tracy for including this blog in the top 50.

Non-Toxic Etching Update

I just received an e-mail from someone who read my non-toxic etching post from last year. I realized after rereading the post that the information there needs to be updated. It was written after just one test with a copper sulfate solution and I erroneously reported that the etching time for zinc in copper sulfate was the same as with nitric acid. This is definitely not the case. The copper sulfate solution etches zinc much, much faster and the bite is much harsher than etching with nitric acid.

I also have not had much luck aquatinting with copper sulfate since I work with subtle variations in tone. And since the bite is much harsher and quicker, it's very difficult to get subtle or delicate effects. Though if someone has had better results with this I'd love to know about it.

If you include thick, bold lines in your etchings, I would say that copper sulfate will give you that more quickly than nitric acid. But I need to do more experiments with copper sulfate before I can give advice about how to create delicate work. So far my attempts at this have been unsuccessful.

If you have had a lot of experience with copper sulfate and zinc, I would very much appreciate hearing from you about your experience.

Life

It's been a rough couple of months with my husband being very sick requiring frequent trips to the ER, surgeries and quite a few hospital stays, but I'm hoping that we're coming out on the other side of all of this. Though we just spent the weekend in the ER yet again and I'm sitting next to his hospital bed as I type this.

I know my postings have continued to be few and far between. I'm not going to make any promises about when I'll post the next one, just know that I haven't stopped thinking about this blog and what I'd like to further relate about my experiences with printmaking.

And just a heads up, I'll be posting info on some upcoming shows that I'll be part of this summer in NYC. As soon as I have the specifics, I'll put them in my calendar section. But for now, I'll be in the Carrier Pigeon show at the Sacred Gallery in Soho (NYC). The opening for the show is March 18, 8-10PM.

Promises, Promises

After reading my last few posts from the fall semester, I realized that I had promised to post work that I had done then. I wish I had been more timely with this post, but I have a few photos that I can share with you now.

Here was my first installation project. It was lit from within so that you could see the shadows of people hovering over the animals (etchings printed on very thin asian paper). When you looked into the "windows" in the box (as illustrated by my classmates in the photos above) you could see the shadows form different points of view depending on which window you looked into. The outside was covered with woodprints from a really great gnarly piece of thrown-away plywood.

Below was my second project for this class where I created "corozas" (caps of shame) from a silkscreened image of one of my monotypes (last one below). It was the first time I had done a silkscreen project in many, many, many years (and I was a bit rusty).

Anyway, sorry for the delay in the posts. This work is not really what I want to do. I see myself as more of a printmaker and illustrator and I have no interest in installation work. But, here it is in all its 3Dness.

Experimenting with white ground etching

The Skeptic

Etching, ©2010 Elana Goren

This past fall, I experimented with etching techniques that I hadn't tried before such as white ground etching. For the print above, I used white ground as an acid resist on a zinc plate.

White ground is a soapy mixture that allows the artist to build up thicker layers of resist where the acid can't reach the plate as well as thinner, gradated areas that are more susceptible to the acid's bite. This ground is more unstable than regular asphaltum-based ground and so it needs to be monitored more closely when in the acid bath. But the instability of the ground adds to the textural and tonal quality that it yields.

It's a little tricky to paint with what is basically soap on the metal surface. But, it can be worked with while it is wet to add texture as you would a soft-ground application or it can be scratched into with a pointy object that's not too sharp to scratch the plate (unless you want to add some drypoint lines to your image). It's also nice to work with a medium that can be corrected easily by washing off the undesired application before starting to etch.

After applying the white ground, the plate is covered with aquatint rosin and it can then be etched. It's recommended to use the white ground before applying aquatint since this makes for a smoother surface to paint on. 

I took the photo of the plate (above) to see what would translate when the print was done. I believe this was taken in the middle of the process where I had already etched the plate and was applying new layers of the soap ground for another etch. You can see how some of the thinner applications of the ground have gone from light to dark grey and the thicker applications remain white. This process is alot like the aquatinting with asphaltum hardground but behaves less predictably in the acid. But the benefit to it is that it allows for a more fluid, gradated image and the white color makes it more visibly straightforward to paint where you want the image to be white.

My first semester in grad school

School turned out to be much more intense and demanding than I had originally thought it would be. I had hoped to keep an online diary of my progress on this blog throughout my grad school experience but I felt like I barely had time to sleep and eat, let alone do anything beyond the endless assignments required of my first semester.

I had expected more time to develop my ideas and explore new media such as lithography (an example of my latest lithograph is pictured above). And though I did learn how to create lithographs, I expect it will be a while before I will really feel comfortable enough with the medium to embrace it as fully as I do etchings and monotypes.

I am hopeful that the next semester and 2nd year of school will prove more flexible in allowing me to develop my work more independently as I had before I enrolled in this program. I also hope to be able to follow through on my resolve to discuss my new printmaking discoveries on this blog during the school year. It has been disappointing that I was unable to so this past semester.

So to all happy holidays and I will try to check in again after the new year if not before then.