back to printmaking

the intaglio print studio at Pyramid Atlantic Studios. Press, glass covered tables, vents and various areas for etching and paper preparations... before the class begins.

Professor Muirhead inspects our plates and talks about the next steps we will take in preparing our prints.

1. etching the lines in acid bath.

2. cleaning off the hard ground.

3. preparation to print the newly etched plates, etc.

Professor Muirhead (Jake) observes two plates in the acid bath, says it looks good! There was a lot of excitement in the room, as everyone was waiting for a turn to put the acid on their metal plate and develop their first etchings.

the zinc plate goes into the acid bath after I drew the chair through the "hard ground" a brown blocking agent keeps the acid out except where we want it to bite a line. The feather is used to remove tiny bubbles created while the bite happens allowing fresh acid to bite the zinc. It stayed in for about 12 minutes then comes out to be rinsed in fresh water.

classmates Aimee, Joan , Dan and in the back our intern Micah all working on various stages of inking their etched zinc plates for the press to transfer ink to paper.

the huge intaglio printing press with clean white blankets to pad the plates and wet paper as they travel under the rollers.

we pulled two proof prints each, one brown and one black inked, then hung them up to dry flat with push pins.

here is my captain's chair print, the second proof printed in Jake's specially mixed magic brown ink. We had to leave them behind on the wall this week. Better images will be available soon as I get my print completed.

I studied fine art printmaking for a bachelors degree at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn NY in the 1970's. In addition to drawing, dancing and socializing, my life at Pratt was a wonderful experience when I discovered who I am and explored the world in many ways. As my primary print making professor I had Clare Romano, who is so well versed in printmaking she and her husband John Ross published the book. The Complete Printmaker the best book on printmaking around then and now. I learned intaglio from Romano. Intaglio print are created by numerous ways to bite, scratch and make marks on a metal plate and then apply inks and transfer an image to paper. Materials are simple but not easy to set up and use at home, mostly because of the big ticket item: an intaglio press which cost thousands of dollars and take up a lot of floor space. This meant the all that intaglio learning I did was left behind in the studios at Pratt when I left in 1979. I have done woodcuts and wood engravings which are hand printed they don't require toxic chemicals or big presses. Sadly relief block prints don't offer the same line and tonal qualities an intaglio print does. Since I left Pratt I have spent time drawing, especially the human figure, which is said to be the most challenging subject and the most rewarding for improving drawing skills. I know how to draw most things reasonably well now and that was a problem at Pratt. I learned a lot about color, drawing, printing, and other fine art skills but they all need time to be explored and developed and undergraduate schools are just the beginning.

Now thirty years later I am lucky enough to have access to Pyramid Atlantic Arts Center near by in Silver Spring Md. where studio to make intaglio prints and a press to print them on! I met Jake Muirhead printing one night and asked about printing and the print studio. I wondered if he used all water based inks and how this process has changed since the good old days of the 1970's when we practically bathed in "cleansoline" a mixture of turpentine, kerosene and goodness knows what else and worked in studios with no mechanical vents for the removal of toxic fumes. Black ink under your fingernails and cuticles were signs of a real printmaker we supposed in those days. Jake says intaglio printing has become more cautious but he still likes and uses the oil based inks only they are used much more sparingly. He told me he was planning to offer an intaglio workshop in etching soon at Pyramid Atlantic Arts Center that I would be welcome to join. I delighted in the opportunity and I asked my friend Douglas Kingsbury, who I believe draws like a old master, to join the workshop. Etching is the perfect medium to reproduce fine line drawings in multiples and I have talked with him about etchings often so I am excited to share this learning experience with him. Once we finish we will be printmaking on our own but now we can lease the press and studio space when we want to make prints.

NYC visiting

Sister Dimension at La Mama, Etc. June 15, 2008

Double click any of my images to see them larger.

Tomkins Sq. Park, NYC: Temperance Fountain

Temperance Fountain in NYC: which works serving up free fresh cool and clean water with no plastic additives. 

Crazy colorfully painted Bus

Bicycle Ricshaw with a flat :-(

I just spent a weekend in NYC's east village at the institution,

known as La MaMa, Etc. Theater complex. 

I was there with my dear friend John Kelly to talk on a panel of former friends of Larry Ree the creator and founder of the first all male drag ballet. It was called the Original Trockadero Gloxinia Ballet and got it's beginning in 1972 and many years of support at La MaMa where founder Ellen Stewart was a big fan & friend to the company. John Kelly and I were both dancers in this ballet from about 1982 . I dropped out of the practice in the late 1980's after a year long toe nail infection from one of my visits to NYC to dance on point shoes with too little rehearsal. John collected some excerpts from videos of us dancing and Larry in various roles as a drag performer as well as slides and guests to tell about their memories of Larry and Madame. We spent two hours story telling, watching the slides and videos to bring a very important theater and gay history to life. All of it was recorded for the La MaMa, Etc. Archives. I had a good time and got to stay in the 4th floor dormitory for my two nights in exchange for my testimony. Allen Mace: Sister Dimension the former manager and DJ at the Pyramid Club where we did many shows was a panelist and posed for a quick snap shot of his fabulous red hat and boa. Sister Dimension is now famous on You Tube for his role as the pickle in the Pickle Surprise video by Tom Rubnitz. Madame's "world's largest tutu" sat in the corner. This is a six foot wide ballet tutu skirt that stood erect on Madame's waist! Larry spent a couple years making it and beading it and the top skirt. I got a very short video of the tutu by accident when I thought I was making a photograph with my new camera. You can see it below. I also saw a few fun things on my walks around the old neighborhood I used to live in back in the early 1980's not to mention plenty of memories returning. While I was there in my free time I also got to see my best friend from Pratt Institute. He is a fabric designer with one of the world's largest makers of fabrics and has developed a love of flowers because of that work. I walked with him to see what we might find and came across lots of community gardens and city parks gardens where we shared stories about our gardens.  He has a big garden 3 hours north of NYC in western Massachusetts which is in a zone 4 area so that is quite different than mine in Washington DC our zone 7-8 of a warmer subtropical climate. I am posting a few photos of the Temperance Fountain I found in Tomkins Square Park built for the Prohibition era thirsty by some wealthy man. I also traveled up to New York City and back on the new fully wired for laptops and wifi BOLT BUS which was fun, on time and inexpensive. High gas prices make traveling on a bus very green.  

I saw an amazing new work of theater written, directed, composed and produced by Ellen Stewart, called THE RAVEN which was a musical in the style of the Peking Opera. It was a fantastic fairy tale of princes, ogres, spirits, magic and beautiful ladies all in elaborate costumes and head dresses with a live orchestra and special digital screen effects. It was truly a magical evening and it was opening weekend so if you are near and you like fantasy go see The Raven at La MaMa, Etc. it is a brilliantly colored story from the mysterious world of old China. It has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poe's Raven. This one gets shot! 

finally, orange and some blue

Dear readers:

Finally I have permission to share an orange story with you on a subject that got me very excited a few days ago.  Edgar Degas and ballet paintings always remind me of my youth.  In the story I read, and present for you here today, he used orange and blue as his main palette. The article is about the restoration to bring up those colors from beneath years of dust and yellowing varnish. The process and the colorful painting all thrilled me when I read it so I hope you will enjoy it too. Discovering Degas  Thanks to the Washingtonian Magazine for giving me permission to link.

I studied to be a ballet dancer from age seven. I also studied some other forms of dance after I left the ballet classes at age sixteen and learned a lot about movement and performance. One thing that spoke to me when I began studying visual art at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY was how well Degas captured the movement and shape of ballet dancers.  I wanted to be able to draw and paint like him. One of my foundation class projects was to divide a picture by a master painter into it's visual planes showing what was the front of the picture plane and the receding, middle and background planes of the space in the painting. Another famous Degas was the one I chose to work from on this project. My project Degas was of a dancer adjusting her shoe in the foreground of a ballet class studio which I got from the Metropolitan Museum of art in NYC.  

At Pratt I also studied modern and avante garde dance for PE credit. The most interesting class was with a choreographer named Laura Dean who taught us how to spin like sufi whirling dervishes. I practiced and achieved an advanced level where I could spin without stopping for 45 minutes in my home studio. It was a great way to meditate and get your heart pumping. The only draw back was  shin splints which comes from doing the same movement repeatedly. In another school project for a film class I used an orange plastic rain suit and a blue sky on the roof of my Brooklyn apartment as the subject. In this film I was spinning in the orange suit against the shockingly bright blue sky. My tribute to dancers in orange and blue circa 1977. I still have the original 8mm film but I have no idea how to make it digital. One day if I find a way to do it I will add it to the blog.