Scoop Painting

I spent a few hours yesterday painting at Feed. It turned out to be a bigger job than I thought. Yellow paint is surprisingly hard to cover with white. I wanted to paint the whole place, but only managed to get one wall done. Painting is more fun when you have a partner to help out.

I've been thinking about inventing these shoes with soles made out of those small plastic furniture movers they sell at the hardware store. Today I found out that somebody beat me to it. I've never been more angry. My other shoe-based invention involves putting blocks of salt on the soles to make them slip-and-fall-proof in the winter time. I guess I better patent that idea pretty soon before I get scooped again.

Lower Level Levens

Tonight we collected all the finished collages from the first workshop at Feed and hung them on the walls. In the end, there were fourteen pieces including those from Michael and me. All of the artists agreed to offer their work for sale at the low, low price of only $50.00. The exhibit officially opens this Saturday with a reception from 12:00 - 4:00. It seems like Alexa, Luke, Alissa, Caroline, Ally, Kenzie, Bea, Megan, Megan, Claire, Amy and Josie are all planning to be there. If you can come, I'm sure it would mean a lot to everyone involved, except for me.

English Dumptruck

I made a few prints of this dump truck from England today. It was a quick demonstration of the "cardstock drypoint" printmaking technique that I made up. A couple of guys wanted to see how to do it. It is so easy that doing a demo is pretty much unnecessary.

Here's how you do it: Get a piece of thin, glossy cardboard. I used a postcard today, you might use a piece of a cereal box. Use a pen or pencil to make a drawing on the glossy side of your cardboard. The drawing should be pretty heavy, incising lines into the cardboard. When you are satisfied with the drawing, use a little piece of mat board or cardboard to cover the surface of the drawing with some etching ink. Scrape away as much ink as you can, then take a couple of sheets of paper and lightly rub the surface of the drawing, leaving the ink only in the lines from the pen or pencil. Get a nice, damp piece of paper and lay it on top of the drawing. Pass it through your etching press with a bunch of pressure. Voila! You made a print. I made a small edition of four prints of the truck. Including the drawing time, they only took about ten minutes. If four people ask nicely, I'll send them each a print for free.

Oh yeah, I also posted a new exhibit at Captive Werewolf.

Gouge Away

I'm planning this block printing workshop in January. Pretty much everything you'll need to design, carve, and print a single color edition of prints will be provided. And then all the prints will be exhibited at Feed. The whole thing is only $45. I think it is going to be a lot of fun.

Next Saturday, Michael is hosting Feed's first real exhibition. The show will include all of the artists who took part in his mixed media workshop. On the same day, Santa Claus is supposed to be hanging around the Majestic Centre taking pictures with his fans. I'll be in Missouri that day, but don't let that discourage you from coming by. Michael will be there to talk to you about what's coming up, and I'm sure these new artists would appreciate your support.

Remember Printmaking?

Hopefully in the coming weeks I'll have a lot of time to get in the studio and make some prints. The last five weeks or so were relatively unproductive print-wise. I guess I've gotten a lot of other stuff accomplished, but I'm feeling pretty antsy to get back to my real work. I'm going to look at the three photos above for a while and see if they deserve to be translated into prints. Right now I think they do, but it is three o'clock in the morning.

Feed Cards

I made these business cards for Feed. I'll have to see what Michael thinks about them, but I know we need to have some cards to give out with a link to the website. Speaking of websites, I registered feedartcenter.com today. Right now it redirects to the original blog which I think is fine. Maybe in the future we'll design a regular website.

Feed

Michael's first workshop at Feed seems to be going good. I hung around tonight while it was happening and joined in a little. I posted a progress report so you can read all about it.

Excuses

I don't think too many people have been stopping by here lately but for those that have, sorry about the lack of posting lately. Despite taking a few minutes tonight to post an exhibit from Michael Costanza at Captive Werewolf, I haven't had time to do much creative stuff. Things have been pretty busy with the end of the semester coming and so much required crap to get done for my classes. I've been putting together presentations, self-promotional materials, and the obligatorily useless research papers. In the midst of all that was Thanksgiving. In years past, "when asked how was your holiday?" I've typically responded, "fine" with little thought to the truth of that answer. This year I could honestly answer "great." I really enjoyed the double dinners followed by Mr. Fantastic, the Fox. Right now I'm going to bed so I can get up early and get back to the tedium of typing. At least I've chosen a subject I'm interested in, William Eggleston.