The Archeopteris Tree

My scanner pretty much mangled this scan but then I don't usually have much success scanning in sketches. This is a detail of a print I'm working on for next summer's show. I had the idea a few years ago and never really saw it to fruition. The Archeopteris Tree was a very prolific progymnosperm (before seeds bearing plants)and one of the very first trees. It grew in a large swampy area near the steppes of the Blue Ridge Mountain Range back when they were the size of the Himilayas of today. Archeopteris had the habit of shedding leaves and limbs on its growth cycle up and out. Placoderms or plated fish ruled the seas at the time and had voracious appetites. An organism was discovered from this period that was still fish like but instead of fins had four limbs with 8 fingers attatched to the ends. The joints were too weak to support the weight of the animal but would be perfect for brushing aside vegetation and wriggling through brackish water. I can't remember the name of said animal off the top of my head but the theory goes that "8-toes" sought the refuge of Archeopteris swamps in hopes of escaping the Placoderms. Perhaps this environment harbored and encouraged the first steps towards land dwelling vertibrates. I am drawing up plans to print a large scale woodblock print in the style of old European block print texts with the image of a great Archeopteris standing in brackish water. Amidst the shed limbs of vegetation, a few "8-toes" hang out under the trunk of the tree while Placoderms patrol the outlaying areas. To help the "old world" feel of the image, I'm drawing a boarder of Archeopteris leaves and 4 corner images of Archeopteris spore. Now if I only knew what Archeopteris spore looked like.....

Ghetto Studio

Yessir, that thar is baling twine holding ma speakers onto a zinc plate shipping crate. I ain't say'n it's purty but it works. I moved a ton of stuff around in my studio and even though I had to sacrifice the space my speakers originally resided at, it turned into a really nice set up. I'll be excited to see how much better my set up is now. I am in the process of revamping my old DistinctMink Etsy site. I was REALLY sold on the idea of ditching it and consolidating everything on PistolesPress.Etsy.com but I just don't think that would be a good idea. When I go to markets and fairs, I'm not going to drag my expensive works with me so why lump them together in Etsy? Also, the packaging for DistinctMink and PistolesPress products will be different. I can happily use biodegradable packaging for stationery and journals but I can't for the fine art works as that stuff is not yet archival. Maybe one day.

Well, production is definitely underway! The hard bound books are proving to be WAY more time consuming than anticipated. The covering of the book boards and installing ribbons is the time consuming part. I can zip through binding them pretty well. The best news is that the 100% biodegradable packaging is working out! Yay! I love guilt free packaging! I've noticed more and more companies are using starch packing peanuts as opposed to the styrofoam ones. Thank god! It's about time! The best part is yet to come. I have purchased some Lindt Chocolate for my photoshoot to post on Etsy soon and somebodies going to have to eat all that chocolatey goodness!

Alternate Realities

I can't believe I'm posting this on the net. This is one of four cursory proofs I pulled of the Alternate Realities blocks. It kind of makes me throw up a little bit. I mean, that's the purpose of proofing; to see where you are and where you need/want to be. For the most part, the registration isn't THAT off but it's irksome to me. It's especially irksome because I completed carving 8 kentos in a few days and now five of them need tweaking. There were bokashi and other things I left out because I just wanted to see how things lined up. I think, if I remember correctly, I carved the gas tanks first and pulled proofs that way. From there, I traced the other images one by one from the original drawing and there is where my problems lie. My original kentos were virtually nonexistent and if my drawing wasn't spot on, this is what I end up with. Lesson learned. The ink mixing was another pain. I love spring greens: celery green, grass green, parrot green, mint green, seafoam green. You see where I am going with this. The greens I have mixed from cadmium yellow and cobalt or prussian blue look like vomit. I just don't like them. The orange created with cadmium red and cadmium yellow for the solar panel key block matches too closely to the middle sienna color block of the geothermal image. They are close to the same in my eye.
I don't want to toss these because I've kept them for so long and also I've put a good deal of time into them. I think I might ditch the idea of color blocks to save hair pulling and do something I've always wanted the time to play with: Chine Colle!

Design Stages....

The Book of Life continues to develop in its design stages and other works are in the pipe. To raise funds for the creation of The Book of Life, I have unearthed and am revamping printing blocks that never came to fruition. Baren Forum had an exchange years ago that had the theme of Surimono. I regrettably had to drop out because of an imbalance. The discrepancy was that my carving skills developed faster than my printing ability. I carved several blocks but printing them proved disastrous. In frustration, I had to drop out of the exchange and abandon the blocks to the far corner of my studio. It's probably been four years since then and I pulled them all out this past sunday. I saw right away that my early concept of the kento was flawed. I re-carved 6 kentos on sunday and I have 2 more to do tomorrow and then can hopefully pull a proof to see where I am at. At any rate, the title of the piece was going to be Alternate Realities. One side of the diptych image had a black row of gasoline pumps and the other side had a similar silhouette but instead was in brilliant color. The colored shapes were those of the various alternate energy resources that are available and should be employed further. These include hydro turbines, wind turbines, geothermal pumps, and solar cells. I hope to have some nice results tomorrow.
About the picture, I would like to work fairs and festivals in the summer and perhaps put these letterpresses to work on jobs they were meant for. I have another Etsy store called DistinctMink that has been stale for quite some time and I was contemplating destroying it were it not for a nice lady who bought some of my stationery and encouraged me to keep producing. I want to create a correspondence set that features flora native to Nelson County. I set out with my digital camera as we've had some lovely roadside burgeoning on my driveway. This photo is of a Tulip Poplar blossom. Normally, they would be blooming high in the air but a specimen rooted in a spring was nice enough to sweep her boughs low so I could see them. We also have plenty Blackberry, Choke Cherry, and Wild Rose blossoming as well. Smells nice at my house!
Chocolate Book Update: Hands down! The soft cover chocolate books are so much easier to print and bind. I have completed 10 of those already and am STILL working on the design stages of the hard bound. I bound one this afternoon and I can't stand the ribbon I put on it so I'll have to perform minor surgery tomorrow, ugh. I ordered packaging materials this morning for them so hopefully they'll be on Etsy soon. Impact Images, my packaging supplier of choice (www.clearbags.com) has biodegradable bags I can put them in!!!! Yay!!!! I still have to use the old plastics for prints though as the degradable bags are not acid free :( Progress will catch up with that I'm sure :)

CONTEST: The Book of Life

There are bits of knowledge that man has carried with him since the beginning of his existence about the natural world but only recently has he begun to realize how truly interlaced and connected these categorized concepts are. Our world is a giant scale that has balanced and continues to balance itself in a universe of seeming chaos. Natural disasters are simply a balancing of the scale and humans are a testament to the tenacity of life but now that we are able effect the natural systems in place, directly or indirectly, we must acknowledge how interconnected and delicate they are. People must find a way to sync up with the our cradle of life or step aside for nature's next improvement.

I conceived this idea in 2007 but only now have had the opportunity to flesh it out and get started. My knowledge of the Earth's interconnected cycles are limited at best because I am not a trained scientist but even the ancient Hindi's and Buddhists knew that somehow everything is connected. As a block printer and bookmaker, my goal is to create a tome of images that infer the natural systems of the earth. I am trying to abstain from including any script as the book must be able to be read and understood by any culture. This being said, I will be employing things like molecular structures and other such visual clues in places like borders. I am also open to including cultural symbolism as well. An example can be seen in the illustration above. The barbs on the ends of the sun's rays are actually hands. The ancient Egyptians used a stylized version of a thumb and flat palmed hand to infer how the sun god touched and blessed his people with his rays of light.
The contest is to see how many of these natural systems I can illustrate, carve into blocks, print, and cram into one volume. When I say I want to create a tome, I want this thing to be big! Your challenge is to present me a natural system in the earth that I have not thought of yet. If I use it, you will receive a print of your system from the edition when it is completed. Now, I said natural system in the earth but many things affect these. For example, I am including the Eleven Year Solar Cycle because the Monder Minimum will attest to that and everyone acknowledges the Lunar Tides. I am also not opposed to the concept of Cosmic Wind Cloud Seeding but I need to be a little bit more educated about that. Here is the list of cycles I have already conceived ideas for so that you'll know what not to suggest. Maybe you have something to add to these concepts? Let me know as that may affect my imagery and you may get a japanese woodblock print!

1. H2O in convection= the weather: liquid, evaporation, condensation, precipitation, liquid

2. H2O and Salt in convection= oceanic currents: warm saline rises, cold saline sinks (the filling of voids in this movement creates the currents)

3. Nitrogen/Carvon Cycle: vegetation utilizes ground nutrients, herbivore consumes vegetation, carnivore consumes herbivore, vermiculture consumes carnivore, vermiculture creates ground nutrients through castings.

4. Solar Cycles (11 years): solar activity cycle and polar magnetic switch

5. Tectonics: magma rises to mantle to create new crust, crust sinks to mantle to create new magma

6. Terran Convection: lava currents through convection

7. Lunar Cycles: lunar gravity on currents

8. CO2 Cycle: leaves absorb CO2 in summer and outgas in winter

9. Respiration: plants absorb CO2 and outgas O2, animals absorb O2 and outgas CO2

The illustrations will be just like the image you see above. Everything must move in a circle (cycle). The pages will literally be round and the book will look like a half circle when closed. There will be a circle cut out of the center as I have already designed a concept for a book stand. I have purchased a sphere of Labradorite from China to be mounted in the center so the pages will glide over it as they turn.
This book is a huge undertaking and I therefore I have not placed a deadline upon it. I am due to have a show about this concept in July of 2009 and hope to finish many prints by then for the show but I do not think that the book will be finished as a whole then. In fact, I think there will be several editions of this book as it grows. Life is a journey not a race and so I anticipate working on this project for 5 to 10 years, maybe even more.
Good luck! I look forward to hearing your response!

So Close!

No pun intended but I'm so close I can taste it! I received the deep cocoa colored paper in the mail a few days ago and went straight away to cutting it up into book covers for the hard bound books and jackets for the soft cover books. (Yes, I'm crazy and am printing and binding both!) I carved the cover plate design out of linoleum instead of wood and printed that a week ago. I put my info in lead type and an awesome pilot press decal I got from David Churchman. Those I will attach to the inside of the back cover as a sort of hack collophon. Yesterday, I printed the title pages and end pages. Because I carved the block to perform for both the hard bound books and the soft bound, it was like a three ring circus trying to keep track which orientation was which. It also did not help that I carved the image on the WRONG SIDE of the block!!!! No biggie, I just had some overhang I had to protect against grimy quoins and furniture but an annoyance at myself for a stupid move no less. I'm doing a little tap dance to the print gods in front of my drying rack right now to hasten the drying. Yes, print god tap dances appease the forces that be into pity for an idiot. I snapped a photo of the title block and flipped it in photoshop.