Saturday, January 22, 2011

Goat Gotta Itch!


I took my Monday, vacation day, last week from school while it was also a rainy day and worked on a new print.  This is it.  "Goat Gotta Itch!" 
Several weeks ago I visited a friend that has about 15 goats in her back 40, and took some pictures.  This print was based on a photo I took of a goat using his horn to itch his leg.  I've seen this sort of action many times when visiting goats and thought it would be a good representation of what goats do?
For this print I decided to challenge myself and do another reduction print.  It has been about 2 years since I attempted a sunset over water reduction print, so this is only my second attempt.  I actually also used wood, so that was another added challenge.  All of my previous prints have been Linoleum.
This is a 3 color print, green, brown, and black.  4 colors if you count the white of the paper.  I started out with 15 copies and ended up with 8 that were halfway decent.  It is not easy to get the registration accurate with minimal equipment.  The size of this print is 4 1/2x 6 1/4".  Hope you enjoyed it.  And if you would like a real copy of it. Drop me a line!

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Public Works Administration



Mt. Baldy from Lake Arrowhead


Franz Geritz-1928

A few weeks ago, my wife had the Antique's Road Show on PBS.  During the show a lady had 3 large block prints that she said she saved from being thrown away.  They were prints of Grain Mills and other architecture from the Mid-west.  The antique dealer that was telling the lady about these prints said they were made by artist hired by the PWA, during the New Deal.  A few months prior to finding out about these prints, which by the way were now worth I think about 2000.00, I was at the North Carolina History Museum in Raleigh, NC.  They had a special exhibit of Photography done by PWA Photographers around North Carolina, again during the New Deal.  Oh, here is the actual prints from the Antique's Road Show, just found them.  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/archive/199802A32.html  These are really good they remind me of the works by the painter Charles Sheeler and Edward Hopper a bit.  

Charles Sheeler, Ballet Mechanique, 1931

This brings me to my desire to learn more about the printmakers of the PWA.  Who were they?  How were they picked?  What images did they portray?  When doing some research on this using Google... I found a simple quote from Roosevelt:

    "New Deal art would be art that was: …native, human, eager and alive… that was painted for the people of this country by their own kind in their own country, and painted about things they know and look at often and have touched and loved."  http://www.articlesandtexticles.co.uk/2009/04/07/the-public-works-of-art-project-pwa/
So if anyone has anymore info about this subject I would really like love to have you share!