Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Quarterly noise report, self-initiated projects + William Blake 36 editions

On Thursday I ran into Ke over at FHE and talked to him about the next few projects coming up. The James Sienna reverse wood-cut will run not as a wood block, but with a different relief process, once the proof is approved. I asked him about the possibility of burning a plate and running some of my own poster prints I have been working on :


... for the Quarterly noise report this month. The design is a work in progress but I think it will look good when we run it on the press, black, nothing fancy. Maybe print this on colored paper. I made this in illustrator, and I have little experience with the program, but this was a good exercise, just simple layout and type-setting.

I have a few other projects I want to work on like the favorite record prints series, a conceptual piece, will be a series of relief prints made from my favorite records. Want to make about 10 or so different prints. Document the process and hang the work as an installation. Maybe continue with the series and do cassettes, vhs, cds, etc... The idea is to exploit old technologies, ruin them, then make a print of them, black ink, which tells the viewer something is lacking. Maybe then digitally photograph the prints? Commenting on reproductions and originals, does it matter which is superior... no.

A project that I mentioned earlier, Songs of Innocence and Experience is the job Dennis Ahearn is working on for FHE in collaboration with Michael Phillips, who is a William Blake expert. The process is almost exactly the same as the process from the early 1800's, which looks a little like this image.
But the ink is a burnt umber. There will be 36 editions. The trick is to replicate the 1790's approach to printing these, down to the imitation 1790's hand made paper, the amount of embossing and beveling as a result of printing is fine tuned, the application of ink to the plate is also interesting and quite particular; they did not have rollers back then to apply the ink so a dabbling technique was discovered by Phillips, and Ahearn is laboring away at as I type this.

Another project going on is the video work I am doing for Pat Greene, which is a video installation showing all month at the Maitland Art Center called RS:21. I helped Pat edit the video and burn the DVD. I will doing more collaborations with Pat, working on my own school projects and prints, and drawing for DII class.
Till then.