Tales from Tamarind

Why is it so hard to get a haircut around here?

2008-05-06T16:52:00.000-07:00

Haircut
My hair was getting really really bad. With two weeks left to go until I returned to Saint Louis, I had quite the dilemma. Do I wait until I get back to STL and my favorite hair stylist, Callie? Do I fork over the big bucks for a fancy, but still probably crappy haircut? Or do I just go somewhere cheap and get a probably crappy, but potentially decent haircut? Since my 9 months of unemployment has left me with empty pockets, I opted for the latter. Last Wednesday, I ended up at the Urban Academy beauty school on Central for a cheap haircut. My stylist-in-training did a good job, although it took about an hour and a half to get the job done.

I normally have my hair cut much shorter, but this seems to be a tall order around here. When I say "short" I mean less than a half inch rather than an inch. (Compare this "haircut" to the lovely short cut in my profile picture on the right.) Overall though, she did better than the last person here in ABQ. I'm still looking forward to my return to STL and my regular stylist. It's nice to be able to walk into a place and just say, "the usual" with no questions asked and have it done in less than a half hour (including three trips to the shampoo sink).

Final Critique
Last week was pretty busy in the shop. Everyone was trying to get done for our last critique, which was today. I was working with Neal Ambrose Smith. The print was three runs, one on stone and two on plates. He started with this image on the stone.

Then on the subsequent plates he added some more drawing and then xerox transfers with text and clip art. Originally he wanted to do some sort of RGB color layering, but the drawing wasn't really working for that effect. We ended up with a watermelon, a golden yellow, and an eggplant color. Here you can see the red and yellow together, and then the purple layer on top to the left.

After I finished the three run edition, Neal decided to add in another layer to finish it off. I don't have a picture handy, but the final version has a red ochre flat that pushes the landscape back and pulls the figures forward. It turned out nice.

Here I am pulling my final official print at Tamarind (I still have a few personal projects to finish up):

Sunday evening I helped Patrick finish his print which was a small simple CMYK on some crazy paper. He was also happy to be finished:

Isotopes
Yesterday we hit a mid-day matinee baseball game at Isotopes Park. The weather was almost perfect, except that we weren't able to escape that oppressive Albuquerque sun. Patrick got a giant hot dog which was double in size by all the toppings he added.

Patrick was determined to get a foul ball... even if it meant digging behind the rolled up tarp pushed against the wall. So happy!

A Fancy Weekend

2008-04-30T14:44:00.000-07:00

Sorry folks. My wireless has been slooooooow this past week. I was lucky to just check email and celebrity gossip... updating this blog with pictures was pushing it.

Less than one week to go until our final critique. I'm not quite in panic mode yet, but I'm also not nearly finished with this last project (so maybe I should be). It's been pretty strange at Tamarind. I've been struggling with senioritis. I'm so ready to get out of here, but I have nowhere to go yet.

All Fresh and Organic
Thanks mostly to Valpuri, we have a lovely show up in the Tamarind Gallery. Usually the student exhibit showcases the work of the collaborative artists, but our show is just the work of the printers. I had two sad-faced prints in the show. (3 Color Litho with Beeswax.)

Here we are showing our good sides at the opening on Friday (Mick somehow escaped this shot):

And here are our bad sides, with Rodney:

Albuquerque BioPark
On Sunday, Yuli, Ana and I went to the Botanical Gardens and Aquarium. The aquarium was small but nice. Our favorite part was the jellyfish section, although it made Ana a little motion sick.

They also had a big shark/ray tank.

We got there at feeding time and got to see the giant rays completely surround the diver. It was crazy.

After that, it was on to the botanical gardens. Alex and I had been speculating about what a botanical garden in New Mexico would be like. We imagined it being brown and full of succulents, but it was actually kind of nice. It was like stepping into another world. I wish I'd visited the place earlier on during my stay here in ABQ.

The first stop was the enchanted children's garden, where Ana felt right at home among very large things:

Sometimes Ana felt out of place under very short things:

The green-ness made Yuli miss Colombia:

And it made me excited to go back to Missouri:

La La La... so many plants and trees:

Somebody got overly-excited about the prospect of entering a humid greenhouse:

Amanda next to flowers with incredibly large hair (FYI: I got it cut today):

There was this weird part of the botanical gardens that had a farm and animals and vegetable gardens:

Overall, a very fancy weekend.

Second Year Results

2008-04-20T21:25:00.000-07:00

It has been more than a week now since we learned who the lucky ONE was that would get to stay for the second year. Here's how the day went down:

We started our day with an 8:15 breakfast business meeting at Frontier. Since pretty much everybody was feeling like throwing up from stress, I was a little surprised that this decision was made. But sometimes the urge for pancakes is stronger than the urge to puke. These people seem to be having an okay time:

Celina was convinced that Rodney had actually used a half a bottle of syrup:

Here's the proof (everyone had their own syrup, and they supposedly started out full):

Rodney asked everyone if they wanted their letters right then and seemed surprised when the majority said "YES!!! GIVE IT TO ME NOW!!!" There were a few others who had artists coming in, so Rodney stuck to the 11:45am time that had been previously decided upon.

I was stuck sponging all morning and couldn't help but look at the clock every two seconds. There was lots of craziness going on in the student area and I felt a little left out. Thankfully, Mick came running through every 15 minutes with a countdown... "Only 55 more minutes until we open letters!!!"

When the time finally came, Brandon let me join the others in the library.

Marge came in briefly to apologize again for only being able to take one and reminded everyone that she would do whatever she could to help the losers find jobs. Then she ran out before she started crying.

Rodney slowly passed out the letters. I got a letter, but knew it was just a "Thanks for your hard work..." so I took the opportunity to take pictures of people's reactions.

And the next thing I know Mick starts screaming. And then Celina starts screaming. And Valpuri is confused because she thinks Mick and Celina have both made it into the second year. But then she opens her letter and makes this face.

And says, "Filip is going to KILL ME!!!"

Of course, everyone was very happy for Valpuri:

And if gave us all excuses to give her kisses:

Congratulations Valpuri!

Go Cards!

2008-04-16T09:31:00.000-07:00

The Cardinals face the Brewers 5 times in 8 games and you can imagine how rowdy this makes me and Patrick. St. Louis took the first game last night, 6-1. I love this picture from the game (taken by Chris Lee of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch):

Interwebs

2008-04-09T12:59:00.000-07:00

I've been without internet since Monday night which is quite unsettling.

Also unsettling is the roach that visited me on my pillow while I was sleeping Monday night.

I'm ready to come home.

You're My Popsicle!!!

2008-04-04T11:05:00.000-07:00

Okay... who's going with me to the New Kids on the Block reunion show? I am so excited!

Hoo-Reyes

2008-04-03T23:45:00.000-07:00

Seriously, am I the only one who thinks Anthony Reyes is hot?
I just hope he doesn't get traded before I get back to Saint Louis.

[CHUCK-E-CHEESE UPDATE: Cardinals 2-1, Brewers 2-1]

No News is Good News

2008-04-02T20:20:00.000-07:00

Baseball

It's baseball time again and things are getting heated here at Tamarind. As you might recall, Patrick is a fan of the Milwaukee Brewers. I'm not usually the bettin' type, but challenging Patrick is one of my favorite pastimes. We decided that the better team's fan after the first 10 games would be treated to Chuck-E-Cheese (including game tokens) by the lesser team's fan. So far the Cardinals are 1-1 and the Brewers are 2-0. If it weren't for that stinking Opening Day Rain-Out for the Cardinals, the teams might be tied. Peh! (At least the Brewers are beating the stupid Cubs.)

Printing

After Spring Break, we discovered that we had only TWO weeks to finish our next projects. Somehow when setting the critique calendar Rodney neglected to figure in the week we had off for the break. It hasn't been too big of a deal for me because I have only one artist and it's an easy print. But I feel bad for some of the other printers.

Here's the first proof of Ben's print (the green one on the right). It's the third print in a triptych (the first two were printed by Pat and Alex):

I've also been trying to work some on Kathy and Nikki's prints from Dallas. Here's a proof of Nikki's print:

And... I'm trying to do a few things for myself as well. We're having a show of our own work at the end of April and everyone is scrambling to get something done for it.

After this project, we will have a good month for the last one. I'm looking forward to being done.

Second Year Stress

Meanwhile everyone is freaking out about the second year. Everyone except me, that is. You see, I've decided NOT to apply for the second year. That's right! There! I said it out loud to everyone and I'm NOT changing my mind. (I think.)

As a reminder, each year they take 1 or 2 people for a paid position at Tamarind, working with Bill Lagatutta on the REAL Tamarind prints. At the end of the second year, they are certified as Tamarind Master Printers.

Up until a few weeks ago, I'd had every intention of applying for the second year and felt confident about my odds of making it. But as the application deadline drew near, I started to have doubts. I gave a lot of thought to the pros and cons of staying in Albuquerque versus the pros and cons of returning to Saint Louis. In the end, I realized that the only reason I was applying for the second year was for a title that I didn't necessarily need. Also, there's something alluring about being "the one" picked. But I have so many more reasons to come home.

Plus, we recently were informed that they are only taking ONE this year. More reason to get out while I still can. Being "the one" is going to be a hard hard job.

Big Muddy Editions

My purpose in going to Tamarind in the first place was to better prepare myself for opening a print shop. I went from having no clue what I was doing to feeling confident that I could actually open a print shop in Saint Louis and really make it work. Although having no money and massive school debt doesn't really help, I think I'm still in a position to get it done (eventually).

So the plan is to come home, find temporary work (most likely Six Flags drawing caricatures), look for buildings with commercial space below and apartment above, remodel the building and get in before the end of the year. Carrie's landlord has agreed to month-to-month leasing so we won't be bound to the apartment unnecessarily.

I'm trying not to rush the business side of things but it's hard not to get excited about it. I'm working toward a new website and have a brand new press name...

It says "Saint Louis" to me a little more than "Porkchop Press". What do you think?

Chop

In preparation for my new venture and as a celebration of my year at Tamarind, I've finally gotten around to ordering my new chop. A printer's chop is a stamp that is used to emboss the bottom corner of the paper after printing. Traditionally, it's used to identify either the printer and/or the shop it was printed at. At Tamarind, they use the Tamarind chop and then the printer's chop. At Tandem Press, they just use the Tandem chop. So the chop will be ready tomorrow afternoon. I'm so excited and will probably chop everything I can find. Here's what it looks like:

It's obviously the Saint Louis Arch with a heart in it. But if you really reach for it, you can see that it kind of makes an "A" with a "M" at the bottom (my initials).

Night Terrors

I've been so excited about my return to STL and the opening of Big Muddy Editions that I've been staying up late and not sleeping well. I've been having more night terrors lately. Due to the influx of giant cockroaches in my apartment, I often wake up thinking there are bugs in my bed. Look at the size of this guy! That's enough to give ANYONE night terrors!

But last night I thought someone was trying to attack me... so I jump out of bed and run all the way to my front door, quickly undo three locks and jump outside my house. I stood there for a few seconds in my bare feet and pajamas before I realized that I should probably go back to bed.

Oprah did a show on Night Terrors on Tuesday but I missed it. It's probably for the best. I find that the more I think about it, the more likely they are to happen.

Another reason to go back to Saint Louis! Not that I don't have night terrors there. But it's a lot harder for me to go outside!

Spring Break

2008-03-23T18:52:00.000-07:00

Sorry for my absence, I'm just winding down from my big Southwest Spring Break Adventure.

This will be a long one, so click below for the full text and pictures:

Carrie flew down last Friday from STL. After she arrived, we went to the airport's car rental center to pick up our car for the week. I'd reserved the car on Hotwire a few months back. When we tried to get the car they said they didn't have any Compact cars left, but they could give us either a 12 passenger van or a Mid-sized car for $5 more a day.

We tried to reason with the lady that we had a reservation for a certain price, and it wasn't our fault that they didn't have the smaller car available. Surely they could just give us a mid-sized car for the same price. But NoOoOoOooo... That woman resented us for getting such a great deal on Hotwire and basically forced us to pay the extra money. After going back and forth for a few minutes I finally gave in and handed over my credit card, figuring I could always complain once we got back (Note: Hotwire is currently reviewing my complaint.) The agent tried to make us feel better by giving us a Hyundai Sonata instead of a Chevy Malibu. Here I am with our sweet ride:

The first stop on our trip was Durango, Colorado, where we met up with Carrie's college roommate for lunch and a stroll on the river walk.

It's been a while since we last saw Jenni. She's married now and just had a baby last fall named Bennett. He's a cutie:

We stayed the night at Jenni's and after a yummy homemade breakfast we navigated our way off their mesa and got on our way to Utah.

Originally, we had planned to drive south from the Durango area, through the 4 corners, into Arizona and then up to Utah. But Jenni's husband suggested an alternative route that was a little more scenic but supposedly faster. There was snow in the forecast for Utah and it seemed safer to take a more southerly route... but who am I to argue with scenic drives?

We did see some really pretty stuff once we got a little farther into Utah!

And then the clouds came... And the snow.

By the time I took over driving duties, we were in a full-on ice and snow storm. Our route took us through the Dixie National Forest in Utah at elevations of 8,000-10,000 feet. The higher we got, the worse the weather was. The road was completely covered in snow, my windshield wipers were frozen up with ice, and I could barely see through the windshield. I had hopes that once we got out of the designated forest area, that the roads would be better. But it was a long, slow, scary drive.

At one point I had to get out and clean off the wiper blades and window. I made the mistake of stopping on a hill. So when we got ready to go again, the car wouldn't move. The wheels were spinning on ice and packed snow! I had Carrie take the wheel and then I did something stupid. I got behind it and PUSHED from the back bumper!!! Thankfully, the car didn't roll back on me. In fact, I somehow managed to summon the strength to push that bad boy out of the rut and up the hill. (Thank you Jesus!) Once the car got going, I did another stupid thing. I ran along side of the car, opened the door, and jumped in while it was moving!!! Seriously, I almost didn't make it.

Here I am reenacting my pushing the car as I ran along side of it:

Thankfully, the roads DID get better once we got out of the National Forest, for a little while anyway. There were some parts after that where it didn't even look like snow had touched the ground. Here's an incredibly relieved but still somewhat worried Carrie somewhere in Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument:

Just when we thought the worst of the weather was behind us, we ran into more snow and bad roads. the deer and the turkeys were sure enjoying it though!

I was never so happy to get to a destination as I was that night. A trip that should have taken 6 or 7 hours took about 9! Blech. The bad thing was, by the time we got to our cabins, all the nearby restaurants were closed. We drove a little ways to Ruby's Inn and found their restaurant open. It felt so good to eat.

The next morning, we slept in a bit and then drove over to Bryce Canyon National Park. We knew that it was supposed to be cold at Bryce, and also knew that it might be snowy, but for some reason we didn't translate that into, "We're not going to be able to do much." We enjoyed an orientation video at the visitors center and then set off to explore some of the trails into the canyon. Of course, all of the trails were covered in ice and snow, and we weren't exactly prepared to hike in those conditions. We were almost too cold to get out of the car to take pictures from the scenic view areas, but somehow we managed. It was pretty, we just wished we could have gotten down in it.

With our day at Bryce shorter than expected, we headed on down to Zion National Park, keeping our fingers crossed that the weather would be nicer. It was only about a 1 1/2 hour drive, but somehow during that time the snow disappeared and the temperatures warmed up more than 30 degrees. Driving into the park was beautiful!!!

We checked into our hotel and went back to the park to look around. We tried going on the first leg of the Emerald Pools trail but somehow ended up doing the whole 3 mile trail. It was nice though, and not too difficult elevation-wise.

The next morning we set out to tackle Angel's Landing, which is one of the more popular, but also more dangerous trails in the park. The trail ascends 1500 feet over a distance of 2.5 miles. At the end, you climb up a narrow fin of rock, in some places only 4 feet wide, with more than 1,000 foot drops on either side of you. There are some chains in the rock to help you get to the peak, but no guardrails. Since 1983, 6 people have died hiking up to Angel's Landing (including a STL man in 2007).

Now, I really wouldn't consider myself a thrill seeker, but when scores of people write that this is the best trail in the park and one of the best trails in the National Park System, it makes me want to get to the top. I was a little bit worried though, since I can be afraid of heights and this definitely fell into the "If you're afraid of heights, don't even consider doing this" category. We were told that there was a landing, about 2 miles up, where you could stop and turn around if you didn't want to make the final crazy climb, so we decided to go for it.

I'm not exactly the most active person in the world, and I definitely had to take a lot of breaks as we worked our way up to Scout's Landing. Fortunately, pictures provide an excellent excuse for taking breaks:

Since it was such a steep climb, there were a lot of switchbacks cut into the rock. The steepest series of switchbacks are called "Walters Wiggles" and they get you Scout's Landing.

There were probably a couple dozen people hanging out at Scout's Landing when we got there. We could see just a few brave souls heading on to the last scary climb to Angel's Landing. As we sat and enjoyed some snacks, we were attacked by some crazy ground squirrels who were after my Luna bar wrapper. One of them even climbed inside my bag! Carrie kept telling me to zip up my bag, but I didn't want to because it was just so darned cute. I was hoping it might accidentally come home with me.

After a rest, I hopped up and said, "OK, let's go!" I charged ahead to grab onto the first set of chains that would help me scale up the rocks. Carrie reluctantly followed, but after about 15 feet, she decided not to continue. She had new shoes and she didn't trust them to get her up the side of the cliff. It didn't help that there was another group of people following close behind, rushing her a little bit. I didn't want to leave Carrie behind, but I also wanted to say I actually finished the trail. I continued on for a little bit more, then got to a landing where I was able to clearly see the final steep climb up. I realized that it would probably take me another hour to finish the trail and get back to Carrie, and I didn't want to leave her down at Scout's Landing by herself, worrying about me. So I took a few pictures, turned around, and went back down.

Going down was a lot easier than going up, but it still took a little time. By the time we finished, we were ready to eat and rest a bit. Then we went on the anti-climactic 3 mile Watchman Trail later in the day.

It was cold in the morning, and our legs were SO TIRED from our hikes. So we decided to just do an easy paved river walk before we left the park.

We left around 11 and started our drive to the GRAND CANYON!!! The drive down into Arizona was a little boring. There were a lot of Native American folks selling stuff in booths along the road. We got to the Grand Canyon and it was incredibly busy.

I was expecting it to be pretty touristy but still found it a little annoying since the other parks had been so quiet. We walked along the rim some and took a few pictures. Here's me being unimpressed with the Grand Canyon:

And here's Carrie loving it!

We saw that there was an evening ranger program a mile or so down the rim, so we started walking towards it. It got dark and quiet and all of the tourists disappeared. It was actually a little scary there for a bit, but we eventually found our way off the rim trail and got to the program. The program was about the beauty and danger of the Grand Canyon. The ranger was really great but the presentation was mostly about stupid people dying at the Grand Canyon. We were really paranoid the rest of the time we were there, expecting that every yahoo who got too close to the edge to take a picture was going to fall off and die.

We tried to walk down the Bright Angel Trail into the canyon but didn't get very far. It was pretty icy and muddy and it looked like people were having to crawl on their hands and knees to get back up to the top. No thank you! We walked down far enough to take some pictures and see some mules and then we were out of there.

Thursday evening we drove to Flagstaff, Arizona and checked into a hostel there. It is a place that Carrie had stayed at years ago. It wasn't too bad, but it was very loud with trains going by and a bar across the street. We just happened to be placed in a room by the street and I couldn't sleep at all! The good thing about the hostel was that we got to watch LOST in a TV room with 5 strangers. It was great.

Friday morning we had breakfast in Flagstaff and then drove back toward Albuquerque on I-40. It was about a 5 hour drive, but we broke it up by visiting the Petrified Forest National Park. Carrie had been here before and said it was "interesting", which secretly meant that it was a little boring. It was pretty fascinating to see all the trees that had turned into rocks. And the landscape was very pretty in parts. But other than that, it was just a bunch of rocks laying around. We still managed some pictures:

We got back into Albuquerque Friday evening and Carrie stayed until this afternoon. It was a nice trip but I'm glad to be home, where the most walking I'll do is the 500 feet between my house and Tamarind.

LeRoy Neiman

2008-03-10T19:58:00.000-07:00

Apparently YouTube entries do not count as a real blog update, so here is something of substance.

Since last week, LeRoy Neiman has been working with the printers at Tamarind for a benefit print. For those of you who don't know, Neiman "is an American artist known for his brilliantly colored, semi-abstract paintings and screen prints of athletes and sporting events." (Thanks wikipedia!) He is also known for his wicked handlebar moustache!!!

Now 81 years old, LeRoy got his big break back in the day when a co-worker named Hugh Hefner started a little magazine called Playboy. He became an artist for the magazine, and has painted and drawn almost every athlete and celebrity imaginable over the past 50 years. He was the official artist for five Olympics and was often filmed drawing live sketches at the Super Bowl and other events. Here's a few of his images (courtesy of his official website):

While some artists might scoff at Neiman's art, they are most likely just jealous because of the MILLIONS and MILLIONS that he's made off of the sales of his work. Apparently, Neiman's prints and paintings are primarily bought by self-made Southern and Midwestern businessmen who aren't usually big into buying art. Having one of Neiman's pieces is definitely a status thing.

Anyway, Tamarind is still desperately trying to raise money for the new building and they got the idea to invite Neiman to make a print. Apparently he's never made a real limited edition lithograph before and was delighted at the prospect. He spent most of last week working on a stone in the studio. On Tuesday night he was the guest of honor at a fancy dinner with the UNM president, then got to sit in the Governor's box at the UNM vs UNLV basketball game. (We got to go too, but our seats weren't quite as close.)

LeRoy drew during the game and was announced to the crowd midway through. It was a good game and UNM won 59-45. Here's me and Patrick getting fired up. Go Lobos!

By the weekend, LeRoy had finished his drawings and they started proofing. Here they are on Saturday trying some different colors.

And here is a close-to-finished version of the print.

Today, they busted out the old flatbed press so that LeRoy could do some monoprints. Here's his ink setup.

And here he is working on a monoprint of LeBron James (from the Cleveland Cavaliers).

Tomorrow night we are having a reception at Tamarind for Mr. Neiman. I guess the benefit print will be unveiled there. Also, there's going to be lots of legislators coming through, so Marge wants us to be printing at night and looking happy and busy, but also a little sad because we need a new building.

Still My Favorites

2008-03-07T20:43:00.001-08:00

5+5+5+5+5= YAHTZEE!!!!

2008-03-03T12:02:00.000-08:00

Seriously.
All I want to do is play Yahtzee.

In the park

At Tamarind

At home

In the bed, on the floor, on a towel by the door...

A is for Amanda, B is for Boredom, C is for College Art Association

2008-02-24T21:17:00.000-08:00

Things slowed down considerably after the first critique. Some artists were chomping at the bit to start working on their next project. Others (like my artists) decided that they needed a good week or two to mull things over. I was grateful for the break from printing... for a few days anyway.

Patrick's girlfriend Chelsey came down for the weekend and we hung out quite a bit. I somehow managed to convince them to join me for a minor league hockey game in nearby Rio Rancho. It was the New Mexico Scorpions versus the Colorado Eagles in hot CHL action. So exciting!!!

The game was fairly lopsided with the Scorpions losing something like 5-0. But the good news was that they were having Skate with the Scorpions after the game. We hurried down to the bowels of the Santa Ana Star Center to get complementary skates, but I was the last person to get a pair. Patrick and Chelsey watched from the stands as I took a few runs around the rink:

Unfortunately, getting the last pair of skates also sometimes means getting the last pair of skates that may or may not actually fit you. The things were killing my feet, the ice was rough from the hockey game, and I was certain that I was going to bite it. I didn't stay on very long... just long enough to take a few pictures in front of the mascot.

I was hoping to make some progress with my artists before I left for CAA on Tuesday but still didn't get a whole lot accomplished. I set out Tuesday evening to Dallas and had an okay flight but an awful encounter with the SuperShuttle out of Love Field. I had prepaid for the shuttle under the assumption that a taxi into downtown Dallas would be much more expensive. But after I waited AN HOUR for the shuttle to pick me up, and after finding out the taxi only would have cost between $5-10 more, I was regretting the decision.

CAA is the College Art Association and they have a conference every year with art panels and things. The main attraction is the interview center where schools interview for teaching positions. In the past it was common for people to go to CAA without an interview lined up, show around their portfolio, stalk interviewers at their hotels, and hopefully leave with a job. But nowadays its a lot different. Not as many schools seem to be interviewing at CAA, it's all done online, and if you don't already have an interview lined up, there's not really much reason to go.

My main purpose in attending the conference was to hang out with my old grad school buddy Kathy O'Connell. Here is Kathy in her power jacket and fashion accessory wheelchair:

Also staying with us was Ms. Charletta Nicole Hogan, who was a few years behind me at the University of Wisconsin. Nikki and I share a love of Mountain Dew and Powdered Donettes.

I somehow managed to convince both Kathy and Nikki to draw on some litho plates for me:

The hotel we stayed at was The Adolphus, which despite being a conference overflow hotel, turned out to be way more awesome than the actual conference site. Of course, I may be biased... since this hotel was built by my boy Adolphus Busch (of Saint Louis Anheuser Busch King of Beers fame). Here's a picture of me and big A:

The thing that was great about the Adolphus, besides being nearly 100 years old, was that there were A's on everything! Even the pillow shams:

I liked to pretend that the A's stood for "Amanda", while Nikki preferred to think they meant "Alabama".

I went to a few conference activities, and finally got around to hitting up the JFK 6th Floor Museum.

But mostly I just hung out in the hotel room, cracked the litho whip on Nikki and Kathy, and enjoyed several excellent meals.

Here we are enjoying a lovely lunch at Dakota's Restaurant:

And this is our last dinner together at Truluck's, courtesy of Kathy's lovely mom, JackieO. (P.S. Look at the size of my SHRIMPS!!!)

Although it wasn't exactly busy at Tamarind before I left for CAA, it was still nice to get away and enjoy the company of my old friends in Dallas.

Critique #1 (Nicole & Jenna)

2008-02-12T21:23:00.000-08:00

I just got back from a lovely dinner with my Tamarind friends (minus Yuli who has been besieged with dental problems). It always amazes me that I can spend 60 hours a week in the studio with these kids and still want to hang out with them afterward. But as Valpuri put it, "It's not like we have any other friends here."

Everyone else (again, minus Yuli), unwound after a long and stressful first project by going together to Bikram Yoga. While I don't mind occasionally doing yoga in the privacy of my own home, I'm not that interested in going with the others. I argue that my recent kidney donation prevents me from doing crazy hot yoga. But after a year and a half, that excuse is starting to wear thin.

Yoga or not, it did feel good to finally be done with these first projects. We had our critique this afternoon and it was nice to finally have all the artists and printers together so that we could see (and hear) what happened with the collaborations.

Nicole
My print with Nicole ended up being a CMYK print, but it was still quite a challenge. We did CMYK prints last semester, but I don't think I ever actually wrote in detail about them. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about... CMYK printing is what is usually used for newspapers and magazines and pretty much any other printed items. If you've ever looked on the bottom of a cereal box, you'll notice a calibration bar with four colors: Cyan (bluish), Magenta (hot pink), Yellow, and Black.

Below is an image I found on the fancy interwebs that illustrate this concept. On the left you see the different color separations. On the right you see how the image changes as the colors are printed on top of each other.

So Nicole had this image of a building that she wanted to use. It was very important to her to capture all of the different variations in the brick. She wasn't interested in hand drawing or working on the plates or stones directly. I suggested some different ways we could get where she wanted, but in the end she pushed for CMYK and that's what we did. Even though it seems like more of a commercial and maybe more of an easy way of printing, it was still pretty hard. My first problem was that the colors were too lean or transparent. The colors were mixing, but I wasn't achieving the right levels. Nicole was pretty disappointed with the first proof so I spent the next day making another one.

Here is Celina contemplating the prints. The one on the left is the second (darker) version of the print. The one in the middle is the first (lighter version) and the one on the end is just a mess-up where I printed the wrong ink on the wrong plate.

After discussing it with Rodney and Bill, I decided to leave all the transparent base out of the inks and just use opaque colors mixed straight out of the can. They were still printed pretty lean, but I was able to match the colors much more closely this way. We printed half of the edition on gray Rives BFK and half on white German Etching paper. I like the effect of the gray under the inks. Here is a closer look:

I was pretty happy when the edition was done:

Jenna
Jenna and I got off to kind of a late start. She was also working with Ana and they met before we did, so she kind of already had an idea of what she wanted to do. For me, she tried working with the tusche on the stone. This was the first version of her print (as it looked on the stone before etching):

After seeing the proof, she decided that she wanted to work into it a little bit more. So I counteretched the stone and she went back at it with more tusche, some litho crayon and some rubbing crayon. Which resulted in this (in ink on the stone):

This turned out to be just one run on gray Rives BFK paper in a blue-black ink. Jenna expressed some interest in maybe watercoloring over the print, but has yet to do so.

Otherwise...
Things are going well. Patrick and I spent about 20 hours in the studio this past weekend, and my little guest house was in shambles. I finally did my laundry, picked up my messes, went grocery shopping and found time to update this blog. It's nice to actually have some breathing room again. For the next collaborations, I have Nicole again, and then Karl. We have four weeks to complete the prints this time, which is nice. But I'm planning on going to the College Art Association conference in Dallas next week. So that will cut into the planning stages a little bit. Hopefully by the time I come back, my artists will have their ideas completely ironed out so that I can get cracking on the proofing.

The (other) Mile High City

2008-02-09T21:58:00.000-08:00

For most of the first semester, Patrick and I spent our Sundays watching the Packers on the big TV's at Howie's Sports Page in NE Albuquerque. However, there were a couple of weekends when Patrick abandoned me to spend time with his girlfriend Chelsey in Denver. Apparently, Denver has a Packer bar that puts Howie's to shame. According to Patrick, hundreds of Packer fans show up, Green Bay is the only team on the TV's, and the drunken bar owner sits up in a crows nest and leads the fans in Packer chants during commercials.

It seemed like a pretty exciting place, and I've never been to Denver, so when Patrick suggested that we should go up to Denver together sometime to visit Chelsey and watch a Packer game at the Best-Packer-Bar-Ever, I was all for it. Little did I know that Patrick and Chelsey were scheming to surprise me with a roundtrip airline ticket to Denver for Super Bowl Sunday!

Despite the fact that both of us were pretty busy with our artist collaborations, Patrick and I set out for Denver on Friday afternoon.

The flight was short, but not so short that Patrick couldn't fall asleep on the way there. Chelsey picked us up at the airport and we dropped our things at her apartment. I was greeted by Chelsey's roommate's dog, Roo, who was very excited to meet me.

She was also excited to see Patrick. So excited, in fact, that she peed on Chelsey's bed. Awesome.

Chelsey lives near the capitol, and not too far from downtown, so we headed down that way to find somewhere for dinner.

It was a bit chilly, but we walked down the sparkly main drag and picked a restaurant randomly. The restaurant was a bit of a letdown, but we went home and saved the evening with a game of Monopoly. Patrick hadn't played since he was a boy, and I ended up winning with nearly $10,000 in my hand!

Roo slept with me on the air mattress which was weird and comforting all at the same time. Saturday morning we went to a City O' City for breakfast and enjoyed english muffins with tasty toppings and various baked items. I also had a hot chocolate which was one of the better hot chocolates I've had in a long long time. I guess I'm just used to Swiss Miss though, so my standards aren't too high.

Somehow it happened that Patrick's cousin and some friends were visiting Colorado from Wisconsin during this same weekend. We drove two hours SW from Denver to a cabin that they were staying in and hung out with them for the afternoon. Patrick and his cousin are like brothers from another mother.

The drive through the mountains was pretty and got even better the higher up we got.

Chelsey brought stuff to make Spring Rolls and after shoveling some snow and trying to heat up the cabin and enjoying the spring rolls, we all headed over to Mount Princeton Hot Springs Resort.

When Patrick talked about going to the hot springs, I was expecting something similar to the "Hepatitis Ponds" that the Tamarind kids frequently go to near Albuquerque. But this place was a lot fancier, with a changing and shower facility, real swimming pools filled with hot spring water, and then hot spring ponds nestled in next to a freezing cold river.

We skipped the pool and headed straight to the river, nearly killing ourselves as we tried to climb down the cold wet rocks and into the hot spots. It took a bit to transition from the cold into the hot water, but once we settled it was pretty great. The best part was when it started snowing on us. It was pretty surreal to be laying in a river in my swimming suit in the mountains with snow all around and snow falling on my face. I loved it. After the hot springs, everyone was pretty tired and relaxed. It was starting to get dark and we had a long drive through the mountains ahead of us, so we decided to take off around 5:30.

When we got back to Chelsey's, I got right in to my pajamas and we ordered Thai food and played another round of Monopoly.

Patrick is one of the most competitive people I know and he was determined to give me payback for my $10K win the night before. Of course, he won.

Sunday morning we went to a restaurant called Watercourse. Watercourse and City O' City are apparently run by the same people and they were both delicious. We started with a crazy fantastic sampler appetizer and then I had the Buffalo Tofu sandwich, which turned out to be a little too spicy for me. Chelsey had pancakes with homemade granola and fruit and bananas and real maple syrup. It looked pretty phenomenal.

Of course, Sunday was Super Bowl day and we were a bit indecisive about where we wanted to go to watch it. It seemed a little depressing to go to the Packer bar if the Packers weren't in the Super Bowl. Also, we figured it would be crowded. So we ended up watching the game at a tavern down the street from Chelsey.

Despite their beating the Packers in the NFC championship game, Patrick and I were rooting for the Giants to win. Tom Brady and the Patriots just get under my skin a bit and I didn't want them to have a perfect season. Because I'm mean like that. Here I am savoring the Giants victory and Patrick is in a state of shock.

Our flight was early the next morning and then it was back to Tamarind for a week of crazy hard work.

I was a little nervous that I'd gotten behind during my trip to Denver, but I'm glad that I went. I had a great time.

Inter-NOT

2008-01-30T22:23:00.000-08:00

Today was pretty long and frustrating.

I stayed up late last night working on a photo file for Collaborator #1, trying to figure out how the heck was I supposed to make it into a print. We met at 10am and things were a little tense. After all my work trying to figure out how to piece the thing together, she reveals that what she really wanted was a print that looked exactly like the photograph. Now as far as prints go, I'd say that's not very exciting. There are lots of easier and cheaper ways to get that end result (digital printout, color copy, photo enlargement, etc.). But in the end, I agreed that if that's what she really wanted, I'd just do a giant CMYK print. It's still going to be challenging for me to print. It's just not as adventurous as most of the other collaborations going on.

At lunchtime I walked my rent check down to the bank to deposit in my landlord's clearing account (because apparently he's too busy to deposit the checks himself and this is supposedly more convenient for me somehow). Afterward, I went back to Tamarind and wandered around in circles for an hour or so... until the UPS guy brought my new shoes.

I don't buy shoes very frequently. I'd say I usually get at least two or three years of regular wear out of a pair of shoes before I find a new favorite. Anyway, Carrie and I are going to spend my Spring Break galavanting all over the Southwest (hitting each of the four corners: New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona). We're going to do a little bit of hiking around and I figured that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to wear my flat-footed-polka-dotted Vans slip-ons. So I ordered the cheapest, least ugly hiking shoes I could find on SierraTradingPost:

It's always strange wearing shoes that actually have support and some traction. I don't really see these working their way into the everyday wear category, but it'll be good to have them for that rare occasion when I do go outside.

After trying on my shoes and scaling my bar stool and breakfast bar in a climbing simulation, I worked on a new print. It's been a while since I made some art for myself. I've been getting so annoyed with not being able to work my collaborations, but I'm not really using all of this free time to get anything done. I had plates ready to go for my winter break but I never got around to using them, so I broke one out and started drawing on it. It was a self portrait... because I love myself. It's going to be a three run print with waxing and maybe a little embossing thrown in at the end. If it turns out good I'll post a picture.

I was so upbeat after finishing my drawing. It was nice to actually accomplish something. I was supposed to meet up with Collaborator #2 this evening, so I hurried to check my email before I left and was ~~disappointed~~ outraged to find that my internet stopped working AGAIN. Arghghghghghghghghhhghrrrghghrrggh. So annoying. I wasn't able to fix it before I left, but when I returned home I fiddled with the settings and got it to come back on.

Things at the studio went good. I got my artist going on her stone finally with some tusche washes. She is pretty mellow and understands that we're taking a gamble with these tusche washes. After a few quick test runs we pulled out her stone and she got to work on her landscape painting. It's kind of a depressing black and white fuzzy sort of thing. The tusche that she put down tonight looked good and I think she's hoping to finish it by the weekend. Meanwhile, Collaborator #1 will be bringing me the CMYK films for her print on Friday, so I'll be able to get busy next week after my return from Denver. Oh... I guess I didn't tell you about my trip yet. Maybe another time....

One Week Feels Like Three Months

2008-01-28T18:38:00.000-08:00

Artists

After our meeting with our artists last Tuesday, everybody was pretty fired up. What we didn't realize then was that most of us wouldn't even get to start working until the weekend.

I met with my first artist on Thursday. We had a nice long visit at her studio and pinned down some solid ideas for her first print. Nicole does installations based on sites that she finds around Albuquerque. I initially thought we might work on some printed components for her installations. But I guess she would rather just make a print based on the photographs that she takes of her sites. She still needed to make a final decision for the exact image she wanted to work from, so we agreed to meet again on Tuesday, during our assigned class time to get started with things.

Meanwhile, my other artist was missing in action for the better part of the week. She didn't return my calls or emails until the weekend. We finally managed to have a brief meeting on Sunday and I'm hoping she'll be in the studio tomorrow to get started. She is also working on a small print with Ana, so we have to go easy on her. For me, it looks like she'll be doing a smaller landscape on a stone primarily using tusche washes. That should be a blast to print if I don't completely burn it out while etching it.

Demos

When we're not waiting around for our artists, we've been doing some demos on the flatbed press. The flatbed press is huge and German and is used mostly for monoprinting at Tamarind. I think we had one of these in the print production room at UW, but nobody really knew what it was for. I never saw anyone use it for anything besides a table.

Originally it was designed as a proofing press for newspapers and such, so that printers could check out their plates before they ran thousands of copies on their big machines. It was pretty cool to finally see the flatbed press in action. But it was a lot like letterpress in that it takes a long time to set up, just a few minutes to print, then an even longer time to clean up.

Here are all of the rollers on the press. The rollers on the left are the inking rollers (with green ink). I think there around 13 of them. The blue thing in the middle is the big rubber blanket. And the red things on the right are the dampening rollers.

You put a piece of paper and an aluminum plate next to each other on the press. Here you can see Mick pulling a finished print out of the grippers. The printing plate is locked in to the right of it.

The carriage with the big blue blanket roller passes over and the red dampening rollers wet the plate. The inking rollers drop down and ink the plate after it's wet. Then the carriage stops and goes the other direction. The blue roller drops down on the inked plate and picks up the image, then rolls around and transfers it directly to the paper. This is known as "offset" lithography. Because the plate never touches the paper. The ink is offset onto the blanket and then put on the paper. It's pretty cool. All of these guys seemed to think so:

We did one of the demos using Celina's plate. Here Mick and Celina are checking out one of the first prints we made with it:

Black Eye Update

This picture was taken on Friday. It was still swollen and starting to turn yellow all around my eye.

And this is me right this second. I think the swelling has gone down and it's not as yellow. But I still have a bit of red/purple there and the point of initial impact is still a bit sore.

Weekend/Drawing

Patrick and Alex and I went to the movies Saturday night. On Sunday I worked on a drawing for Bill. Apparently they are going to the state capitol tomorrow to do demos in the rotunda. They needed a small stone to take with them... something cheesy and New Mexicoey. This is my drawing on the stone. The printed version has a bit more contrast. I'll post that as soon as I get a copy.

It's a roadrunner (the state bird) in front of the state capitol roundhouse with the zia symbol on the side. The zia is on the state flag and is a Native American sun symbol. The shadow under the bird is the Tamarind symbol. (Oh so incredibly awful). I called the print "Beep, Beep!" (after the Road Runner cartoon). Sharon and Brandon printed up 30 of them this afternoon to give to various Tamarind donors and supporters. They borrowed a table top press from Takach and will be printing more of these tomorrow, I guess.

Interwebs

The most awful thing happened Saturday night after I returned home from the movies.

I couldn't connect to the internet!

How seriously awful. I mean, all I do is eat, sleep, go to Tamarind, and stare at my computer. Remove one of those things from the equation and my life becomes significantly more lame.

It was late when I came home so after an hour or so of fiddling with the wireless settings I powered it down and went to bed. I hoped it would fix itself by the time morning rolled around. But on Sunday I got up and it still wasn't working. Normally when something is broken, I just look up on the internet how to fix it. But it's hard to look up internet problems when you can't get online. For a good part of the day Sunday, I was trying to get the stupid thing to work. Apparently my wireless was working just fine. I could get signals from every router within a half mile. But I couldn't get an internet connection. I figured that there was just some minor setting that needed to be changed, or else it would just fix itself. I hardly ever have problems with my Mac which is why it's extra upsetting when things do happen. Anyway, after 36 hours without an internet connection I finally "fixed" it today. After running the various network diagnostics and setup assistants a million times, it just magically started working. Now I'm afraid to stop using it...

LOST

My favorite show returns Thursday night and I don't have a TV to watch it! I have four options.

Buy a TV for LOST watching purposes.
Invite myself over to someone's (TV) house on Thursday.
Wait and watch LOST when it is posted on ABC.com
Not watch it at all.

Most likely I'll end up watching it at someone's house. Which will suck because not many people here share my love of LOST. And I'll probably end up having to explain everything and put up with snide remarks about the show, which is the last thing you want when it's the season premier and you haven't been able to watch the show in a million years anyway.

Collaboration Station

2008-01-22T16:48:00.000-08:00

Black Eye Update: 5:54PM Tuesday

Today started out like any other day at Tamarind. We all met up around 9am in the studio and talked with Rodney for an hour or so about the upcoming semester. Or more accurately, Rodney talked to us about the upcoming semester.

We had our Art History Class (History of Printmaking II) at 11am, so Rodney walked us over to our building. (Once outside Tamarind, we have no idea where we are.) The AH class was okay. Mostly just introductions. I've had a similar class before, so I'm hoping it won't be too taxing. It helps that the instructor is a former Master Printer. So at least she knows what's going on.

We had lunch together as a group and then Patrick accompanied me to the Financial Aid office to take care of my business. I swear, I don't know how many of you read my early early post about my Financial Aid Fiasco, but this semester has almost been worse. We had to wait a while, but somehow managed to get in and see the FinAid officer and run back to Tamarind before our 1:30 meeting with our Collaborative Class. I'm not used to running, much less running in high altitudes... so I was a black-eyed incredibly winded wreck when I arrived back at Tamarind.

It was exciting to finally meet with our collaborators for the semester. All of the collaborative students are in the graduate program at UNM. Some of them are printmakers, but it seemed like most were painters and drawers. There may have been a couple sculptors thrown in.

Rodney handed out a collaboration schedule. It appears that the semester is broken into four 3-4 week periods. During each period, we are assigned to work with one (or sometimes two) of the artists on an edition of prints. In the end, it looks like each printer will have to do six total editions, four of which will be 3-4 color runs and two of which will be 1-2 runs.

So for the first collaboration, I am working with Nicole on a 3-4 run print (with 3 trial proofs) and I'm simultaneously working with Jenna on a 1-2 run print (with 2 trial proofs). Besides our Art History class, this is the only thing we have to do... so I'm hoping it won't be too hard to get in two projects at once. I mean, last semester we were cranking out more than an edition a week, so this should be manageable.

The hard part is having to coordinate schedules and meetings with your artist(s). From what I understand, there is the potential for a lot of down time. If you get a proof done and are waiting for them to come in and approve it, for example. Also, it's going to take a bit for them to get their ideas together. Some of them know what they want to do. Others are completely clueless. We're supposed to arrange meetings in their studios to discuss their work and get ideas on how to translate that into a print.

Nicole and I pinned down a time to meet on Thursday morning. I'm still waiting to hear from Jenna. I think she's a little more wary of this whole process. Or maybe she's just wary of my black eye. Who knows.

Either way, I'm excited to be back and working on things. I have nothing to do tonight except mourn the loss of Heath Ledger, so I might go grain a stone after dinner (before all of this enthusiasm wears off).

Back In Action

2008-01-21T21:45:00.000-08:00

My black eye and I welcomed Patrick back to town with a trip to the old Frontier restaurant. At least I have an excuse for looking rough. I'm not sure what's wrong with Patrick here (except for maybe that Packer-loss-hangover).

Welcome to Albuquerque (again)

2008-01-21T18:09:00.000-08:00

You know how you always try to make a good impression on the first day of classes? Or at least I always have. I think it goes back to when I was little. My mom would always get us dressed up in our nice new clothes and brand new school shoes. We'd have our shiny new lunch box and backpack, and an unbroken, unused box of Crayola Crayons.

In college, a lot of my friends would show up in pajamas for the first day of class. And even though I'm not known as the fanciest dresser, I'd be sure to at least be wearing an ink-free set of clothes to my first day of art classes.

So here I am, 28 years old and about to begin my second semester at Tamarind. I have an Art History class this semester with an actual teacher. Plus, we'll soon be meeting our grad student collaborators for the first time.

And while I have a new pair of jeans and a brand new notebook to take with me to class, I somehow think those things are going to go unnoticed...

BECAUSE I HAVE A F*#$*#*ng BLACK EYE!!!

No seriously.

I. Have. A. Black. Eye.

I'm sure you want to know how this could happen to someone as graceful as me. Click below to continue reading the account of this unbelievable feat.

It all started this afternoon as I boarded my plane in Saint Louis. I thought to myself... "Geez... I've got two bags, one of which weighs 50 pounds. And I'm planning on taking the BUS home? That's going to be annoying. I should just see if I can get a cheap rental car for the night. That way I can go grocery shopping and stuff and not have to worry about the bus or asking for rides."

So as soon as I landed in ABQ (a long boring flight surrounded by three babies and Santa Fe loonies), I called Carrie and asked if she could check on rental car prices for me. She found me a good deal with Enterprise and off I went to the rental car facility.

[SIDENOTE: Not before running into my Tamarind friend Yuli at the baggage claim. Apparently her ride had forgotten about her, so she used my phone and found someone else to come and get her. At this point, I still thought I was taking the bus or else I would have offered her a ride.]

The enterprise folks were nice and professional and walked me out to the KIA Spectra I had waiting for me. After doing a dent-check on the car, the nice gentleman started her up and directed me out of the lot. Now all I had to do was get in the car and drive away. Easy enough, right?

Apparently not.

I start to get in the car, but it's unfamiliar and the door is higher than I'm used to. I swing the door towards me as I lower myself into the car and the next thing I know I've smacked myself under the eye with the car door. I winced and grabbed my eye. There was an agent walking toward the car who may have seen it happen, but I pretended like nothing was wrong and continued into the car. I adjusted the rear view mirror so that I might see out the back window and also see my throbbing eye at the same time. There were two small scratches under my left eye and a small bump starting to form.

I kind of figured returning to Albuquerque would suck, but not this much.

The only cold thing in my fridge was the Mountain Dew I'd left for my arrival home. I "iced" my face until my skin stuck to the can and the pain went away.

I made a grocery list, went to Wal-Mart and just got home... only to discover my newly forming black eye. I bet it's going to look even better in the morning, on my first day of classes.

Running into a car door really isn't the best excuse. If you have any better ones, let me know. I'm thinking I might tell everyone I took a hockey puck to the eye. Or that I got in a fight with a Giants fan during the football game last night.

So many possibilities.

Sadness

2008-01-20T19:51:00.000-08:00

I'm leaving tomorrow.

Also, the Packers lost in overtime.

So much sadness.

Large and in Charge

2008-01-16T08:51:00.000-08:00

Bossy
The UPS Store owner's baby came this weekend, so I've been "in charge" this week. Being in charge doesn't really involve much more than I normally do. It just means I get to be grumpy and say things like, "Do you need something to do?" As my luck would have it, this new level of responsibility coincided with our monthly bulk mailing for a local real estate company. (Not much fun and takes up a lot of space in the store.)

Visits
In addition to being bossy this week, I'm also trying to fit in a lot of last minute visits. Yesterday, I met my caricature buddy "Cookieman" for lunch. Last night, Carrie and I went to dinner at Riddles Penultimate Cafe and Wine Bar. My little bearded brother is in town today for some work related meetings and we're going to hang out tonight and watch hockey. Tomorrow night we're having dinner with my long-lost college roommate. Friday I have lunch with one of my sweet old UPS Store customers. And Saturday my mom (and maybe dad) are coming up to hang out for the day. On Sunday my focus is...

Football
Everyone thought the Packers would be playing the Cowboys in Dallas this Sunday for the NFC Championship (and a trip to Super Bowl XLII). Thankfully, Tony ~~Romo~~ Crappo and the Cowboys lost last weekend to the NY Giants. Since the Packers are ranked higher than the Giants, the game will be played in GREEN BAY at Lambeau Field. Despite the momentum the Giants have gained by beating the Cowboys, I still don't think they're a match for the Packers at chilly Lambeau. This is going to be an awesome game.

Touring
The hockey game last Thursday was awesome. Student night tickets aren't available until 90 minutes before the game starts, so it was a little chaotic when we got there. The lines were long and confusing and there were lots of stupid college kids trying to cut to the front of the line. We ended up sitting next to a young nerdy couple who seemed to be stuck in the mid-nineties.

On Saturday morning we decided to go to the Anheuser Busch brewery for their free tour. Carrie got her picture taken with one of the Clydesdales and we got free samples of whatever A-B product we wanted. I enjoyed a seasonal Winter's Bourbon Cask Ale and a super-fresh glass of Budweiser Select.

Returns
I leave for Albuquerque in just five days.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

2008-01-10T13:13:00.000-08:00

Last weekend Carrie and I drove to Rolla to visit with my parents again.

Twelve years after building and moving into their house, my Dad finally got around to building the chimney in the living room. I guess he's been working on it here and there over the past few months. Apparently the weather and the short days have made the project quite a challenge, but he almost has the chimney bricked in. Saturday I spent the afternoon up on the roof helping my dad put the last few rounds of blocks up.

Mostly I just stood around on the roof handing my dad things, but as we reached the top of the chimney it got a little harder. My dad had some rickety scaffolding up but it was still challenging to get those last few blocks on.

Sunday afternoon we met up with my little brother and his family. After chatting for a bit we decided to take the kids bowling. Here is Alex, Dawn, and Alex's new beard.

I'm a little envious of Alex's beard. As inconvenient as it might be to have to shave your face every day, I think it would be cool to just grow a beard whenever you felt like it. In some ways it makes him look a little bit older, but I still think he sort of looks like a twelve year old with a fake beard on.

It had been a few years since we last went bowling, but you can see that I haven't lost my form. (Of course, if you could zoom in on the scores you might see that I barely broke 60 points.)

Meanwhile at the UPS Store we're still waiting for Matt's new baby to come. Business has been slow for the most part, and I usually only work five hours a day. Now that the holidays are over and people are back to work and school, my commute to the UPS Store has been taking between 45 minutes to an HOUR! Bleh. Fortunately, when I come home it only takes 35 minutes.

This afternoon I decided to go and get my Missouri drivers license. I looked especially cuddly on my Iowa license, but it was time to move on. Now the only thing tying us to that awful state is the $15 left in a bank account there.

I picked the perfect time to go to the DMV. I was the only one there! It was crazy. The other crazy thing was that they apparently still had my information and picture on file from the last time I had a Missouri license (2000?). The lady that processed my information was laughing so hard when my smiley faced picture pulled up. I can't help it that I love getting drivers licenses! I'm always cracking the biggest grin. This time wasn't much better. But I've learned to wait to get my license until after I get my hair cut. Otherwise I spend the next few years regretting it. (Perhaps some of you remember the "shadow mullet" on my Wisconsin license.)

It's student night at the Scottrade Center and Carrie and I are going to go see the Blues take on the Dallas Stars. Woo-Hoo!

This weekend we have a wedding to go to and I have Packers football to watch. GO PACK!

The Year of Twos and Eights

2008-01-02T14:07:00.000-08:00

I'm not much into the whole "New Year" thing... but it certainly is a convenient time to stop and reflect on things.

Let me tell you, folks...

2008 is going to be a fabulous year.
I can feel it in my arthritic 28-year-old bones.

But before I delve into my big dreams for this year of twos and eights, let me bring you up to speed on what I've been doing since I last wrote.

Trips (and Oliver)
After visiting Carrie's family in Arkansas, we drove up Hwy 63 to spend the night at my parent's house in the Missouri "wilderness". It was a brief visit, but I was glad that I got to spend a little time with my parents before going back to work at the UPS Store. We played card games with my parents and hung out with my mom's awesome dog, Oliver.

Oliver can be hard to take pictures of because he's always moving. But here's a good one.

Work
The UPS Store has kept fairly busy since Christmas, but we're starting to slow down a bit now. I'm working mornings mostly. There are a couple of guys that come in at 1pm, so I usually just open at 8am and stay until they show up. Having the afternoons off is nice, but I don't like getting up so early. Especially now that...

Highway 40/Interstate 64 is CLOSED!!!!
So apparently this major stretch of road in Saint Louis is in need of repair. So someone had the bright idea that they could get things done quicker if they just closed the whole road, rather than doing partial closings. I'm sure this is probably true. I mean, it makes sense. But this is definitely one of the more well traveled routes through the city and it is affecting a lot of people. Here is a map showing my previous route to work (in blue), and my current route (in pink). It takes about 10 extra minutes, barring any stupid back-ups from the other highway being closed.

Knitting
For some reason, I decided that I should start knitting again. I've picked back up on the baby blanket I started more than three years ago. I also am making a hat for Matt's soon-to-be baby. Here is a picture of the hat in progress:

UPDATE: I finished the hat tonight. I just hope it will fit a real baby... at least for the first few days of its life.

Home Again
Sometimes it is strange being home again. It almost like I never went away to Tamarind. I'm getting used to driving everywhere again. I'm used to my bed and the chilly house and my cat whining for food every other second. I'm getting used to working and looking forward to coming home from work. Trying to find things to do around the house and trying to avoid things I need to do around the house. It is comforting in some ways, but I also don't want to get too content here. I don't want to fall into the same old routines.

More than anything, my time at Tamarind has reminded me that there are things I want to do with my life and it's helped me to realize that I'm actually capable of accomplishing these things. As much as I love standing around all day at the UPS Store, I've got bigger things ahead of me.

Goodbye 2007, Hello 2008!

The UPS Store

2007-12-19T17:52:00.000-08:00

We returned from Columbia Saturday night and on Sunday afternoon I went back into work at the UPS Store. I had worked at the UPS Store in between my stints as a Six Flags Caricature Artist, and told my boss that I'd come back to help with the holiday season. Monday turned out to be the busiest shipping day of the season. Thankfully, we had four people on hand and were able to keep on top of things pretty well. Here are some pictures from Monday. And these were taken after a UPS driver had stopped by and cleared a substantial amount of the pile out of the store!

A Trip to the Mizzou Print Shop

2007-12-19T17:19:00.000-08:00

As soon as Carrie picked me up from the STL airport on Friday we drove to Columbia for Katie Spencer's PhD graduation.

Before we met up with Katie and her family for dinner and the graduation, we stopped by the MU Art Department to visit with a few of my professors from undergrad. Fortunately, the opening for the Senior Art Show coincided with our arrival and we got to enjoy some snacks and art while chatting with my old friends. Brooke, the printmaking instructor, encouraged me to run upstairs and check out the print shop. I'd been thinking about the place lately and was certain that it would be different than I remembered. After being at Tamarind, everything seemed smaller and messier, but still very familiar. There was even some of my old art hanging around in odd places:

Here's the litho area, which consists of a Griffin litho press next to a graining sink.

There's also an ink slab and an assortment of litho inks.

I'm not sure what is in these cubby holes, but it scares me a little bit.

Here's the etching press (a Charles Brand, I think).

A view of the room from the Brand press.

The screenprinting area is separate and very narrow.

This is what happens to leather rollers when they die. (They become rolling pins for damp paper blotters.)

Outta Here!

2007-12-13T21:55:00.000-08:00

This whole week has been a whole bunch of MickeyMouseWork and passing time at Tamarind. The end of the semester party was Tuesday night at Marge's house. Yesterday we had a last-minute Gold Leaf demo and I did my laundry and packed. Today we took a lightning fast look at our last few projects with Rodney, did a massive clean-up of the studio, and said our goodbyes.

In the meantime, I'm all packed up and ready to go to STL for 5 weeks!

See you in Saint Louieeee!!!!

Unsatisfying

2007-12-10T21:33:00.000-08:00

I'll tell you what unsatisfying is!

Unsatisfying is taking an online Algebra I exam, only to get to the end and find out that the program isn't compatible with your browser and is therefore unable to calculate your test results!

I'm sure you're wondering what I'm doing taking Algebra I tests.

Honestly, it's been 15 years since I was in Algebra I and I found some of the questions to be rather challenging. I like to brush up on these things every now and again. You know, keep my mind sharp. In case I come across a girl named Sue, who has 16 marbles in her pocket. And lets just say that 8 of the marbles are red, 4 are green, and 4 are blue. Perhaps she might want to know how many she could take out and still know that she had one of each color. I want to be able to tell her how many!!!

Dude.

I need to get out of here.

Sicko

2007-12-09T22:02:00.000-08:00

Well, my body finally decided to break down on me. Thank goodness it was at the end of the semester!

My throat started hurting on Monday, but I thought I had just wrecked it from yelling too much at the football game.
On Tuesday it was starting to feel thick and even more sore. I told Carrie that I thought I had strep throat.
By Wednesday my throat felt better, but the rest of my body was achy and I was really tired.
Thursday I had to sponge all day, but got a burst of energy in the afternoon, printed three color runs in less than an hour and went home and collapsed.
By Friday I was done for. Sniffling, sneezing, congestion. I was like a cold medicine commercial, minus the cold medicine. Patrick took me to the store and I picked up some generic Nyquil.
Saturday, hung over from cold medicine, I slept until 11:30am then stayed in my pajamas for the rest of the afternoon. Less sneezing, more congestion, it felt like the side of my face was numb and my ear was stopped up.
Today I was better. Went to the Packer bar to watch the game with Patrick, went to fancy brunch with 6 out of 8 Tamarindos, and shopped a bit in old town with Alexandra. I'm coughing a lot and I'm still feeling congested. It's moved into my chest now, which means it's almost gone.

We've all but thrown in the towel on this semester at Tamarind. Everyone is tired and even Rodney has lost the will to continue. Our end of the semester party is on Tuesday night and we're not really expected to do much past that. I wish I had known that when I was buying my plane ticket home, but we weren't supposed to be officially done until Friday.

Right now, I've got a ticket out of here on Friday morning. And I won't be coming back to ABQ until January 21st, 5 weeks from now! I'm so happy to be going home. I'm taking some litho plates with me to draw on during the break, and I'm going to be working at the UPS Store while I'm home. I will definitely be busy.

I just have to get through this week!

My (Texas) Weekend in Pictures

2007-12-03T21:22:00.000-08:00

This is what I think of Texas!

Our sweet barrel-proof ride!

A rest stop south of Fort Worth on I-35

More pictures behind the cut!!!

We stopped and ate at Rudy's Bar-B-Q

Suzi expresses how she feels about the "rally" before the game.

Maybe we would have had more fun at this event.

But then there weren't Mizzou Golden Girls at the Homeland Security Conference.

Our seats were better than I thought. Too bad the game was so awful.

The next day we walked around downtown Dallas and looked at buildings. There wasn't much else to do.

Can you tell I lost my hair product at the airport?

The wind certainly didn't help the matter any.

Seriously... there must have been gusts of up to 50 miles per hour.

The JFK Memorial in Dallas

Suzi on the Grassy Knoll

The building that Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly shot JFK from.

"Dear Mom... Be glad you didn't go to the game."

Impulse Purchase

2007-12-02T22:19:00.000-08:00

This has been an exhausting weekend and I really should be curled up in bed right now... but I know I've already gone too long without an update.

At some point around the middle of last week, I got the bright idea that I wanted to go to the Mizzou-Oklahoma game in San Antonio, Texas. I wasn't really planning on acting on this bright idea, until I just happened to be on eBay... and just happened to see a super cheap pair of tickets to the game... and just happened to accidentally impulse purchase them. I didn't think I'd actually win the auction! I put in an amount that was just enough to satisfy my urge to bid, but not enough to actually win the tickets. Well, that plan backfired.

So then I had this pair of tickets, albeit cheap tickets, coming to me and no good way to get there. Despite the fact that New Mexico borders Texas to the west, it's still a pretty long trip to San Antonio fro ABQ. Last minute flying was too pricey and driving 11 hours by myself in a rental car seemed pretty insane. Carrie tried to convince me not to go at all. I gave in for a few days and said I wasn't going. But when those shiny tickets arrived in the mail it was all over. I hopped on my computer to look at rental car prices, and my Saint Louis friend Suzi started a gmail chat with me. The conversation went something like this:

S: Only 29 more hours until the game.
A: I have an extra ticket, do you want to go?
S: What!?!?! You're going?!?

The next thing I knew, we had coordinated a complicated plan to fly into Dallas, arrive 15 minutes apart, meet in the terminal, rent a car, and drive to San Antonio for the game. When I rushed into Tamarind and told everyone about my plans, they all looked at me like I was crazy. I guess it was a little bit.

I'm much too tired to post pictures and go into all of the details right now, but here are a few things we discovered.

If you get pulled aside for extra screening at the airport, you should make sure the screeners give you back your toiletries. Otherwise, you might end up with flat hair, bad breath, and stinky armpits.
There is an IKEA in the Middle of Nowhere, Texas.
Saturn cars do wonderfully well when struck by flying construction barrels.
Oklahoma Sooner football fans are obnoxious.
The DFW airport has vending machines that sell iPods.
There are three year olds that can play the piano better than me.
The Grassy Knoll isn't as flashy as you might expect it to be.
Chase Daniel is no longer my boyfriend.

Pictures tomorrow maybe. Good night!

Tigers for Brains

2007-11-27T20:46:00.000-08:00

Now that the Thanksgiving break is over, we're back in full swing at Tamarind.

Our big Workshop Proposal project is due for Marge's class in one week, and people are starting to stress a little bit about it. Fortunately, I've been working on my proposal off and on for the past few months and have quite a bit done. That's not to say that I'm not worried though...

Nope... I have sports things on my mind and I'm nervous. Not only do the Packers have a huge game against the Cowboys for first place in the NFC, but my Missouri Tigers have an even more monumental game against the Oklahoma Sooners on Saturday.

In case you live in a college football free world, the Missouri Tigers (previously ranked #4), beat the feathers off the undefeated #2 Kansas Jayhawks. Since #1 LSU had lost their game to Arkansas on Friday, the Tigers somehow became the top team in the nation:

The top two teams in the BCS rankings at the end of the season get to go to the National Championship Bowl Game, and if the season ended today, the Tigers would totally be in... which is just crazy.

Unfortunately, the Tigers still have to play in the Big 12 Conference Championship game against Oklahoma. Most of the media people are expecting them to lose, despite their #1 ranking. (OK handed Mizzou their only loss this season and the Tigers have not traditionally had much success against them.)

So now I'm nervous about football and angry at all of the people that say that Mizzou doesn't deserve to be ranked as the top team in the nation. I hope that the Tigers beat the Sooners on Saturday so that I can relax and focus on my proposal.

Thoughts before Thanksgiving

2007-11-18T21:54:00.000-08:00

I was at the laundromat trying to remember how long it had been since I last did laundry. When I got home I counted my pairs of socks and my underwear and decided it had been about three weeks. I like that I have enough t-shirts, socks, and underwear that I can go three weeks without wearing the same thing twice.
I am getting deliriously excited about the newly dubbed "Armageddon at Arrowhead" game between MU and KU next weekend. Carrie sent me a new shirt and I wore it yesterday . Luckily, my favorite Finn and fellow Missouri supporter Valpuri was also wearing her black and gold yesterday.
Last night, Alex, Pat, and I went to the movies. Afterward, Pat declared that he needed to go to the urgent care clinic. His throat had been hurting pretty bad and his lymph nodes were swollen up like walnuts. We ended up at the UNM Hospital Emergency Room and fortunately we didn't have to wait too long. Here is Pat looking rough:

And here is Alex looking concerned... or maybe just tired:

The doctor thought that Pat either had mono or strep throat, so they treated him for strep. He chose the giant shot in the butt over a week and a half of pills. I think maybe he regretted it afterward.
I was doing pretty good with my Mountain Dew intake for a while there... but I seem to have fallen off the wagon.
I've been thinking a lot about my options for next year. I am trying to build confidence in the idea of opening my own print shop in Saint Louis. However, I'd also like to teach. Ideally, I could do both eventually. In anticipation of applying for teaching jobs, I'm working on updating my resume, teaching philosophy, and artist statement. I'm also scrambling to throw a solid body of work together. Why are all the good things so hard?
Have I mentioned how excited I am for the Thanksgiving break? Only a few more days.

I want to marry the GO! Team.

2007-11-15T07:38:00.000-08:00

P-11: Acrylic Reversal (and Whatever Else Rodney Could Think Of)

2007-11-12T21:22:00.000-08:00

Sorry again for the delay, but I'm finding it's easier to just talk about these projects after they're finished.

Once we were done suffering through the Maniere Noir, we moved on to Acrylic Reversals. The idea here is that you start with one image... But then your artist decides that it would look really cool if it was inverted. That is, the blacks become white and the whites become black.

These days, you would probably just make a photo plate with a negative image. But as Rodney likes to say, there may be a time when the power grid goes out, and you can't make a photo plate, and your artist is only in town for one afternoon, and you HAVE to do the reversal or else they'll never work with you again. In this instance, you would need a primitive way to invert the image. And that's why God created the acrylic reversal process.

To make this project more interesting, Rodney decided to throw in a few more elements. Not only would we have the reversal plate (run 1), but we'd also have an underlying texture or flat (run 2), AND chine colle (run 3), AND some dusting (run 4)... in no particular order. And to top it all off, our reversal image would be applied to the plate using Dolphin Litho Transfer Paper... one of the runs had to be a Split Roll... and this was a collaborative project!!! Okay... you ready for this? Click below for all of the excitement...

Mick was my artist for this project. In the meantime, I was collaborating as an artist for Ana... but I can't show you any of that project because it's a surprise present for Carrie. So I had Mick draw an image on the Dolphin transfer paper and then I ran it through the press onto a plate. It worked kind of like a temporary tattoo, in that once it was applied, you wet the backing paper with water and then slowly peeled the paper off to leave the image on the plate. Here's Ana drawing on her transfer paper with litho crayons:

Here's what Mick's image looked like after it was on the plate. He used an autographic ink to make his lines:

After the transfer, we etched the drawings as normal and rolled them up in black ink:

After pulling a few proofs of the image to make sure it was well established, we began the reversal process. Gradually, we applied and buffed four thin layers of acrylic matte medium into the image area. Here is Patrick at work on Ana's plate. Notice how he taped out his borders with clear packing tape to keep them clean.

Once the matte medium set up for a good hour or so, we came back and cleaned out the ink with lithotine.

Next, we buffed TAPEM into the resulting gaps to create a mask, then washed out the matte medium with acetone. We next applied a layer of shellac to our plates:

Then we were ready to roll it up in ink and see the magic of the reversal. Mick's plate was a little ugly, but it worked!

After the long, tedious process of the reversal, it was pretty smooth sailing. Mick drew his second plate with crayons for me:

Then we set about mixing colors and trying to figure out the split rolls and the chine colle and dusting.

A split roll is when you have more than one color on the roller at one time. It's kind of like the blend roll that I used on the Unicorn project. Except in this case, you should not be able to see the point at which the two colors blend. Mick decided that we would use a split roll for both plates on this project. Here is the roller for the first plate:

And here is the plate with ink on it:

Here is the roller for the second plate:

And here is the plate with ink on it:

With the split roll, you have to be very careful about the inks that you are using. You have to make sure that they are of an equal density and volume or else one of them will begin to creep into the other one and contaminate it. This was especially the case with my first split roll. One of the colors was very transparent and kept getting overpowered by the heavy reddish brown that was next to it.

Once we had the plates made, we decided on the chine colle. Chine Colle is when you attach two pieces of paper together during the printing process. You may recall that this is what I did during my SNAP!!! print a few months back. For this project, we tore the chine colle paper down and adhered it to the support paper ahead of time, using an airbrush and rhoplex adhesive. Mick's chine colle was a simple square of white japanese paper that went on the right side of the print.

The final element was the dusting. Dusting a print usually means that you are adding either a colored pigment or some sort of iridescent powder to the wet ink. When you have multiple runs, it is important to make sure that the previous run is completely dry before you print on it. For this project, we added dryer to our ink to make sure that it was dry enough before moving forward. When the second run is added, you then place a small amount of your powder of choice onto the print, then move it around with a soft clean brush. Ideally, the powder will stick only to the wet freshly inked areas and not to the paper or the previous run. You can then brush off the excess, suck it up, or blow it off with an airhose. Sometimes, the pigments will stain the paper, so you have to be careful in which one you choose.

Mick decided on a green pigment for his dusting. We found that it stained the paper though and it didn't look that great with the inks he had chosen, so I ended up mixing it with a pearly color and only applying it in a small area on the print. I apologize, but I don't have picture of the final dusted image yet. In the meantime, you can look at the new "last print" face I've been working on. What do you think?

This one?

Or this one?

Field Trip!

2007-11-10T12:44:00.000-08:00

We've spent most of the week working on projects. While Rodney was hoping for disaster, almost everyone came out unscathed.

Ha ha! Foiled again Rodney!

We celebrated with a crazy Friday. Here's what went down:

Printing
In the morning we printed. Anna is my partner right now, and she is also my printer for this collaborative project. This equals Amanda assisting with her own print. This also equals Ana being driven crazy by the demands of her bossy sponger-artist. But you couldn't tell it from this picture. Such good times!

At some point in the morning, printing was interrupted by...

BUNNIES!!!
Alex loves bunnies and other cuddly animals. She spends her spare time doing youtube searches for "cute animals" and comes up with things like this:

It turns out that Ana's roommate's girlfriend has a bunny and Alex really wanted to meet it. You can imagine the excitement on Friday morning when Ana's friend showed up with a bunny in her jacket. The bunny was freaking out from the smells but we still managed to get a few pictures.

Around 11:15 we left for a field trip downtown with Rodney. The idea was that we would go to some galleries and get lunch. We split up into two cars and made our first stop at...

El Modelo

Rodney says they have the best tamales in town. The place was in kind of in a weird area. There wasn't much else around, but the place was rockin! Especially after we got there.

I started with a giant chicken and green chile burrito and had a sopaipilla for desert. The burrito was one of the most intense things I've had to eat in several months. It was good, but it was like eating a brick. I think the others felt the same way about their meals. Here they are after eating...

Galleries
We went to a couple of galleries on Central to find some art.

There were some nice group shows in the 516 Arts space. I especially liked the photogravures of Robert ParkeHarrison. Here's one of the prints that was in the show:

Beer
After the galleries, we weren't in the mood to return to class so we decided to get a drink at a place called "Blackbird".

I was still reeling from my burrito, so I just had a Dr. Pepper and a Cupcake.

We enjoyed the 70+ degree November weather and our snacks but still weren't ready to return to Tamarind. Rodney had been talking up this candy place across town, so we jumped in our cars and drove out to...

Buffett's Candies
This is a family owned candy shop that specializes in pinon candies. I didn't go too crazy, but got a couple of little chocolate things to send to Carrie and my brother's kids. As for everyone else... well... let's just say it was a wonderful way to end the field trip.

More Printing
Sadly, we got back at two and there was still more work to be done.

I had to print in the afternoon but I felt rough from our big adventure. I was able to get the third run on Mick's print and call it a day by 5pm.

Stray Bullets

2007-11-05T21:26:00.000-08:00

I used to love brushing my teeth, but now it's just more of a hassle.
I want the Missouri Tigers to go to a BCS Bowl Game... and I want to be there for it.
There are lots of dead bugs in my house. I'm not sure what's worse. Dead roaches or live spiders.
I often come home to find random people hanging out on the other side of the fence by my house. They often say things like, "Give me the BEER Stacey!!!" But they never say anything to me.
Last week I jumped out of bed in the middle of the night and put all of my clothes on and then stood there and trembled for five or ten minutes.
For the first time in my life, I think I might need to go on a diet. Or maybe I just need to exercise.
In Albuquerque, Hellmann's mayonnaise is called "Best Foods", which seems really generic.
I bought a 2-Liter of soda for the first time in years. I thought it might help me to drink less. But that could be a lie.
I had my one year kidney donation anniversary a couple of weeks ago. My dad still hasn't acknowledged the milestone.
I really miss ice hockey. Also, I miss Madison. And I miss my friends.
Blacksmith Tom Joyce is working at Tamarind for the next couple of weeks. Ethan Murrow just left.
After eight years of stealthy dodging, I finally pinned down The Boy. We are now Facebook friends.
I'm thinking about going to the 2008 Southern Graphics Council conference, but it's in Virginia. **snore**
I've been feeling very nostalgic lately.

M-I-Z....Z-O-U!!!

2007-11-04T22:35:00.000-08:00

Chase Daniel is my boyfriend.

P-10: Maniere Noir

2007-11-01T18:04:00.000-07:00

Happy November to you all!

I'm just sitting here, enjoying dinner and an internet radio broadcast of St. Louis Blues hockey. I'm also wondering where October went. Next thing I know, we'll be midway through December and I'll be on a flight to St. Louis. (Woo-hoo!)

I feel like things are moving along pretty quick, but there's still a lot left to do here in Albuquerque before I get to go home.

We still have five or six projects to complete for Rodney's class. And we also have our big Workshop Proposal due for Marge's class at the beginning of December. We just started on our next crazy project for Rodney... but first I have to tell you about the last one.

After our last big project was finished, Rodney had to leave town for a week to deal with some family matters. Rodney's departure seemed like the perfect time to test out some of the revised instructions in the recently completed Tamarind Book of Lithography. We were left with instructions for a Maniere Noir project, which should have been a bit of a breather after the giant crazy project... but of course, it wasn't.

Maniere Noir is a subtractive printmaking technique in which a dark flat is created and then the image is made by scraping away the flat to leave white areas.

Here is some random Maniere Noir image I found on the internet. (I'd credit the artist but their name wasn't included.)

The original set of instructions called for us to create the background flat out of a mixture of asphaltum and ink. However, Bill suggested that we also try to make the flat with ink only. Bill's way is a bit easier, but some people say that you can't get the same subtle tones as you can get with an asphaltum mixture.

We started by defining two rectangles on the stone with gum arabic borders. On the left side, we applied the asphaltum mixture. On the right side, we made a flat out of ink. When we were finished, we used razor blades, x-acto knifes, etching needles and any other sharp thing we could find to scratch away an image.

I found it was more satisfying to scratch on the ink-only side, because the ink was so thick that I could feel it coming off the stone. The asphaltum mixture was so thin that it was hard to scrape without digging deeply in the stone.

Here is Mick etching his stone:

Here is Yuli rubbing her stone up with asphaltum before rolling up:

And here is Valpuri rolling up her image in black ink:

Probably about half of the class had problems with the asphaltum mixture side of their stone. For some reason, it just wasn't rolling up correctly. Unfortunately, my stone fell into this category. Here's what it looked like when I first tried to roll it up:

Bill suggested that I make a new flat over the top of my other one and start over. Here is my stone after I made the new flat:

Here is a close-up of the ink-only side of my stone:

I re-scratched my image and etched it as instructed, but when I went to roll it up over the weekend, it failed AGAIN! I decided to wait and see what Rodney thought when he returned on Monday. This is what my stone was looking like at that point:

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Rodney helped me for quite some time that afternoon, but it was all for naught. In the end, Rodney just told me to tear my paper in half and only print the good side.

I was a little disappointed with the project. Mostly just because I felt like I had followed the project instructions exactly, and it still failed. Rodney thinks I "burned out" the fragile asphaltum flat with our hard ABQ water.

Since the class had such crappy results for the Maniere Noir project, Rodney decided to have us try it again, as a side project. I'm anxious to take another crack at it, as I suspect that it might just be a temperamental stone that is sabotaging these projects.

I love this man.

2007-10-29T21:08:00.001-07:00

Brunch at Becky's

2007-10-28T20:57:00.001-07:00

Becky, the curator at the Tamarind Institute, invited us out to her house today for brunch. The house is about a half hour away from Tamarind, on the other side of the Sandia Mountains. It was a nice getaway. I even got a little sunburned!

Click below for more pictures from this exciting adventure!

Finally.

2007-10-23T22:13:00.000-07:00

Finally finally finally done with this project.

Yuli and I started around 9am and finished by lunch time. I didn't have any major problems. Not like Yuli has been having anyway. I decided to go with the black because it was easier. I printed with Charbonnel Noir A Monter ink which is the greasiest stuff we have. I just had some registration issues but at this point I didn't really care. I just wanted to have it done. (Yeah, now that's how a professional printer talks, right?)

I'm putting some pictures of the final printing behind the cut. Sorry for the blurry... but I was in a hurry.

The stone before printing:

Rolling up with black ink and the leather roller:

Yuli sponging the stone:

Matching the marks on the paper to the marks on the stone:

Pulling the final print (the standard printing pose):

And yes... my hair is getting crazier and crazier as this project goes on! Look at it!

We've started preparing our stones for the next project and will be getting demos from Bill tomorrow morning.

Also, my left wrist hurts.

Planet Unicorn

2007-10-16T19:49:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you've been wondering what I've been up to the last week or so. Quite honestly, I've been trapped on Planet Unicorn and tangled up in the never ending giant print project.

So as I explained earlier, each of our projects has three runs: a blend, a texture, and a key image. In my case, the blend and texture are on aluminum plates and the key image was drawn on the stone.

Here are some shots of my pretty blend:

Because my print is vertically oriented, I had to use a long skinny roller instead of the chunkier one. Some call it the hot dog roller, others call it the snake roller. I call it a pain in the butt.

Look at this craziness! Can you imagine how tired I was?!?!? And this is with me standing on a step stool.

I don't think I ever got around to showing you the texture plate that I made. I busted out my six flags caricature airbrush and ran gum arabic through it to create a mask. Then I sprayed over that with spray paint. The areas covered by the gum will allow the blend to show through. The spray painted areas will be inked up in white and will serve as highlights on the horse and Rodney.

Once we had our plates and stones made, we had to proof each run three or four times on different types of paper. I was a little unsure about what color I wanted to use for the key image, so in addition to different papers, I also tried different colors.

I'd originally envisioned my key image being printed in black, but I got about six different suggestions from others in the class, including Bill and Rodney. I settled on Dark Blue, Dark Purple (eggplanty), Chocolate Brown, and Black.

Here are how the four proofs turned out. I'm torn between the black and the purple... but think I'm going to end up going with black. (Sorry these photos are really bad.)

Yuli and I finished proofing sometime around the middle of the week and started editioning on Thursday. I have not been looking forward to editioning the blend AT ALL. I had a hard enough time printing four of them... let alone another 18! Needless to say, that was one of the tougher days I've had here. It wasn't that I didn't want to do it. I was just physically exhausted. I could hardly lift and rotate that three foot long roller. Here I am... so happy to be done with the very last print!

On Saturday, we came in and printed my texture plate. I didn't really have any problems with it. Some people were having issues with registration, but mine seemed to work out pretty well. I ended up adjusting the colors of my blend somewhat so that the white of the texture plate would show up better.

One final component of this project was that Rodney wants us to counter etch one of the plates or the stone and add more drawing to it. This evening I went in and added some crayon drawing to Rodney's pants, to the background, and to the unicorn's horn. I also put the Tamarind chop on the butt of the horse. Depending on how things go, we might be able to finish up this project tomorrow. I'll be very happy to have it done.

Rodney is out of town due to illness in the family and we are going to be all alone for the next week. We've been given the next assignment and are expected to get cracking on it before he gets back. I'm more than ready to move on.

Balloon Fiesta

2007-10-13T21:02:00.000-07:00

After about two and a half hours of sleep, I got up at 4:30am to catch Mass Ascension at the Balloon Fiesta. This is the early morning event where all 700+ balloons take off within minutes of each other.

I took a million pictures. Click below to see a few of them.

The group was me, Celina (driver), Yuli, Mick, Ana. Traffic was pretty heavy around the Balloon Park but we got there in plenty of time to see the very first balloons take off in the dark. It's pretty cool when they fire up and light the whole balloon.

The sunrise was pretty coming over the mountains. It also helped warm us up a bit.

Here's a panoramic shot... and yet only the tip of the iceburg. So many balloons!

Representing my Missouri teams hardcore. (M-I-Z... Let's Go Blues!)

Pretty pretty.

God Bless America!

There was seriously a balloon shaped like a dead cat.

Patriotic Lighthouse... hooray!

Holding Hand Bee Balloons (but not really).

But I think my favorite shape was the Smokey The Bear Balloon!

Here's a view of the field after most of the balloons had taken off. I think they said it's about the size of 54 football fields. And there were so many people there.

We stayed at the Balloon Park for a couple of hours and then I went home and crashed for almost five hours.

P-9: Crazy Giant Print

2007-10-10T22:38:00.000-07:00

With our newest project, Rodney is admittedly trying to kill us, or break us, or maybe just make us think twice about being at Tamarind. We're upping the ante here.

First of all, this project is big. The paper size is 22"x30". The image size is 20"x28". Which means we only get a one inch paper border around our image. There is no room to punch the paper, so we have to use the T and Bar method of registration.

Not only is this project big in size, but it's also big in scope. We have to have three runs (three separate layers printed on top of each other). One of the layers is a giant blend (also called a rainbow roll), in which we blend multiple colors together on one massive roller.

Here I am struggling to use the roller in our long demo on Friday:

And here I am smiling only because Yuli forced me to:

The hardest part about the blend is keeping the colors consistent. If you don't place your roller down in the exact same spot every time, the colors will start to migrate and the blend will transform into something completely different.

Patrick proofed his blend onto several different papers. So pretty, yet so evil:

Besides the blend, the other layers have to be a texture layer, and a key image.

Rodney has been daring us to draw Unicorns, so I decided that I would draw Rodney riding a Unicorn for this project.

Here is my drawing. I was never really that good at drawing horses:

For my blend, I'm going to use a light pink, a hot pink, and a lavender in the background. These are the colors I'm using, but I think the blend will be primarily the lighter pink with the other colors pushed more towards the top of the image:

I'm not quite sure what I'm doing for my texture yet. I'm thinking some sort of airbrush highlights in a white or peach that goes over the unicorn and in the clouds.

P-8: Collaboration II

2007-10-10T18:56:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: This project was actually finished a week or so ago. I've just been lazy. Sorry.

For our second collaborative project, we are working with punch registration and color inks. Up until now, we have been printing with only one image (run) in black ink. This time we are using two plates in two different colors printed on top of each other.

So we started with a flat... just a plain old solid rectangle.

To make the flat, we had to use a ruling pen with gum arabic to create perfect borders. Then we filled in the remaining rectangle with shellac and rolled it up in ink. We start with it in black, then switch to color when we're ready to print.

Next, we had our artist draw an image on a piece of mylar with toner (marketed as Litho Coal). The toner is a lot like what is in copy machines. You know, that powdery black stuff that can get stuck in your lungs and is really bad for you. We mixed a little bit up with some alcohol so that the artist could paint it on with a brush. Here is the image that I painted for Celina while it was still on the mylar:

Once the drawing is done on the mylar, you simply place it on the plate and run it through the press. This transfers the toner to the plate. Then you stick it in the oven and bake it for about 15-20 minutes. Etch it with 50/50 and you're ready to roll.

Patrick is my artist for this project. Here is his image on the plate:

Patrick picked out colors for me to mix. The flat is a creamy green and the toner image is a dark blue. Here is what it looked like when it was done:

When you start printing multiple colors and images on top of each other, it becomes incredibly important to have a good registration system.

For our purposes, registration can be defined as lining up two images so that the edges match up exactly. Good registration will also help you to print your image in the same spot on the page every time. If you want your image to be perfectly centered on the paper, you need a way to mark it so that you can lay it down precisely.

There are lots of methods of registration. So far this semester, we have been using the "T and Bar" Method. With this method you simply put pencil marks on the back of the paper that correspond to scratched in marks on the stone or plate. Skilled printers can get pretty good registration this way, but it becomes increasingly difficult to get exact registration with lots of colors.

With punch registration, we have a glorified hole punch (from Takach) that we use to punch holes in the plate and our paper. Then we have a little metal button or pin that we stick up through the hole and through our paper.

Punch registration is a great way to ensure you're getting your paper in the right place, but it can be tricky. It is very important to make sure that the image areas on all of your plates or stones are exactly the same size and shape... or it will never line up right. Even with pins.

Overall, Patrick and I had a fairly easy time with this project. The edges of my flat were pretty janky but I think I've got the hang of it now.

Visitor(s)

2007-10-08T19:37:00.001-07:00

Early this morning, Carrie caught a cab to the airport and left me here all alone. The winds from the north were blowing the balloons over the top of Tamarind and we went to the roof to watch them pass.

I was excited to see the balloons so close but also a little sad since Carrie wasn't there to enjoy them with me. We had a pretty good weekend but never made it out to the Balloon Fiesta to see the balloons up close. Click below for more on C's visit:

Thursday
Thursday morning I took the bus out to the ~~airport~~ Sunport to "pick up" Carrie. After waiting for her bags and the bus, we made it back to my house around 11am. Our first stop was Satellite Coffee (for Carrie), then my apartment (to drop off bags), then to Tamarind (to say Hi), and then to the Frontier (for lunch).

Despite its proximity to my apartment, Carrie hadn't been to the Frontier yet. We were joined for lunch by Patrick, Alex, Celina, Ana & Valpuri. I don't think C was quite as impressed with the Frontier as everyone else seems to be. But the meal was satisfying nonetheless.

After her long morning of travel, C was tired and took a little nap in the afternoon. I returned to Tamarind to work on things. Before dinner at the fast-food-Japanese place, a nice lady came by and delivered my new bike! I'd been looking for a bike on craigslist since I got to ABQ, but hadn't really found much of a need for one. With my frequent travels to Patrick's house and a desire to move outside my two block radius, it became more important for me to get some wheels. I decided that I wanted to get another trick bike, even though I don't know how to do any tricks (except ride with no hands and pop a little wheelie). The bike was filthy, and despite the fact that it supposedly had only be ridden "five times" by the woman's son, the right brake lever was broken off. After a good scrubbing and a little "mechanickin'" on the brakes, she was as good as new. Here I am looking good on my new ride:

Afterward, we hung out at Patrick's for a bit. We'd hoped to play Scrabble with Alex, but her mom made a last minute decision to come into town. Instead, we played Carcassonne, which is a fun strategic tile game too difficult to explain but incredibly easy to play. I highly recommend it.

Friday
I got to Tamarind around 9am while Carrie slept in a bit. We are starting to do blend rolls for our next big project (to be explained later). And Rodney wanted us each to take a turn at rolling out and printing a blend. Since we were all participating, this turned out to be one of those demos that takes all day. I had my turn just before lunch and I found it to be incredibly frustrating. Mostly because the roller was giant and I'm am short and the plate is big and my arms just don't reach that far. I whined a lot about it and eventually finished my turn.

Carrie had spent the latter part of the morning knitting at Satellite Coffee and she joined us for lunch at another coffee shop/cafe across the street. This time the group was us, Patrick, Ana, Celina, Valpuri, Alex and her mother.

Tamarind has an official tour once a month and I encouraged Carrie to get in on it. She was able to watch Four Stones for Kanemitsu and strolled around Tamarind with a group of strangers. (I still don't know where these random tour people come from.)

Patrick's parents arrived from Milwaukee in the afternoon and they joined our class (including Carrie and Alex's mom) as we went to look at some lithographs in the Print Study room on campus.

Carrie was so inspired by all the printmaking that she agreed to make a little print with me in the evening. I had some crappy plate scraps left over from another project and let Carrie draw on them.

Saturday
As I'd mentioned before, the balloon fiesta started this weekend and I just kind of assumed that we'd go at some point. Of course, I really didn't put that much thought into this excursion. I figured that somebody would be wanting to go out there, and hopefully that somebody would have a car. The balloon park is a good 20 minute drive north of campus. They do have several park and ride locations around town, but the closest one was nearly two miles away. To top it all off, most of the good stuff happens before 7am! That is a very very early long walk to the park and ride. No thank you.

Instead of dealing with this dilemma, we decided to spend our morning shopping in Nob Hill (about 1 mile down Central) and having a nice lunch at Scalo. Unfortunately, I was feeling pretty crappy that morning. I managed the walk to the restaurant, but as soon as I sat down I was miserable.

Here is Carrie with Central Avenue and the mountains in the background:

And here is me wishing I hadn't ruined the morning with my sickliness:

We tried looking in a few shops, and then stopped for super-yummy Gelato from Ecco-Gelato. (Thankfully they had a bathroom available for customer use.) I recovered at home for a bit and then we returned to the studio to work more on Carrie's print.

We printed the background plate first in a lovely shade of blue. Here I am doing a little deletion work on the plate:

Here is my little sponger in her borrowed Tamarind apron:

Here's Carrie taking a turn at operating the press:

Here I am rolling out the ink:

And here is the proud artist with the first run:

Later in the evening, after dinner at Saggio's, we went to the Copper Lounge with Patrick and his parents. Mick and Sharon met up with us there and we eventually ended up at Valpuri's house (minus Patrick's parents). The highlight of my evening was buying and eating a bag of Pork Rinds. Such a guilty pleasure.

Sunday
We threw around the idea of walking down to the Park and Ride Sunday morning but it just didn't happen. Making the situation even more complicated was the fact that I had been given two free tickets to the balloon fiesta (a $12 value). The Park and Ride fare included fiesta admission. You couldn't just get the ride by itself. I just couldn't bring myself to fork over money for admission when I already had tickets. Carrie claimed not to care, so that was that.

Instead, we spent the morning at the apartment and then returned to the studio to finish Carrie's print. I think Carrie was a little disappointed with the end result. It didn't help that I was in a hurry and was being completely unprofessional. I didn't know C would take the project so seriously. But as she later said, after you spend three days on something, you want it to look good.

Here I am in my green and gold, mixing up a little red:

And here are a few variations on the finished print:

After printing we went for a walk on the UNM campus and hung out at the "Duck Pond". At 5pm, Patrick picked us up to go to Howie's for the Packers-Bears game. Patrick's parents were all decked out in their Packer finest and we had an enjoyable time at Howie's, even though the Packers lost. (Murrr.) Since it was a nationally televised Sunday night game and the balloon fiesta was going on, it wasn't as crowded as normal. But there were still quite a few Packer fans, including some visiting from Green Bay for the balloons.

Apologies

2007-10-03T20:38:00.001-07:00

I'm sorry for being such a miserable blogger lately.

I started to write a big post about our latest project. But I've been slacking on my picture taking and start to feel too wordy without images to back me up.

Patrick and I finished our projects this afternoon which means we have a little bit of time to relax. This little break will perfectly coincide with the arrival of CARRIE tomorrow morning! Hooray! We're going to enjoy the Balloon Fiesta this weekend, go out to dinner, catch a showing of The Darjeeling Limited and perhaps go to the Packer Bar on Sunday night with Patrick and his parents to see the Pack take on the Bears.

So I'm sure you're wondering what else have I been doing lately... especially now that the Cardinal baseball season is over. This past week, I have discovered full episodes from season one of 30Rock. I was a little worried about not having a TV, but it's turned out to be okay. I still get to watch the Office, just a day later than everyone else. I watch a lot of movies with Alex and Pat, but I also signed up for NetFlix recently so that I could pick out my own movies to watch. Of course, now that I've signed up for it, I can't think of a single thing that I was wanting to rent. If you have any suggestions, leave them below in the comments section.

When I watch ~~television~~ the computer, I often draw caricatures so that I don't feel like I'm completely wasting my time. I don't think I've shown any of them here yet. Marge asked if I would do one of the soon to be inaugurated UNM president. Here it is:

I'm eating a lot of pop-ices. I'm still hanging out with Patrick and Alex quite a bit. I've also recently discovered that a good night's sleep can do wonders for tiredness. It's amazing.

Of course, the rest of the time I'm at Tamarind. When I'm not working, I like to go in the library and read old Tamarind publications from the 60's... Something like "Business Methods for the Lithography Workshop" or "Economic Standards for the Lithography Workshop". They're pretty interesting but because they're so dated, they're probably not as useful as they once were. We've been given the assignment for our big Workshop Proposal and I am very excited about it. This is something that I've been thinking about for a while and it's great to have an assignment that makes me plan out every detail of it.

Out of My Hands

2007-09-30T19:43:00.000-07:00

I finished printing my SNAP!!! edition near the beginning of last week and allowed a few days for cleaning them up and making them look pretty for the portfolio exchange. This included erasing any inky fingerprints, disguising poor registration and removing registration marks.

On Friday, I spent a good part of the day getting ready to ship them off. First, I signed, titled, dated, and numbered the prints. Then I bought some glassine (a supposedly pH neutral paper that is used for storing prints) and cut it into slip cases for them. Next I made a last minute decision to trim the prints down. When I'd started they were 12"x12" but the stretch of the press made them all different sizes. Finally, I wrapped them up and doubled boxed them, printed out a UPS label and ran down to the UPS Store to catch their last pickup for the day.

I'm glad to have that out of my hands. Now I can concentrate on my next Tamarind project.

Best Day of My Life

2007-09-26T20:43:00.000-07:00

Monday and Tuesday were snoozers compared to today, so I'm not going to dwell on them for long.

Monday
Helped Alex edition Patrick's print. Watched baseball with Patrick (actually rooting for the Brewers against the Cardinals because it hurts the Cubs). Went into the studio around 9pm and stayed until 1am editioning the SNAP!!! print.

Tuesday
So tired. Had to be at Tamarind early to sponge for Brandon on the pro-side. It was a Jim Dine print but just a boring background flat so I was falling asleep. Had class with Marge. Learned about Contract work versus Publishing. Got our Workshop Proposal assignment for the end of the semester. Watched baseball, worked on proposal, went to bed early (10:30pm).

Wednesday
Best Day of My Life! I know that doesn't say much for the rest of my life... but it really was a great day. We finally got to go visit Takach Press Corporation which is located on the SW side of Albuquerque.

Make sure to click below. TONS of juicy pictures behind the cut!

For those of you not familiar with Takach Press, it is a family run company located in Albuquerque that builds printmaking presses, rollers and other miscellaneous printmaking equipment. They also supply inks, papers, drying racks, flat files, you name it. As their name implies, they are known for their lithography and etching presses. I'm not really sure how many other companies in the United States are currently making printing presses, but everyone I know that has either purchased a press or wants to purchase a press wants a Takach Press.

We arrived at Takach around 10:30 and were greeted by Dave Sr. Dave started the business back in the 70's when he was working as an Engineer at the University of New Mexico. According to the legend, he was approached by a couple of guys from Tamarind who wanted to build their own press. The press went over so well that soon other printmakers were asking Mr. Takach to build them presses. And before you knew it, he had quite a bustling business for himself and his family. Here's Dave Sr. with Dave Jr., discussing important business matters, I'm sure.

After introductions, we first looked at a couple of presses that were being assembled. Here is an etching press without the bed on it. To the left, you can see a smaller etching press with a captain's wheel instead of a crank.

At Takach they have most of the components of the presses made beforehand and then they are assembled as they are ordered. There were lots and lots of parts laying around:

Our next stop was the ball graining room where we watched Tamarind Professional Printer and Takach Employee Aaron Bass demonstrate how they grain aluminum plates for use in lithography. Again, for those of you non-printmakers, ball graining takes a smooth sheet of aluminum and puts a rough grain or tooth on it so that it can be drawn on with a litho crayon or used similarly to a litho stone. These are the types of plates we have been using in our projects so far this year.

Here is Dave Sr. next to the giant bed. The only thing I can think to describe it as is a huge billiards table on hydraulics with rubber lining it instead of felt. In this picture, you can see the ball bearings on the right side. The plates are the silver rectangles and the rubber bed is the red part.

I got pretty good video of the machine in action. You'll see that the machine is turned on and the ball bearings start to roll across the bed and agitate over the plates. At the end of the clip, you see Aaron pouring in water and aluminum grit to help with the graining process.

During the process, Aaron started throwing some sort of powder over the bed. I'm not sure what it was, but it looked good.

About fifteen minutes later, we came back and watched Aaron unload the plates from the bed. The machine tilted up and he scooped the ball bearings out of the way. Then he removed the plates and fed them onto a conveyor cleaning and drying system. According to Mr. Takach, as far as he knows, they're they only company currently making ball grained plates in the United States.

The next stop was the machine shop where we watched Dave's son, Keith, machine the rust off of a steel cylinder used on the presses. Here are some of the cylinders in their natural ugly state:

And here is Keith making them beautiful. Look closely and on the right of the drum you can see how shiny and sparkly it is.

We stopped into the wood shop area where we learned about the Takach Press beds and how they are assembled and sanded down to be ridiculously level. This is the sanding unit they devised. You see a bare press bed on the unit. The sander moves back and forth over the wood of the press bed and takes off a little bit at a time. Eventually, they mount some sort of aluminum and composite top layer to the wood.

On our way back through the shop we visited with a welder who was working on welding the inner-parts of an upper-drum for a press.

Another interesting thing at the welding station was the jig that they use to create the signature Takach press legs. The jig enables them to get the press legs welded together quickly and in the same configuration each time.

Our next stop was in the roller room to visit with Dave's son-in-law Joe. Joe and his son build the sweet Takach rollers and brayers that we all love to use. I think Mick is trying to slip one of those pretty brayers in his pocket.

Joe explained that the rollers are actually hollow metal tubes with rubber around the outside. Most of the weight from the roller comes from the rubber. Here are various sizes of the tubes waiting to be assembled into rollers and brayers:

And here are some with the rubber attached:

There was lots of other fun stuff laying around, but nothing quite as pretty as all the cans of ink just waiting to be shipped out to little printers all over the country:

After the tour, the Takach family was nice enough to treat us all to a delicious home-cooked meal. Dave Sr's wife, Helen and their daughter Peggy did all of the cooking and it was fantastic! Patrick sure did enjoy it anyway:

Just when we thought the day couldn't get any better, we were given free t-shirts.

Okay! Okay! I'll buy a press from you. Geez. Twist my arm.

Seriously though, good marketing considering probably at least half of our group will drop $10-20K on one of their presses in the next five years.

Weekend Fun

2007-09-23T20:58:00.001-07:00

After printing Saturday, a group of us made a trip to the New Mexico State Fair (just about five minutes away).

This was the last weekend for the fair and it was pretty crowded. Our first stop was at a bank of black and white photo booths. Somehow we all managed to squeeze in and you can almost see everyone if we turn our heads just right. This was by far the best part of the evening:

After that, it was mostly a lot of us pushing our way through the crowds:

And also being yelled at by crazy carnies who wanted Patrick to try his hand at their rip-off games.

None of us were really feeling up for rides... but we did stop to watch a few. Here's Alex looking heavenly as always:

And here's what she was gawking at... GENESIS:

We tried our hand at a couple of games... mostly the kind where you are in a race with a dozen people and roll a ball into a hole to try to advance your racer. All four of us struck out the first time and the second time Alex was triumphant. Unfortunately, the guy running the game totally conned us. At first he said the winner got choice of any prize, but after Alex won he told her she could only have a stuffed cow. Apparently, since not all the seats were filled, she was no longer eligible to get her choice. We ended up paying the guy off so that we could take home a Pink Unicorn.

Sunday

This morning I slept in and then Patrick and I drove way out to the NE side to watch the Packers game. We were going to watch it at his house but for some reason the CBS station in Albuquerque was showing Paid Programming instead of one of the four football games that other cities were showing. Luckily, we found a Packer Bar that turned out to be quite the hotspot. Even better, the Packers beat the Chargers today to put themselves at 3-0. Here we are rocking the green and gold:

Chorus After Chorus

2007-09-22T20:37:00.000-07:00

Alex was sponging on the Pro-Side on Friday, so Patrick helped me proof her stone. I thought it was going to be fairly easy, but I ended up having some trouble with it. It seemed to be etched decently. Here is what her drawing looked like:

And this is a close up of one section, showing the stone before and after it was etched. The image on the left is the stone with only drawing materials on it. Alex used crayon to draw the bodies, then filled the clothes in with tusche and added rubbing crayon some on the faces and around the bodies. After the stone is etched the first time, we wash out the drawing materials and roll it up in printing ink. The image on the right is what it looked like after being rolled up. If it was etched properly, it should look pretty much the same except a little darker. In this case, you'll notice the greasy tusche got completely black (which is what Alex was hoping for, I think). We lost a little bit of the detail with the rubbing crayon in the background, but overall it's still mostly there.

So when I went to print the image for the first time, I was having a lot of trouble getting the flat black parts on the bodies and the bottom banner to roll up dark. I wasted several sheets of paper before Rodney came over and put me to shame with his filthy selective rolling techniques. I think he also cheated a little bit by using a much better quality of paper to proof on. We increased the pressure on the press and modified my ink so that it was super soft. That seemed to do the trick and I was able to get an Approval to Print for Alex by the end of the day.

On Saturday, we met in the afternoon to proof Patrick's stone and finish the edition of Alex's print. Here is what Patrick's drawing looked like as Alex was etching it:

Alex seems to have the miracle stone and she got a good proof with relatively little effort. My editioning went good for the most part. My first print on good paper was a little lean but I was able to get the rest of them (almost) exactly the same. Now we just have to finish printing Patrick's stone on Monday.

Romancing the Stone

2007-09-21T20:57:00.000-07:00

Apparently, no matter how much explaining I do, some people still don't understand what I'm doing at Tamarind. I figured I'd try throwing in some video clips to supplement my explanations. Sorry, I don't have a way to edit them right now.

Anytime we go to print a stone or a plate, there are several steps we have to take. At this point, the stone has had it's first and second etches applied, is rolled up with ink, and stored under a thin, buffed-in layer of gum arabic. (See picture above for reference.)

The first thing we do is apply a fresh layer of gum arabic and buff it in. After it dries, we take lithotine or some sort of other solvent and remove all of the ink that it was rolled up in. The gum layer is not affected by this and will protect the non image areas from grease. In this first clip, Valpuri has already poured the lithotine on and is in the process of wiping out the ink.

After the ink is removed, we replace it with a thin coat of asphaltum, which serves as a printing base. Here you see Valpuri applying asphaltum to the image area, then buffing it in with a rag until there is a thin even coat.

Once the asphaltum dries and sets, the stone is ready to be washed out with water. The water will remove the previously applied gum from the non image areas and will leave the thin layer of asphaltum as a printing base in the image areas. You'll notice that Valpuri will first clean out the borders and then commit the image area. After it is relatively clear, she grabs the inking roller and rolls quickly, simultaneously snapping out the remaining asphaltum and inking the image.

With the stone satisfactorily inked, we're ready to pull a print on newsprint. Usually, we'll pull at least three or four newsprints, slowly adjusting our inking and pressure until it looks fairly good. This way we don't waste any of our expensive good paper. In this next clip, Valpuri has already placed a piece of newsprint over the inked image. She has also put down a tympan (greased piece of plastic) on top of the newsprint that will protect the paper as it is run through the press. Printing happens in several steps:
1) The press bed is guided to a marked starting point.
2) A lever is pulled down to apply pressure to the stone.
3) A clutch is engaged and a handle cranked to run the stone through the press.
4) At the marked end point, cranking is stopped and the pressure disengaged.
5) The pressbed is then pulled back to it's starting point.
6) The tympan is removed and the newsprint or paper is peeled off the stone.

Flight of the Conchords

2007-09-20T00:24:00.000-07:00

This makes me very happy.

But then again, so does this.

P-7: Collaboration I

2007-09-19T22:07:00.000-07:00

On Monday we got going on our first collaboration project. For now, we are assigned to work with one of our fellow student printers. I will serve as the Printer for Alex's drawing and I will act as an Artist for Valpuri.

The printer's first responsibility is to meet with the Artist and determine what sort of print they plan to make. They provide a stone that is ready to draw on and also provide the materials that the Artist will work with. Now that we have done our crayon and tusche tests, we have a good idea of what sorts of things work best on our stone. In some cases, limitations might be placed (suggested) if the Printer doesn't think they can pull a technique off.

The Printer will also prepare the paper for the project, which in our case includes calendering. The tremendous pressure of the litho press will cause a paper to stretch out a little bit as it is printed. The stretch of the paper can cause problems and inconsistencies with registration and it can help to calender it before you actually print. To calender the paper, we simply run it through the litho press at 2/3 pressure to smooth and stretch it out.

I got my stone ready for Alex before I went to Saint Louis and on Monday, Valpuri finished graining her stone for me. Tuesday I was on sponging duty all day with Brandon, with the exception of my morning class with Marge. I was exhausted after so much standing and sponging, but I returned to the studio yesterday night to work on my drawing.

Rodney urged us to challenge our Printer without stabbing them in the back. Originally, I was just going to do some crayon and maybe a little shop black for the borders. But Valpuri was practically begging me to give her something difficult... and I obliged.

I decided that I wanted to do a picture of me and Britney Spears. To make it more fun, I decided that it was going to be cut and folded into a stand-up print. Here are a few pictures of the drawing on the stone before Valpuri took over.

The paper will actually extend about four inches on the top and bottom from where the drawing stops. I will cut around the heads with an X-Acto blade and then fold it three places to create something similar to a table tent. Here's a diagram:

After consultation with Rodney (and an eight hour day of sponging), Valpuri set to work on putting the first etch on my drawing.

First, she decided what etches would work best for the drawing and mixed them up. For the stone, we start with an ounce of gum arabic and then add drops of nitric acid to strengthen the etch. Some delicate work will only require straight gum arabic, heavier crayon could need up to twenty drops or more. Here Valpuri has mixed up at least three different etches to use on my drawing (probably a 3 drop, 7 drop and a 10 drop). She also has a giant bottle of gum arabic on hand to "cool things down" if she gets carried away.

Next, she put rosin and talc on the image to help protect it from the etches and to draw the gum in closer to the grease particles:

Finally, she set to work on applying the etches to the stone. She had to work quickly and methodically. Being careful to apply the weakest etches to the delicate parts and the hottest etches to the heavy parts.

The reason that my image is difficult is because of the combinations of materials. I have light tusche washes next to medium crayon drawings next to dark black borders. Not only will it be difficult to etch it perfectly, but it will also be a challenge to roll-up with ink. I hope that Valpuri knows I'm not really trying to sabotage her, but rather make her a better printer. Even though she is already the Best Printer in Santa Claus Village.

Alex started drawing on my stone this afternoon and she should have it finished tomorrow. She was a lot easier on me than I was on Valpuri, but I still think it will be challenging. This project requires us to work around the schedules of both our Artist and our Printer. As a result, there's a lot of down-time for me right now. I spent the afternoon at home preparing paper for my SNAP!!! print and in the evening I went into the studio and pulled my first proof of it. I was pretty excited. Hopefully I'll be able to edition it very soon.

Meet Me in Saint Louieee Louieee

2007-09-17T23:23:00.000-07:00

The night before my trip to Saint Louis I couldn't sleep at all. Seriously, I may have gotten an hour or two in the whole night! I was back and forth between my bed and the computer and the futon. Finally I got a solid block of sleep near daylight. My alarms were set for 6:30am and 6:45am, but I didn't hear either one of them. My eyes opened at 7:28am! Just two minutes before my shuttle was supposed to arrive!

Thankfully, I had set out my clothes the night before and piled my stuff together. I ran around my little house throwing on clothes and grabbing the trash to take out. Just as I was about to leave I heard a knock on my window. It was my neighbor, in her robe, informing me that the shuttle guy had knocked on her door. Crap. (I learned today that she was already awake, which makes me feel a bit better.)

Anyway... I made my shuttle and got the airport with plenty of time to spare. I bought a book, Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother, to read on the plane. My flights seemed pretty quick and uneventful. I connected in Kansas City and arrived a few minutes early in Saint Louis.

Carrie picked me up. It was a little weird at first. But look how happy I was to see her and to be back in Saint Louis!

Carrie took me to ArtMart to pick up some Kozo paper for my SNAP!!! print and then we had a quick bite at Saint Louis Bread Company in the loop. My haircut was at 4pm, we got there early and I had an enjoyable haircut and visit with my favorite stylist, Callie. We poked our head in some stores in the Loop and then made our way back home. There was a Balloon Race in Forest Park this weekend and all sorts of crazies were pulled off the highway watching it. I thought it was funny that there were balloons in Saint Louis because that is the big event in Albuquerque. Of course, in Saint Louis there are only about 70 balloons in the race. At the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta there will be around 700 balloons! So crazy.

Here is a picture taken from the car of the balloons over Forest Park:

By the time we got done with my haircut and got home, I was pretty wiped out. We rested a bit and then walked down to Bahn Mi So 1 for a late dinner of Palestrina's Delight and the Best-Spring-Rolls-In-Saint-Louis.

I slept incredibly well that night, and in the morning we went to La Dolce Via for brunch. I had biscuits and gravy which was delicious until I slowed down enough to realize it was made with lamb sausage. I'm not trying to be down on lamb sausage or anything... but when you're not expecting it, it can leave quite a bad taste in the mouth. Here I am trying to do the Katie Spencer photo-face, but really just looking silly:

(P.S. Check out my awesome Cardinals shirt that Carrie got me. So stylish and comfy.)

Just as we were wrapping up our brunch, a gaggle of early-twenty-somethings walked in. I thought I recognized a guy in the group and then realized that it was Alexandra's boyfriend Hayden! Sure enough, Alex strolled through the door a second later. It still amuses me that we ran in to each other there. Of all the places in Saint Louis they could have gone. Crazy Crazy.

Back at the house I worked on printing out the color parts of my SNAP!!! print onto the Kozo paper I'd prepared. My parents drove up from Rolla and arrived at the house around 2pm. We rushed down to Laclede's Landing so that we could beat the football game crowd to the Old Spaghetti Factory (my mom's favorite). Here's a view from the riverfront:

We hung out with my parents for quite a while and ended up back down in the loop for Ben and Jerry's. By the time they left, it was around 7pm! Where does the day go? I worked more on my SNAP!!! prints and then Alexandra called to invite us out for dessert and drinks at Bailey's Chocolate Bar. We were pretty desserted-out from the ice cream so we just stuck with a drink and enjoyed conversation with Alex and her friends.

I still had about 15 more pages to print out when I got home and I was a little disgruntled that I had to spend my last waking hours at home working on a print. There were so many people that I didn't get to see while I was home and I wish I could have found a way to squeeze more in.

5:30am came very early in the morning. We drove out to pick up Alex and Hayden from their hotel and took them to the airport with us. Hayden's flight to NYC wasn't until later in the day and he was flying on a different airline so we parted ways at the security checkpoint. So many goodbyes. So much sadness.

Alex slept pretty much the whole way back... Look at her! Just like a little angel with her head smashed into that tray table:

Celina picked us up at the airport and we dropped off our things and headed straight into the studio. Today we discussed our next project and Alex and I finished printing her last two editions. Tomorrow morning we have class with Marge and then it's on to our first Collaboration!

SNAP!!!

2007-09-14T23:16:00.000-07:00

Several months ago I was invited to participate in a print portfolio for the IMPACT 5 international printmaking conference in Tallinn, Estonia. The print is due at the end of the month and I'm finally making some headway. I had a bit of a creative block. Too much printing and not enough printmaking, I guess. The best I could come up with is a print about printing. It's gonna be titled, "Snap!!!" You Tamarind kids out there know what I'm talking about.

Anyway... this is going to be a Lithograph and Digital on some sorta Japanese paper chine colle'd onto somerset satin or something similar. The plate is ready and proofed, I just have to print out the digital parts onto the thin Japanese paper and we'll be ready to roll. The image area is around 8"x8" and the paper size is 12"x12".

[For those of you unfamiliar: Printmaking Portfolios are organized exchanges of prints between artists. An organizer will generally select a number of participants, a theme, a paper size and an edition size. Some themes are more open than others. In the case of my current project, we were simply given a folio title, "Analog Digital Disorder", to work from and told that the prints must be 12"x12", no thicker than 1/4", and in an edition of 27. So I will make 27 identical prints and send them to Dusty. The other 20+ participants will also send 27 prints to Dusty and he will organize them into boxes containing a copy of every print submitted. Dusty will take the portfolio with him to the conference in Estonia. He will also eventually send each participant a complete set of all the prints in the portfolio to keep.]

Since I last wrote, I finished up my solvent wash projects. Alex helped me print my stone on Thursday afternoon and Celina sponged for me this afternoon so that I could print my plate. Both of them turned out relatively well, although I was having trouble getting the black flats to print solid. Rodney said I was rolling too fast and of course he was right. I'm always in super-fast mode when I'm printing. Sometimes it's hard to slow down. I joked that I was paying for Celina's help by the hour which was why I was in such a hurry.

Thursday night I went to the mall with Alex, Celina and Valpuri. Alex left for Saint Louis this morning. We'll probably meet up there on Sunday for Ted Drewe's Frozen Custard and/or drinky drinks.

Tonight I watched the Cardinals lose (again) to the Cubs. I also worked on "Snap!!!". Patrick's Baby-Momma is in town for the weekend and they stopped by after the game. We hit the Frontier for a late snack and then took Chelsey on a tour of Tamarind. Good times.

Tomorrow morning I get picked up at 7:30am for the airport. My flight is at 9:25am. I switch planes in KC and arrive in STL around 2pm.

Shellaccident!!!

2007-09-13T00:02:00.000-07:00

What do you call it when you spill half a bottle of red enamel Shellac all over the press and the floor?

A SHELLACCIDENT!!!

Spiders

Okay, so I decided I'd better not leave you hanging. (That's a little spider pun for you.)

I talked to my mom Monday night for the first time in a month. I told her about my spider woes and she insisted that I tell my landlord about my little problem. Of course, this is the same thing that Carrie has been insisting since I moved in... but when it comes from your Mom, it's different somehow. Also, my Mom lives in the middle of the woods and leaves the doors open all of the time and hardly ever has spiders. Apparently, my situation is not as normal as I'd tried to convince myself.

Anyway... I emailed my landlord and he wrote me back saying that he would have a professional pest control person come out and spray for me. I guess we'll see how effective that is. I'll get back with you on that.

Baseball

The Cardinals are sucking my will to live.
I'm trying not to pin my every happiness on baseball.
But when all I do is print and watch baseball, it's kind of hard not to.

Tamarind

Things have been odd lately in the studio. I'm not quite sure if it's the project or the timeline or just the fact that people are starting to wear down a bit. I don't know how to describe it. We had a pretty good groove going and now it's just off a little bit. Maybe it's just me.

We're still keeping busy for the most part. I think part of the problem is that these tusche washes have to sit for quite a while to dry before you can do anything to them. So if you don't time things right, you can end up spending a couple of hours sitting around doing nothing. Once again... maybe it's just me.

We have now moved onto the Solvent Tusche Washes. You can use any number of solvents to reconstitute the solvent-based tusches. Normally, Rodney has the class do three tests with one type of tusche and three different types of solvents. However, our water-based projects were so crappy that he offered us the opportunity to try our favorite wash again. So our projects are turning out to be two solvent tests and a repeat of one water-based test. You can get an idea of the layout here. This is my stone with the water-based tusche applied on the bottom row.

Here is Patrick putting a gum arabic mask on his plate. The areas where the gum is applied will be resistant to the solvent washes (but not the water-based tusche washes).

The solvent washes were a lot trickier than the water based ones. I don't think they look as nice but maybe that's just because I don't know how to do it very well. Here's Alexandra applying one of her solvent tusches to her plate.

Just in case you haven't gotten enough, check out Yuli and Celina working on their stones.

I finished applying the tusches to my plate and stone yesterday and started etching them today. I was able to get both the first etch on my plate and my stone during class. I also was able to get a little bit of work done on a print for a portfolio I'm in, which was good. I left Tamarind around 4pm and went home to watch the baseball game (see above). Around 8pm, I ran to the grocery store with Celina and was back by 8:30pm to work at Tamarind some more. I had the whole place to myself and ended up staying until after midnight. Besides putting the second etch on my stone and plate, I also worked on cleaning the studio up a little bit. I've been going a little crazy from all the clutter and mess in the studio.

Cleaning a million of these made me feel a little bit better:

Burnout

2007-09-10T20:08:00.000-07:00

Oh please please tell me that I'm not getting burned out already. Please tell me that the lethargy I'm feeling today is just from my weekend of excitement and too much good food. Speaking of which...

After Saturday's decadent meal of pizza with green chiles, Chef Patrick struck again with some more fancy feasts on Sunday. In the morning, I got up and watched the Packers game with Wisconsin's very own Patrick Smyczek (shown here in his super-tight team colors):

While I watched the game, Patrick made me little English Muffin sandwiches with avocado, onion, tomato and cream cheese. So good!

After the Packers won (somehow), I met up with Ana and she drove me out to Trader Joes on the NE side. I didn't really have much in mind but was able to find a few things, including a Triple Cream Cheese that I took to Patrick's later that night.

Yes... Once again Patrick hosted the weekend barbecue at his house. This time it was grilled Chicken Breasts stuffed with mozzarella, tomato, onions and green chiles! The vegetarian option was a bow-tie pasta with homemade creamy pesto sauce and sauteed onions and mushrooms. Pat also grilled some vegetables (asparagus, zucchini, etc) and even fired up an acorn squash (which accidentally got left on the grill until 1:30am). To top it all off, Alex made a delicious Blueberry Cobbler and Ana brought some pumpkin cookies... both of which we smothered in ice cream.

Here are some pictures of the food. Needless to say, I'm not going hungry here.

More Spiders

I've found a lot of spiders around my front door lately (on the outside, Thank God). So I've made a habit of checking when I come home, to make sure I don't run into any. A few days ago, I found this ~~little~~ medium guy trying to get into my house. He was right on my doorstep, scratching at my door. I think it is a Brown Widow, but I couldn't get a good look at the underside, so I'm not entirely sure.

Then today I come home... do my usual inspection and find a freakin' BLACK WIDOW hanging out near the bottom of my door at the hinges. I didn't really know what to do. I didn't want to kill it. I didn't want to get near it, really. But I had to go inside... and it was in a spot where if I opened the door, it was sure to come inside with me. And it did! Blech.

I was feeling a bit sad about having to kill so many spiders lately. And I really didn't want to have to kill the Black Widow. But it FOLLOWED ME IN THE HOUSE! I had no choice. I grabbed my trusty 20 year old can of Ant and Roach killer and sprayed it until it was rolling around in circles on my tile floor. Once it stopped moving I stuck it in a Ziploc so I could get a closer look (also because I'm creepy like that). I tried to scan it for you, but the weight of the scanner lid proved to be too much. Yuck. Well, at least you can see that I'm not entirely crazy. If that isn't a Black Widow, I don't know what is.

Printing

Things are still busy on the Tamarind front. Today I was scheduled to sponge all day on the Pro-Side, but I was able to get out of it for the most part. (Thank you Myungwon!) I helped Alex finish printing her first edition from the stone and we worked on getting our stones and plates ready for the next part of the project (solvent washes).

The Cardinals played a make-up game versus the Cubs at Wrigley Field and they totally blew their opportunity to make up some ground in the NL Central. They've now dropped four straight games... Maybe that's why I'm feeling so down today.

To cheer me up, Ana played X-Men in the graining room.

How Could I Forget?!?!

2007-09-09T02:00:00.000-07:00

I'm going home next weekend!!!!
I'm going home next weekend!!!!
I'm going home next weekend!!!!

Yay! Yay! Yay!

Okay... a little background.

First of all, two of the other people in my program are making trips to Saint Louis in the next few weeks. I started thinking:

"WHY-IS-EVERYONE-GOING-TO-SAINT-LOUIS-BUT-ME!?!?!?!"

At some point last week, a Southwest Airlines DING! Fare came up from Albuquerque to Saint Louis. I was thisclose to getting a ticket then but I decided to wait. I didn't want to impulse purchase a plane ticket. Especially since Carrie is coming here shortly after the beginning of October. So I resisted.

But I just couldn't resist it when it popped up again a few days later. It was just too tempting. How could I possibly pass up a $130(+tax) roundtrip plane ticket to STL? It's impossible.

My printing partner, Alex, is one of the people going to Saint Louis. She'll be leaving on Friday morning, which means we have to get our projects printed before the weekend anyway. So what was I going to do all weekend besides sit around and be jealous of Alex because she's in Saint Louis and I'm not? PROBLEM SOLVED!

If it sounds like I'm still trying to convince myself that this is a good plan, you're probably right. But I'm really quite excited about the trip. In addition to seeing Carrie I will be getting my hair cut and possibly going to a Cardinals-Cubs game. (BEST WEEKEND EVER!) If anyone reading this wants to see me you should drop me a line.

So Many Things...

2007-09-08T23:13:00.000-07:00

So much time and so little to say.

STRIKE THAT! REVERSE IT!

We'll begin at the beginning... or at least where we last left off.

Thursday

Our first real class with Marge... or at least a class where we weren't watching videos or being babysat by someone else. The Tamarind book manuscript is finished and now Marge can move on to other things... like raising 5 million dollars for the new building. Crazy crazy.

I didn't feel good that morning and was having trouble paying attention in class. Also, I'm not good with names and hate it when people ask things like, "What artists were working in lithography in the United States in the early 1900's?" Even if I know that stuff most likely it would never make it from the recesses of my brain to my mouth in time to give an answer. Then I just look extra stupid... so instead I tried to just sit there and look cute. Did I mention my new headband? It takes me back to the old days when I wore a stocking cap nearly year round. This gives kind of the same feeling... the warm pressure on the ears. but without the bad hat hair. It's perfect.

Thursday afternoon we had demos in how to etch our Tusche Wash Tests. After the demo, I worked on putting the first etch on my stone. I think I may have gone back later in the evening and put the first etch on my plate as well. At some point during the day, the Cardinals trounced the Pittsburgh Pirates 16-4! And I didn't even get to watch it because I was in class. *sigh*

Friday

Fridays are work days but I didn't really get going until around 11:30am. I was there. I just wasn't doing much. I guess I still had residual feelings of yuckiness from the day before. I started getting ready to put the second etch on my stone right before lunch. Of course, we all managed to screw ours up (except for the lucky person who volunteered their stone for the demo). My pretty pretty tusche washes almost completely went bye-bye. It's so frustrating. I knew that I was probably going to screw it up but I was hoping by some miracle it would actually look good. Oh well. I spent more than TWO HOURS carefully rolling up my stone with ink, to try to get back the information on the stone. But it didn't help much.

I know this probably makes no sense, but I'm too tired to properly explain it. You'll just have to trust me that it was a pain.

Since I worked through lunch I went home around 3pm and then came back later in the day to finish the second etch on my plate. It wasn't quite as bad as the stone, but it still didn't look super.

Friday night Patrick and Alex came and got me and took me with them to Valpuri's house. There ended up being six of us there and we sat out on the roof and had beers and wine and enjoyed the evening air and conversation and Valpuri's ability to stick things in her nose and also sing Ace of Base. Here is another video for you. It takes a second but I think it gets more amusing towards the end so stick with it. If you pay attention closely, you can enjoy Valpuri's rendition of "The Sign".

Saturday

I slept in a little this morning and then met up with Alex at the studio around 10am. We worked until 5pm and were able to print both of our first plate editions and then my stone edition. I felt good about what we accomplished today, so we don't have to worry about taking the day off tomorrow.

We stopped at a little produce market near my house after we were done working and I got a cantaloupe, some nectarines and two mangoes. The girl at the register commented that I was eating pretty healthy for someone my age. I told her that I was probably older than she was and she said that she was 26. She felt bad after I told her I was 28 and wouldn't stop apologizing. Like it was really that big of a deal.

This evening Patrick came over and watched the Brewers-Reds game. He recently purchased a bushel of roasted green chiles so he brought a frozen pizza and put green chiles all over the top of it. It was fantastic but a little spicy. Here is Patrick skinning the green chiles:

Normally, I would've watched the Cardinals game this evening. But they are playing in Arizona and it is blacked out since I live so close to that market. It is stupid. Anyway... I missed yesterday's 4-2 loss and today's 9-8 loss. Maybe if I were watching them they wouldn't lose so much.

After the game we went back to Alex's apartment to enjoy some television, including our new favorite show, Flight of the Conchords. Those zany New Zealanders! Such good times.

Polly Apfelbaum

2007-09-06T22:50:00.000-07:00

Polly Apfelbaum is in the house for the next two weeks and has started playing around on the Pro-Side.

Here are a few of her recent works from her website:

It's a little weird though because I feel so disconnected from her visit. I'm used to Tandem Press where the students were busy slaving away with tearing paper and mixing inks and doing all sorts of busy-work when the artists came to visit. At Tamarind, we just kind of keep busy with our own stuff and peek in from time to time. I guess technically, whichever student printers are down to help with sponging would be asked to help if needed. But so far, there hasn't been a need. Maybe later once proofing starts.

Here are some pictures I snapped of all the pretty shapes and colors floating around.

Spider Trauma-Rama

2007-09-06T11:21:00.000-07:00

This morning I nearly had one of those breakdowns where you curl up in a ball and sob things like, "I-JUST-CAN'T-TAKE-IT-ANYMORE!!!"

Except I wasn't referring to Tamarind or being alone here in Albuquerque.

There was a spider...
And it was crawling up my leg.

That's where I draw the line.

I can't recall if I've mentioned my spider woes yet in this blog. But I have so many spiders here. Most of them are quarter-sized brown spiders like this one:

But there are also Black Widows hanging around at Tamarind and I'm pretty sure I killed one that had made a web right by my screen door. (You can imagine how thrilled I am about that.)

It is really starting to drive me nuts. I'm constantly on edge and I'm having trouble sleeping at night because of it.

Last night was the first night in weeks that I actually slept the whole night through and didn't jump out of my bed and throw off all of the covers because I thought there were spiders on my ceiling or in my bed.

I thought that I had made a breakthrough... I was feeling like I'd finally overcome my fear (or at least had made myself tired enough to sleep through it) and then the very next morning I have a spider on me. Seriously... I'm at my wits end.

Okay, okay... so I know that spiders are a very important part of the food chain and that they keep other little housepests in check. And if I had one friendly little spider hanging out somewhere in my house, that would be fine. But in the past few weeks, I've probably killed two spiders a day on average. That's what I call an infestation... and it creeps the heck out of me.

I think the biggest problem is that this guest house was converted from an old garage. While it seems fairly well constructed, I think there are a lot of gaps and holes and other entry points that resulted from the conversion. I probably have nests of spiders living in my walls. The most visible areas are the giant gap at the bottom right corner of my front door...

And the swamp cooler that is installed in my wall by my computer. See the white spot in the middle of the grate? That is light shining through from the outside of the house. As I see most of my little spider friends crawling on the wall by my computer, this seems like a popular spot to get in.

Okay... so what do I do? I tried installing weather stripping on my front door to close that gap, but then the door wouldn't shut. I'm not even really sure what I'd try to do with the swamp cooler besides cover over it. I'd happily spray the house with something if I thought it would actually help, but I know they'll just keep coming in. I welcome any suggestions from you readers. Is there anything that you've had success with? I know that BD probably has some good shampoo/herbal/catnip spider friendly way to get rid of these guys. If you have a thought... leave me a comment!

P-5 and P-6: Tusche Wash Tests

2007-09-05T17:45:00.000-07:00

We're nearing the end of the supposedly "easy" P-Projects and yesterday we got instructions for the Tusche Wash Tests.

Okay... so some of you may be wondering what tusche is... besides a term for someone's backside. Lithographic tusche (Usually pronounced TOOOSH), is a greasy drawing material that comes in three different forms: Paste, Stick, and Liquid. Tusche can be dissolved with either water or solvents and can be applied with a brush or a pen. Most people like to use it for more painterly effects.

Here are a few examples of the tusches we are using. The one in the can is the paste, which comes solid. You add small amounts of water (or solvent) in the can and stir it up with the brush until you get the consistency you want. The stick is kind of like a fat crayon. To use it, you rub it on the bottom of a plate and then liquefy it with water.

The purpose of these next projects is for us to get familiar with the different brands and types of tusche and to learn how to process them on the stone and plate. Tusche washes are usually so delicate that it can be hard to etch them and print them without losing the detail.

We are doing two separate sets of tests in these projects. First, we are sampling 10 strengths of five different types of water-based tusche on both a stone and aluminum plate. Next, we will prepare another plate and stone and explore variations in solvent-based tusches.

For each brand or type of tusche, we first mix up a solid concentrated version, then add drops of the concentrate to small beakers with water. We start with just 10 drops to about 20mL of water, then 20 drops, and so on. Here is Valpuri going cross-eyed from counting drops:

Here is Yuli's stone in progress. Each horizontal row is a different type of tusche. You can see how it starts on the left with the concentrate, then the 90 drops, and so on.

Once the water evaporates, the grease particles in the tusche will settle onto the stone. Here is a close-up of my stone:

After the first application dries, we have to go back over a small part of each blob with a second pass. This will give us an idea of how the stone or plate might react with more than one coat of tusche. Here's Celina adding her second coat:

Putting the tusche on the stone or plate is the easy part! Tomorrow we'll get a demo on how to do our first etch.

Labor Day(s)

2007-09-03T20:22:00.001-07:00

This was a three day weekend for most people.
But not for the fine folks at Tamarind.
Labor Day Weekend = Three Days of Labor
Here's how it broke down:

Saturday

After my late night of working and Sponge Dancing, I went into the studio around 9am to meet Alex. We were able to complete the editions on our stones, despite the fact that we probably shouldn't have.

I say we probably shouldn't have pulled our editions because after proofing our stones, they both looked pretty crappy. Not super crappy, but not perfect either. And unless the artist intends it to be so, you should never knowingly pull an edition that has something wrong with it. But we were tired... oh so tired of these stones. I personally tried to "fix" mine four times. The problem with my stone was that it didn't really like the way I counter-etched it. Some stones are more accepting than others and can take a stronger counter-etch. But mine kind of rejected it. So when I tried to add back on to stone, in some areas, it started coming off. So in my beautiful black border I had these white spots and lines. It started to break down the more I printed it. It was sad.

Alex had similar problems but we were both able to get our edition to be consistent... even if it was consistently crappy. We finished with those editions around 4pm. Alex had company coming in from Houston and I had a date with the Saint Louis Cardinals so it worked out well. (And the Cardinals won for me 11-3, which made the day even better.)

Sunday

Alex's friend stuck around ABQ until lunchtime on Sunday which meant I was able to get a few things done in the morning. I decided that it would be a good time to do laundry and I carried my stuff down the block and a half to the nearby laundromat. I always enjoy being at places other than home and Tamarind.

I folded my things and got home in time to catch the Cardinals squaring off again versus the Cincinnati Reds. Alex called me to meet up at the studio around 2pm. I didn't have time to finish watching the game but got to see Rick Ankiel hit me another home run. (The Cards ended up winning that one 3-2.) After our morning off, neither Alex nor I were in any mood to print. We had hoped to edition at least one of our plates, but our plates thought otherwise. We started with Alex's plate and were unable to get a good print for some reason. We think it had something to do with the press set-up, but we're not sure. It took us several hours to finally get a good print and by the time we proofed her plate, it was nearly 5pm.

This project is made a bit more difficult by the fact that Rodney wants us to proof these things in three different types of black ink. We're to use a Black Shop Mix (semi-greasy), Daniel Smith Classic Black (sorta-stiff), and Crayon Black (super-stiff) to see which one works best for our stone and plate. It wouldn't be so bad except that in between each type of ink, you have to clean the roller and the ink slab and your plate or stone. It's a lot of extra work... but it is helping us to get familiar with the differences between the inks and what situations it might be good to use them in.

By 6pm, we were ready to get out of there. Patrick invited us back to his place for another barbecue. The food was delicious and again, it was nice to be away from the square blockage of my house and Tamarind. We even got treated to a fireworks show from the nearby minor league baseball field.

Monday

At 9am this morning, we were back at it again in the studio. I got there a few minutes before Alexandra and had my plate on the press and ready to go. Upon arrival, Alex proposed that we only edition my plate. She wanted to wait to do hers until Tuesday (even though it was suggested that we should have these done this weekend). So we got my plate finished around lunchtime with just a few minor issues.

I learned that when you have a solid flat area with a lot of ink (like the black borders), it's good to pull the paper off the stone or plate from a center point on one edge of the paper, rather than from the corner. For the first few prints I was getting a light area on my border and I couldn't figure out why. I tried changing up my rolling methods and adding more ink. But that didn't make a difference. Turns out it was something as simple as they way I was peeling it off. I won't make that mistake again twice.

After cleaning up, I went home and watched yet another Cardinals game. This time it was a 11-0 pounding from the Pittsburgh Pirates. It was very painful to watch. Fortunately, the Brewers and the Cubs also lost their games today, so it's like it didn't even happen.

In the afternoon, Alex took me to Wal-Mart with her so that I could do some grocery shopping. I'd been running out of things to eat, so I'm glad that I went. In addition to items for a half dozen meals, I also got a colander (yay!) and a blender. Now I can drain things and blend things. I'm very happy.

Sponge Dance

2007-08-31T23:49:00.000-07:00

I really wasn't looking forward to today.

This project is awful... nothing is going right. Rodney assures us that our problems are average problems and are to be expected. I'm glad we get to learn from our mistakes but I'd rather not have to go through this.

There were three things that made today almost an okay day.

1) Rick Ankiel hit a GRAND SLAM in the 6th inning to propel the Cardinals ahead of the Reds.

2) The headbands that we ordered last week arrived today and five of us rocked out while printing in headbands representing our homeland.

3) After the Cardinals game, I went back to the studio, put on my headband, got some major things accomplished, put the needle the Michael Jackson Thriller LP and danced my little butt off.

(Sorry for the quality... not quite as smooth as in person, but that was taken with my phone! The miracle of modern technology!)

How to Fix Things

2007-08-30T21:09:00.000-07:00

I forgot how exhausting sponging can be. Especially when you're trying really hard to do a good job. Sharon and I got going around 8:30 and went until 12:00. That's a solid three and a half hours of Wax-On, Wax-Off. I was glad that I finally got my first round of sponging over with. The bad thing was that I missed a long and rather important demo on the other side called "How to Fix Things".

After sponging, I went home for lunch and turned on the Cardinals game which conveniently started at noon. After the lunch hour was up, I trudged back to Tamarind... only to get there, be overwhelmed with how tired I was and how much I had to do, and turn around and come back home. I hung out on my futon for a bit and watched the rest of the game. Then went back to the studio to face the music. (The Cardinals lost to the Astros AGAIN, by the way.)

At first, it seemed like these counter etching projects were going to be super easy. I mean, all we're really doing is adding more information to a stone or plate we'd already prepared and then printing it. But adding things is a lot harder than it seems and all sorts of problems manifest themselves. Of course, Rodney had this planned out. He knew we would screw it all up. Which is why he was prepared with a crucial demo on "How to Fix things"... which I would miss out on.

My stone was no exception to the failure that was spreading through the studio like head lice in a daycare center. Remember those lovely big black borders I was painting on my stone in the last post? Well... they didn't exactly come out as planned. They showed up, but weren't inking up fully. I had to reinforce the borders with super-greasy-shop-black and then put it to bed for the night. Hopefully, as my stone sleeps with it's blanket of blackness, it will soak some of it in and be more receptive to it next time I roll up. That's the plan anyway.

I'd hoped to work more on things tonight but I was so mentally and physically exhausted that I decided to go home around 5:30pm. I'd been wanting to make the Tortellini with Roasted Red Pepper sauce, but I needed someone to share with. I baited Patrick by offering to let him watch the Brewers-Cubs game at my house. The dinner turned out super-great:

I also made cookies!

Unfortunately, the dinner and the cookies just couldn't overcome the outcome of the baseball game. Milwaukee made it interesting, but with the bases loaded and two outs in the 9th inning, they just couldn't pull it off. The final was Chicago 5, Milwaukee 4. Poor Patrick.

Here are a few more pictures courtesy of Valpuri. She was actually able to get a picture of Mick's face! Something I haven't done yet. You know the top of his head well. Now here's the rest of him (making a funny face, no less):

This is Alex thinking, I wish I had a different printing partner. Why'd I get stuck with this crazy?

And while I do not condone flashing gang signs, it is an inside joke between me and Valpuri... and it must be done.

P-3 and P-4: Counter-Etching

2007-08-29T20:58:00.001-07:00

For the past few days, Rodney has been locked away in his office reviewing the final manuscript of the Tamarind Book. Normally, Rodney is glued to our hips, constantly circulating through the studio, offering advice and demonstrations. In his absence, we mostly just sit around and read magazines and stare off into space. Kind of like this:

Just kidding... I'm sure Yuli was thinking about something very important. Or maybe trying to translate what us native English speakers are saying.

Yesterday morning we had our class with Marge. But Marge is also very busy with the Tamarind book so it was MOVIE DAY for us! We started with Four Stones for Kanemitsu, the 1973 Oscar nominated documentary about a print made at Tamarind. The master printer in the film is Serge Lozingot, who had the best hair ever and never wore gloves and smoked in the studio. I'd like to grow my hair out like Serge's. I'm sorry but I couldn't find a picture. I'll keep looking.

We also watched a couple of other films. One was an old old film from the 40's of this guy in the middle of a park printing lithographs in a white long sleeved dress shirt and tie. It didn't have sound but was fun to watch because he was tasting all the chemicals! Crazies.

The other was some 1999 University of New Mexico production that was painful to watch. The only good part was when they showed Rodney circa 1999. Awesome.

Yesterday we also started working hardcore on our next projects. Here is a picture of my stone in progress. You can see that I've added some new drawings and solid flats to my counter-etched stone. In this picture I'm using a foam brush to paint a border of super-greasy shop black mix on the outside of my drawing. If all goes well, this border will print just as I paint it, solid black with no pinholes.

Once we got the new drawings on, we had to re-etch our plates and stones. The areas from the last projects that remained on the stone only needed etched half as much. The newly drawn areas would need to be etched from scratch. Since all of these areas are so close to each other, we had to be careful about what strengths of etches we were putting where and for how long. Here is Patrick etching his plate:

Here is the top of Mick's head (again):

In addition to etching our plates and stones, we also had to get our paper ready for the next round of editioning. This time we are using a white Rives BFK paper in the same size as last time. Here is Celina showing good tearing form (maybe):

And a beautiful stack of paper ready to be marked for registration:

In the afternoon today we got a demo on how to proof these next projects. Because there are so many different things going on in the plates and stones, we have to be selective about how we roll our ink. The big black borders will require a lot of ink, the finer drawing in the middle will require less. So we need to roll in a way that will give the appropriate amount of ink to each part. It's tricky.

After class today, six of us walked down to a nearby Indian restaurant for half-off Indian goodness. Here's Patrick putting the smack down while Ana makes raptor noises:

In baseball news, my Cardinals were briefly back at .500 after a win yesterday and had moved into second place. Tonight they lost and the Brewers won... so we're right back to where we started from.

I have to get up early tomorrow morning so that I can sponge on the "Pro-side" (Professional Printing Side of Tamarind... where the Senior and Master Printers work). I was supposed to sponge on Tuesday afternoon but it turned out that I wasn't needed. So tomorrow will be my first day at the job. Here is Valpuri sponging today for senior printer Sharon:

My First Print at Tamarind!

2007-08-27T17:10:00.000-07:00

This was actually three or four days ago, but now that I've got my camera cord, you can see it for yourself.

I present... My First Print at Tamarind or at least my first printing at Tamarind.

I was on the electric press so all I had to do was push a button, but it's still exciting nonetheless. If you click on the picture, you can see my fancy customized Tackach apron with Tamarind, Tandem Press, Wisconsin, and Mizzou logos.

Speaking of excitement, scroll down through the previous couple of posts and you'll find those pictures I promised a while back.

"I'm Pretty!"

2007-08-27T10:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday

Despite the fact that I had to go into work yesterday, it was a pretty good day overall. Alex and I printed from 11am to about 3:30pm. We both finished editioning our plates with no major complications. Mick and Patrick finished printing around the same time, so after cleaning up, we all rode over to Wal-Mart together to get some groceries for the BBQ.

I decided to make Spicy Spinach Artichoke Dip and I also got some things to make Tortellini with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce later in the week. I've still got quite a bit of food from my previous shopping trips with Carrie, so I didn't need much more than that. Mick was surprised I wasn't buying more Mountain Dew, but I assured him that I had stocked up before classes started and that I should be good for a few more weeks.

It was fun grocery shopping as a group... especially with Mick, who isn't used to such giant grocery stores. Patrick was giving him trouble because he bought a giant bag of Tater Tots. Mick thought about it for a second and said in his Irish brogue, "I've never had them before." Fair enough. Everyone should get a giant bag of frozen Tater Tots every now and again.

Here we are trying to sort out our purchases in the checkout line:

After grocery shopping, we decided that I would just go straight to Patrick's to start preparing food. Pat had gotten a ton of meat and vegetables to grill. I was glad that I made my dish there, since Pat has a lot more kitchen utensils than I do. Although we both rent from the same guy, his apartment was furnished with fancy things like a colander and serving spoons.

The other printers started showing up a little after six and we spent the next few hours grilling and eating and socializing. It was good to be somewhere besides my house and Tamarind. Here's the grill-master hard at work in the wind and rain:

To make the day even better, the Cardinals won again yesterday, while the Brewers and Cubs lost. They are now one game under .500 and only two games behind the first place Cubs.

Today

We had a counter-etching demo early in the morning. Rodney used my plate as an example, which will save me a half hour or so of work later. It's always good to be the guinea pig! Usually, with a plate or stone, once you've etched it, you can't go back into it and draw more. Counter-etching resensitizes the stone or plate so that you can continue working on it. It also serves as a deep cleaning on plates with scummy edges. For our next two projects, we are to practice counter-etching the plate and stone from the first projects, and then draw back into them with different materials.

After the demo we made a long walk over to get fitted for respirators. I have a respirator that I got in Wisconsin at a Home Depot... but I was never professionally fitted for it. I figured I should just go ahead and fork over the $45 and get a new one with the rest of the class.

Here I am with my respirator on:

Here are Ana and Yuli:

The fitting was a lot of fun. There were a couple of people in the class who, because of facial shape or nose structure, couldn't fit into the same mask as everyone else. After a few tries they eventually got it. The man that was doing the fitting told Valupuri (from Finland) that her Scandinavian cheekbones were causing all of her fitting problems. Through the muffle of her respirator she countered, "I'm Pretty!"

It was very amusing.

Once the respirators were properly fitted, we had to do some tests to make sure that they were okay for us to use. We put on our respirators and these giant hoods and then the guy sprayed bitter solution inside the hood to see if we could smell it at all. If you could feel the bitter solution burning your throat, then you knew that you had a leak in your respirator.

This is what the hood looked like... now imagine all eight of us standing in a row wearing these things.

This afternoon, Rodney will be going over the next couple of projects. I'm pretty tired, so I probably will make it a short night tonight. I'm looking forward to coming home and crashing.