10 Days until Oxbow Press Opens!

The race is on to get everything finished in time for Oxbow Press' big opening. The clock is ticking to get everything complete and hopefully we will have a good looking print workshop to show our guests and new members.

We put the walls up in my studio space and I have been priming them today. I had the help (is that the right word?) of my kids and hubby in the wall construction and so far they are still standing!

The door painting is now finished (yes, it IS supposed to look " aged and rugged"), and just awaiting the logo.

I have to find some more prints to frame for the opening and hand-tint them. I would also like to find some paintings to hang, but I am not sure I have anything I can find in time.

On the home front, I have two birthday parties to arrange for my daughters, the first is coming up on Saturday. Timing is tricky as another daughter has two birthday sleepovers in succession this weekend and yet another daughter has another birthday sleepover the night before. I wish my social life was half as interesting as theirs!

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Encaustic Monoprint Technique

Today I visited a printmaking friend's studio. Amy is experimenting with encaustic monoprints. I have never heard of this before so I was excited to have a demo. Here is the basic process: 1. Heat up the homemade heat box. 2. Rub the beeswax pigment sticks on the metal surface of the heat plate to melt them. Create a design on the plate with one or more colors. Step 3. Lay a piece of rice or rag paper face down on the painted design and cover with newsprint. Burnish. Step 4. Carefully pull the paper away from the heat plate. Steps 5-6. Clean the heat plate with paper towels. Add more color to the heat plate and repeat the process to add patterns or more color to the print. The smell of the wax is yummy and the pigments are really thick and rich to work with. I had a little play to get a feel for what the print is like (image below). Now I want to build a heat box and play!!

A Sort of Artist's Statement

This is a sort of artist's statement, but far more boring and long-winded. My current form of blogging is to limit the text to as little as possible. I am lazy when it comes to writing and the blog tends to trickle off when I feel the pressure of having to add words to the pictures. I hung my exhibition yesterday, so today I will ramble a little about the reasoning behind it (and to help me get over the guilt for hardly writing anything in the last couple of months). Please feel free to skip the words and look at the pictures! For a long time after moving to America, I found it difficult to process who I had become and the new meaning of home. I was English, yet found the American "English" language a challenge. This culture that in many ways was similar to my own, is in other ways completely opposite and confusing. I still often experience a shock by a sudden feeling of otherness and a perhaps a reminiscence for the past, yet I relish the possibility of ne...

Longest day

I spent the day at the studio sorting out some piles of mess and racing outside to see if the water to the pond was flowing. The sorting was hard to focus on and the water never arrived. The anticlimax was excruciating! Hopefully the water will arrive tomorrow! This is all that is left from last years fill, the fish and I are very miffed!

Cricketts Inky Art Blot

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