Constitute, 2012
Etching and drypoint on Rives BFK
Image Size: 31 1/4” x 22 3/4”
Paper Size: 38 1/4” x 28 3/4”
Third State Proof
This is my piece I made for KCAI’s BFA exhibition. It was a beast to print.
Untitled, 2012
Etching, soft ground, drypoint, and chine colle´on Somerset Satin
Image Size: 8” x 6”
Paper Size: 19” x 15”
Artist Proof
Untitled, 2012
Etching, drypoint, and chine colle´on Somerset Satin
Image Size: 8” x 6”
Paper Size: 19” x 15”
Artist proof
Studio Update
Got my reference photos out of the way last week. This week I will be starting to draw them in my sketchbook and transcribe them onto my plates. I need to sand down a lot of them. I might buy another 9” x 12” sheet of copper at Utrecht. The one I’m gonna work on next is another little 6” x 8” plate.
I have this idea in mind that I really hope elevates these works from being overly graphic, which is a recent bit of criticism I received and agreed with. I’m going to begin integrating drypoint into all of the plates as a way to create soft values. Aquatints are just too grainy for me now. I need the softness in the prints to be there for these etchings. As Kelly John Clark, my Printmaking instructor at KCAI has told me, “these are intimate moments and they need to feel more intimate.” I’m starting to realize what he is saying and I’m willing to risk that line-etching aesthetic that permeates classical etchings for a more expressive result. Also, the scratches are going to become less arbitrary background signifiers and more as connectors between the two figures. I’m also going to try soft ground once again to see if I can make it work, aesthetically…
Also, I am going to rework the last plate I did. It was a little too arbitrary with its markmaking and it lacks some of the softness of the fourth plate that, right now, has what I am looking for. So much work to do before the April 20th exhibition…
Also, SGC is coming up soon! I will be around for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday! I cannot wait. I am really looking forward to this year’s conference!
More to come!
Update from the studio
Currently working on two new projects in tandem with my previous series of etchings that focus on male nudes.
The first is less a project and more an exercise that plays with memory, combining drawing and collage. I’m taking a bunch of different parts of the male body and reassembling them in ways that don’t necessarily make sense, but more so reference the fragmented nature of memory itself. I’ll document the drawing I am currently working on that will form the basis for a new lithograph.
The second project is one that I have had in mind for awhile, but never known quite how to go about doing… Since reading about the growing mass amount of suicides amongst gay teens and youths about a year-and-a-half ago now, I have had an intense feeling of discomfort with the level of ignorance amongst society. I have wanted to make portraits of the youths, but in a way that isn’t pitying or sympathetic, but rather stark and visceral. I started this one today of EricJames Borges, who I found out went to College of the Sequoias where a lot of my classmates at KCAI came from. I asked one of the COS transfers if he knew him. He did. That fact hit me so much harder than discovering the news weeks after it happened. He even made an ‘It Gets Better’ video a month before his suicide. It has become so much more startling to me that despite facing their troubles and not only telling themselves but the world that “it gets better,” they still could not escape the pain that was inflicted upon them. The portraits I am working on are going to be 4” x 5” soft ground etchings but the portrait will ultimately be obscured by etching deep scratches over the face with the name of the person silkscreened within the plate margins. I’m not sure how many of these I will do, but I hope to do as many as possible.
In any case, that is all for now. I am going to take the last reference photos I will need to finish my other series of etchings sometime soon. There are only four left to go!
I also got a venue for my senior thesis exhibition. The Leopold Gallery in Kansas City, MO with a proposed opening reception of April 20th and a closing reception on May 4th. I’m still working on a title. But in any case, I am excited.
More to come in the future.
From 2012
Medium: Etching and Drypoint on Somerset Satin
Image Size: 8” x 6”
Paper Size: 19” x 15”
Edition Size: 5
From 2012
Medium: Etching and drypoint with chine colle´ on Somerset Satin
Image Size: 11” x 8 1/2”
Paper Size: 19” x 15”
Edition Size: 5
Untitled, from 2012
Medium: Etching and drypoint on Somerset Satin
Image Size: 12” x 9”
Paper Size: 19” x 15”
Edition Size: 5
clintonmckay asked: Your prints are beautiful, great work
Thank you! I appreciate that. Your blog is very nice. I saw some nice prints and drawings. I was particularly a fan of one of your intaglio prints with watercolor monotype and sugarlift (both from October 25th).
A series I created in my continued studies of etching and layering during my junior year in Printmaking at KCAI in the spring of 2011. I was continuing to use 6x8” copper plates and aquatint techniques, but trying to create plates and combinations that were more dynamic and much tighter than my previous series. I took more time creating the values with multiple aquatints and more care with the drawing, overall.
I used three of these for the America: Now and Here Artist Corp exhibition at the Cocoon Gallery connected to the Arts Inkubator (R.I.P.) in Kansas City, MO.
Medium: Aquatint with etching
Image Size: 6x8”
Paper Size: 15x19”
Created for my Digital Transitions in Printmaking class that I took my junior year at KCAI in 2010. We had to create a print using copy machines. This was a copy of a bad digital print of a photograph.
I did this whole installation of 36 of these that were strung together (unfortunately, I do not have any documentation of this installation…) and manipulated each one ever so slightly, creating an edition of prints that were cohesively connected but questioning the integrity of printer toner as a medium to create prints as well as the idea of an edition as a whole. I would extenuate the horizontal lines going through the prints with an addition or subtraction of lines using graphite or just erasing the toner.
A pair of lithographs I made my junior year at KCAI. I was really interested in transparency in print at the time, focusing on the male nude and drawing.
Title: Steady
Medium: Lithography with relief-rolled etching
Image Size: 6x8”
Paper Size: 11x14”
Edition Size: 12+4 Artist’s Proofs
Title: Instance
Medium: Lithography
Paper Size: 17x23”
Edition Size: 4
gentlebranches asked: please more, your art is amazing.
Awh, thanks! I appreciate it… I have some more stuff that I can post from earlier in 2011, but I just have not yet got around to it. But I guess I’ll get on that ASAP!
From 2010
A suite of etchings created in the fall of 2010, my junior year in Printmaking at KCAI.
This body of work incorporated four etching and aquatint plates of figures that were layered in different ways to create varying results. I titled the series Body Vernacular. The edition size varied, I made 5 of the individual plates and 3 of the layered plates. After all the trading with my classmates that I’ve done, I have at the very least, one of each print.
Medium: Etching with Aquatint
Image Size: 6x8”
Paper Size: 10x13”
