GASP!!! Of course!

God Save the Queen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfi--Jt0BOA

I found June Wayne by accident while looking through the gallery catalog at the Tamarind Institute in New Mexico. If you don't know, Tamarind is more or less the resurrection site of American Lithography (Nathan Oliveria was also a teacher there). If you cut and copy the address site, you can watch her lecture "Life and Litho" and she has some sound advice. What I found to be the most amusing was in the first few minutes where she is literally crowned 'The Queen of Lithography'. It's worth watching.

this thing

While Rives BFK paper is excellent for printmaking, it's not very good for drawing, at least not in the way that I can draw, and it is more difficult working with 100% cotton. Stonehenge is better for dry media. The paper was beaten to shit, but it's an interesting still-life and I want to make more like it-with slightly more workable paper. 12x20", charcoal on paper.

stones and prints

About 22X30. First state lithograph. Although it defeats the purpose of a print, I only made this one. It's an homage to Oliveria's Composite Heads series, if you don't know, you better learn.

Fifth (or sixth?) state, mid-drawing of the twins. Litho Stone, the drawing itself is between 18 or 19 inches square.

Stone pre-etch. The print itself will come as soon as I have the paper (a lame and tired excuse).

This was supposed to be glued onto a mask, then I realized that was a really, really stupid idea. Liked the drawing itself though.

a slight glimpse into the insanity

This is an embarrassingly rough sketch of the Madonna and Child as a Geometrically Sound Entity.

It's a visual Manifesto rather than something that is meant to stand alone for it's aesthetic value, although I think it has those qualities too. It's always changing, keeping the main idea but being fine-tuned as time goes on. Here are some basic ideas that my work operates by. Remember, REALLY REALLY BASIC. To get deeper into any personal manifesto would mean that I couldn't use words anymore because there comes a point-I'm not a verbally eloquent person and I get the sinking feeling sometimes that no one understands what I'm trying to say or that I'm speaking a different language entirely.

Here some of it is:

-there are two important, base numbers and they are 3 and 4.

-3 is masculine

-4 is feminine

- diagonal, / and \ are masculine.

- the circle and the square are feminine.

-masculine is dynamic and action

-feminine is complete and whole

- a picture that operates on a ratio divisible by three will become dynamic

-a picture that operates on a ratio divisible by four will be whole.

Of course, none of this is completely black-and-white. This is where the whole idea of 7 comes in but I don't know if it's worth the time and, quite frankly, this may all only be important to me and that's fine.

Enjoy?

some things done

Charcoal on paper, 9 x 5 1/2".

charcoal on paper, 4 1/2 x 5 1/2".

Small charcoal drawing, about 9 x 5 1/2".

Second state of self portrait litho, I left it where it is. About 11x17 inches

Third state of that litho that I've been working on a few months. I want to have the fifth done before Boston Printmakers. Approx 19"x19". I think that after printing with the black ink, I'm going to take care of the grays with a graphite transparency as a second layer. There are already mid-tones in the first print with just the black ink but I think that a second layer, especially with a graphite transparency, will add some interesting complexity.

New Studio

So I got a new space and it's about twice the size of my old studio. I never work in the studios at 301 for several reasons.

1. That's not a studio, it's a cubicle. If I wanted to work in a cubicle, I wouldn't have chosen art in the first place.

2. I can't smoke in the 301. Fill in the blanks where you may.

3. I'm too cheap to cough up the $30 for a key and I'm a nocturnal creature.

4. Although being awake during the daylight hours is normally an indicator of rabies, I like working with sunlight. The florescent lighting coupled with the overhead fans creates this weird flicker that makes me feel like I'm in prison.

5. ------

6. The walls are moulded and shitty and it reflects so on my drawings.

7. S1. If I have to hear one more Belle and Sebastian or Lady GaGa song, I am going to vomit all over someone.

8. You get the picture.

We are creating habits now. I never want to be separated from my work, have my studio be something that I can 'take a break from', always have work on the brain. My studio becomes a bedroom at the end of the night when I take my mattress from the hallway and put it down to sleep. With this sort of set up, my work is the last thing I see when I close my eyes and the first thing I see when I wake up. I love that.

I also collect, rescue, and trade work with other people, and have a working system for a set up.

What I have left to do in the studio (I want to be done hopefully by the end of today or tomorrow) is finish skimming the working walls until they are baby-bottom smooth, prime, then paint. Oh, and get a door. The two working walls are HUGE, approx. 10 feet wide and 8 feet tall. I'll put up the photos when everything is done, it really is a sweet set up.