[Baren]: The mailing list / discussion forum for woodblock printmaking.

Baren Digest                Sunday, 4 April 1999        Volume 07 : Number 513

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Graham Scholes <gscholes@home.com>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 1999 07:35:01 -0800
Subject: [Baren 3821] Here shark, shark, shark....

Goin' fishing.......here shark shark shark.!

We have in abundance a small shark called Dog Fish in the waters around
here.  When I go serious fishing ...you know SALMON fishing and all the
expensive maucho equipment....well you can't keep the damn things off your
hook. (not the salmon the dog fish)....gees..... You can catch them jigging
real easy.

So in talking to the local boys at the fish market they tell me the
difference in roughness between these little suckers (sharks) and the big
sucker (sharks) is very little.  So it looks like I will have an ample
supply of skins. (not to be confused with condumns).

The drawback to all this is that they are very hard to skin.  If this works
I will gladly send you a forzen shark but you will have to skin it.

Have a good weekend

Graham

------------------------------

From: Graham Scholes <gscholes@home.com>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 1999 08:02:14 -0800
Subject: [Baren 3822] Kremer pigments

Has someone mentioned these people before?

Go looky lou at    http://www.kremer-pigmente.de/homee.htm
to find out all you ever wanted to know about pigments.
A great site.

Regards,

Graham

------------------------------

From: mkrieger@mb.sympatico.ca
Date: Sat, 03 Apr 1999 10:21:01 -0600
Subject: [Baren 3823] Re: Michael Schneider's website

Thank you Michael for the opportunity to see your work. It was very much
worth the wait. The difference in the quality of the images between the
gallery on your home page and the 'reconstructions' encourages me to
imagine what the real thing is actually like.

I am especially intrigued by the variation in grays coexisting with the
sharp blacks and whites. This is one of my artistic goals and your
example encourages me to be more adventurous.

I think we can all relate to the wrestling with the technical skills to
achieve the artistic goals that you mentioned in an earlier e-mail. I
certainly can. You mention on your site that your process is rather
noisy. Are you hammering? I imagine a printing surface that in some
areas is more bruised and roughened than carved. Is this accurate?

Mary Krieger
http://www.mts.net/~mkrieger

PS Tips for frustrated surfers

1. Use a newer version of browser - I prefer an old version for e-mail
but have 4.5 so I can visit those sites that use a lot of Java.

2. Especially if you have a phone link to the net, choose a time that is
not busy - I am an early riser. 7am CST on a weekday is considerably
faster than 9pm CST on Saturday.

3. Be patient. Do something else while you wait for the stuff to
download. Play solitaire, read a book, write poetry - It would take a
lot longer to travel to Austria to see the prints in person.

4. bild = image

Have fun!

------------------------------

From: "Gregory D. Valentine" <gvalen@linfield.edu>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 1999 08:38:32 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [Baren 3824] Miro

  I looked at a book the other day (A Toute Epreuve/P Eluard) with
woodcuts by Miro.  I didn't know Miro had done woodcut, but it suits his
organic imagery well.  In oil in bright colors, but the wood texture kept
the shapes from being so flat; they were cut and glued on a support
type-high. Quite beautiful.        --GV

------------------------------

From: Michael Schneider <mikasch@t0.or.at>
Date: Sat, 03 Apr 1999 22:14:30 +0200
Subject: [Baren 3827] Re: Michael Schneider's website

Mary wrote:
> Thank you Michael for the opportunity to see your work. It was very much
> worth the wait. 

Mary,

you are right the surface of the plates is really rough and the hammering on
the wood with stones was seen by my japanese teachers as you can imagine as
a most barbaric way to work the plate. On the other hand after some
discussions, my teacher encouraged my not to stick to closely by what
everybody expects to be a "perfect print". This made me free to experiment
and finally to find ways to print this plates in a for me acceptable way.
Now I am able to print this plates even when they are not flat
anymore.(sometimes the difference in height between the middle and the edges
is more than 10 cm.) Before I started printing with baren and sumi (6years
ago)I almost thought that I was through with woodblock printing. But the
japanese technique opened up a complete new field for discovery's.

I saw your B/W Prairie Woodcuts and I understood that you also are
fascinated searching for the shades and the "colors" in the black. A friend
of mine, also a woodcut printer loves to do landscapes mostly in B/W. He
does not have a page but I will ask him the next time I meet him to give me
some photos to put on my friends section of my page.
You two sure share some ways of expression.

michael

------------------------------

From: "Jeanne N. Chase" <studiojnc@prodigy.net>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 1999 16:11:14 -0500
Subject: [Baren 3828] Re: Here shark, shark, shark.... 

Graham
I know this should go on After 5, but I wanted to let you know that I will
not accept any frozen sharks.
If you want,you may skin them and dry them. THEN I might accept one.
Thanks for the offer though.

Happy Easter!!!!

Jeanne

I like this; from the artist Susan Rothenberg
"You build up a head of steam. If you're four days out of the studio, on the
fifth day, you really crash in there.  You will kill anybody who disturbs
you on that fifth day, when you desparately need it."


------------------------------

From: "Jeanne N. Chase" <studiojnc@prodigy.net>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 1999 16:24:35 -0500
Subject: [Baren 3829] Re: April's prints

Jean
Thanks for sending us the Lower East Side Printshop url. April's work is
just spectacular.
Her prints remind me of many of the photographss that my husband used to
take underwater when he was a diver.

April;
Do you dive?  Is that where you sometimes get your inspiration? Wherever it
comes from, it is really working!!!!!

Dave
A mistake. I really was not in St. Petersburg, Russia.  Merely St.
Petersburg, Florida. But I bet it is warmer here!!!!!

Jeanne

------------------------------

From: Daniel Kelly <daniel@vowel.or.jp>
Date: Sun, 04 Apr 1999 08:13:14 +0900
Subject: [Baren 3830] Re: Here shark, shark, shark....

Graham,
For you interest, the shark skin I have Toshi Yoshida got for me. Its a local
Japanese shark like the small ones you describe and I see while snorkeling in
the Japan Sea. Consideringf the climate similarities, I think the small shark
is exactly what you want and what is used here. Be sure to wear gloves when
you skin her. I nailed mine to a board. today I would use stainless staples.
Around the outside of the skin I painted to wood to protect it.
D

------------------------------

From: "Gregory D. Valentine" <gvalen@linfield.edu>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 1999 15:15:25 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [Baren 3831] two other boo

  Two other artists, doing water based woodcuts, whose work I've seen in
books recently, are Helen Frankenthaler (HF:Prints) and Chiura Obata
(Obata's Yosemite.)  Frankenthaler's prints are mostly not woodcuts, but
she did a few in the 70s and 80s, and a few more in the 90s, and she (or
her printer, really) gets some fine saturated colors.
  Obata's prints are dated 1930, also professionally done, from paintings
he made on a trip to Yosemite in 1927.  I like them because they look likkse
paintings, and also because he reverses the occidental perspective,
oriental image pattern of shin hanga. It's Yosemite in sumi.

------------------------------

From: mmflavio <marco@athomefaraway.com>
Date: Sat, 03 Apr 1999 15:14:20 +0000
Subject: [Baren 3832] Re: Kremer pigments

By the way these are the pigments that Sinopia in San Francisco sells.
I apologize for the access to my web site but the problem is with
Slip.net. They have a problem with their server and being the weekend
it's on hold till monday.
I guess that should be technical support for them. I will let you know
when thir server is up again. thank you for the patience.
Marco

------------------------------

From: Graham Scholes <gscholes@home.com>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 1999 18:54:59 -0800
Subject: [Baren 3834] Re: Here shark, shark, shark....

Daniel wrote.... ,
>For you interest, the shark skin I have Toshi Yoshida got for me.

You took instructions from Toshi????
You have probably already mentioned this before so excuse if I repeat...
.repeat....repeat... .repeat....repeat.. (oh stop that Graham)

.>Be sure to wear gloves when you skin her.
>I nailed mine to a board. today I would use stainless staples.
>Around the outside of the skin I painted to wood to protect it.

Ah yes, (if it is a male?) and watch out for that stinger on the back
behind the fin....s#*t does that ever hurt...worse than a wasp stink.

For those coming to the workshop I will have one of these babys for you as
a kind jester....all-be-it a rough one !!!!  That is if they in fact are
the right skins...

Graham

------------------------------

From: Graham Scholes <gscholes@home.com>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 1999 20:12:58 -0800
Subject: [Baren 3835] Re: Kremer pigments

Marco wrote....
>By the way these are the pigments that Sinopia in San Francisco sells.

Do you use, or have you, used these pigments?

Graham

------------------------------

From: Daniel Kelly <daniel@vowel.or.jp>
Date: Sun, 04 Apr 1999 19:27:04 +0900
Subject: [Baren 3836] Re: Here shark, shark, shark....

Hi all,
Some answers to the recent postings.
First of all I want to tell you all again that I have been using Kermaer
pigments for the last three years which I buy as pastes from the store in
NYC. I dont't use binders. I even paint with them like watercolors. I've used
all the brands of watercolor. There is no significant difference either
painting or printing.

> You took instructions from Toshi????

No I didn't study from Toshi. But in the summer of '82 I worked on one of my
early prints in what was Toshi's family cultural center in the mountains of
Japan to get away from the heat of Kyoto. Toshi came by with his wife and
gave me great support for the print I was making and I asked him how to get a
shark. He also introduced me to a brush maker. He was very open and warm. I
called his wife recently to ask about a printer. She was still there as a
supporter of younger artists. Back in '82 she told me about when they were
young and how they still made much of their income from some of his early
prints. In '82 she incouraged me to make my editions larger as there is no
benifit to the artist for small editions if they are popular.
I studied from tokuriiki. I  cherish the memories of both but I will always
be Tokuriiki's apprentice. I have a nice early Toshi print ,in an unlimited
edition of a noodle wagon ,I will always love. Its always a wood block print,
even unlimited.

As for the shark skin. I used it that summer. I never bother any more. Partly
this is because it fills with the residue of the burned hairs you are
spliting. I recommend that you wash this out as you use it.
D

------------------------------

End of Baren Digest V7 #513
***************************