PHOENIX CENTER FOR THE ARTS PRINTMAKING MOVING TO XICO

Printmaking classes at the Phoenix Center of the Arts are moving to a new facility, operated by Xico, Inc. a community arts organization located at 1008 E. Buckeye Road.  This is about 2 miles/6 minutes south and east of the Phoenix Center. (Take 7th Street south, past the ballpark, 2 traffic signals and turn left).  The building pictured is the destination - the yellow space shown is my classroom!  New, lots of windows, light and space AND a 30 x 60 inch Takach press!

 

 

 

 

Plus there is a great view of downtown Phoenix. 

The move is effective in January - the Wednesday night What a Relief! class on the 7th will be the very first Phoenix Center class at Xico!  The registration process will remain the same - online here or in person at the Main Phoenix Center at 3rd Street and Moreland.  The only change is the location of the classes.

 

Classes offered in this first semester include Relief, Reduction Relief, Monotype, Collagraph and some limited Open Studio sessions.  Check out the schedule online for more details.  Classes are small so register soon to assure a space in this beautiful new facility!

 

 

2014 End of Year Activities

This year seems to be flying by.  My classes are almost over for the year, and the Phoenix Festival of the Arts is looming!  My favorite, okay my only, sister came to town this month and put on an inspirational workshop "Love and the Hand-Pulled Print".  I might have to bring her back to teach for us again!

 

 

As classes were winding down, I completed a 5-color reduction relief print/collage that I made for a themed project for the Arizona Print Group (of which I am a member).  The theme is "Mythical Creatures" so I created a piece about the "Kurma" - the story of a turtle who saved an Indian Prince from drowning in the ocean. 

 

 

PHOENIX FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS

Click on this link to see all the details:  Festival.  I am sharing a booth with Michelle Terry Helmick and we will be next door to Marlys Kubicek and Donna Atwood.  If you are looking for a small and inexpensive, original piece of art to give as a holiday gift, then our booths are the place to be.

Phoenix Festival of Arts

Hance Park (between the Phoenix Center for the Arts and the Central Library)

Friday December 14th - Noon to 8:00pm

Saturday December 15th - 10:00 am to 8:00pm

Sunday December 15th - 10 am to 5:00pm

 

CLASSES ARE STARTING IN JANUARY





Printmaking classes start January 7th. There are weekday, evening and weekend workshop.  I will be teaching several Relief and/or Reduction Relief sessions, Introduction to Monotype and Painterly Monotype and Collagraphs with Marlys Kubicek.  Solarplates are available now but I haven't had time to learn the new plate technical specifications yet.  When I do, I will schedule some new Solarplate Etching classes.  You may register here for classes now:  PCA.

 

In the meantime there is a nice little "Politics and Printmaking" exhibition ongoing at the Phoenix Center for the Arts Gallery through December.  Stop in and check it out. Here is a sample:

 
 

Also I have 10 prints on display at the airport in Terminal 4 - Level 3.  The 6 in the display case are on view until February 15th and the 4 in the Gallery until April 18th.

 

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season.  Be careful out there. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moving On

IMMERSED AND ILLUMINATED
The exhibition has closed and we are furiously working on new work for our next two-person show in February.  I am showing all the work I had in this show because I am proud of it and I enjoyed making it.  So much so that I will continue to pursue more fish related prints.  There is something about the beautiful ugly creatures who live below the surface...hmm sounds like a metaphor in the making. 

 

 

 

Thanks to everyone who supported Marlys and me by coming to see the show.  Your presence is gratefully appreciated.

 

THE SEVEN C'S OF ARIZONA

As I reported in an earlier post, my work was selected to represent "Climate" in the 7 C's exhibition at Sky Harbor Airport.  It has been fun hearing from people who happened to see it, not knowing it was there.  Here is a photo of my display case.

If you want to see more display cases, here is a drop box the Airport put together:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/suictxqcufjmux9/AABio3dTZ1jOJDXoOJs35Bj1a?dl=0#/

 

 



"Immersed and Illuminated" at Five15 Arts in September

Marlys Kubicek and I will be having a two person show at Five15 Arts Gallery in September.  Marlys's works are mostly collagraphs of creatures from the pages of the Illuminated Manuscript.  They are creepy, weird and beautiful.  My prints are all underwater creatures of a natural variety done as monosilkscreens and collagraphs. 

We will be sitting the gallery this Saturday, August 23rd from 1:00-5:00 where Five15 to the Power of 5 is showing.  If you haven't seen it, there are over 75 works of art by 66 local artists.  Prices are very reasonable and all 2D  work is 12 x 12 inches.  

 Our show will open First Friday September 5th.  All new work!  You might see something like these little guys...and find them illuminating.

 

 

Sky Harbor Airport, Terminal 4 - August 23, 2014 - April 19, 2015

THE 7 C's of ARIZONA EXHIBITION

Sky Harbor Airport is celebrating the Superbowl coming back to Arizona in early 2015 by having an art exhibition focused on the 5 Cs of Arizona - our 5 major crops :  cattle, citrus, cotton, copper and climate.  But they are extending the 5 to 7 and including cactus and canyons.  There are 8 large display cases in Terminal 4 and 8 artists have been selected to represent the 7 C's. 

Howard Post - cattle

Mark Klett - canyons and cactus

Lisa McCollum - citrus

Ann Morton - cotton

Anne Moran & Robert Brown - copper

Ed Mell and Wendy Willis - climate

If you know the paintings of Ed Mell, you might think his would fit into the canyons category but because the work is of storm scenes, they are assigning him to climate.
 
My swimmers will be in a case of their own in Terminal 4, Level 3 beginning August 23rd and will be on view until February 2015.

October 5th will be the opening of the Terminal 4 Gallery exhibition of the 7 C's of Arizona and we will be represented in that exhibition as well, along with artists from the Airport's private collection.  That show will be on display until April 19th.  All in all 10 of my prints will be on display at the airport! 

If any of you find yourselves in Terminal 4, go to level 3 and look for my swimmers.  Let me know if you see them! 

Spring Fling in Napa Valley

Rainy Friday evening at Nancy's studio

This fantastic weekend workshop started Friday evening at Nancy Willis's studio where we attendees were asked to draw with pencil on thin sheets of styrofoam which we inked up and handprinted.  So FUN and easy.  Good ice breaker and chance to get our printmaking juices flowing for the next day.  There we spend a whole day at Sue Bradford's studio Saturday, pulling monotypes and ghosts, some with chine colle...

Inking table, water based ink, handprinting with barens

Some prints from Friday night

My prints from Saturday. Top two are first pulls, second row are the ghosts.

On Sunday we returned to Nancy's studio to take our less successful prints and enhance them by drawing and painting on them with watercolor pencils and caran d'ache crayons.  Then we cropped and adhered them to panels.  So the two on the right became these prints on panel.  

8 x 8"

5 x 5"

It was a great weekend.  Hopefully I can entice Nancy and Sue to come here and do the workshop at the Phoenix Center.  Let me know if you'd be interested in taking it here.

Catching UP

I can't believe it has been so long since I last posted.  Here is the final version of my turtle/babies print. 

"ONLY ONE"

 

Green sea turtles lay 100-200 eggs and only one will survive to adulthood.

 

Candace Nicol, a wonderful artist/educator from Reno came to Phoenix to conduct a Collagraph Workshop for members of the Arizona Print Group.  Everyone loved Candace and we all learned some excellent collagraph tips and techniques. 

 

This will probably become an annual event since Candace's friends come for Spring Training...!

 







Print Exchange Mania

Print exchanges have been an important part of my art practice.  When I was first starting out, Melanie Yazzie invited me to be in a print exchange.  I made a 5 color reduction linocut - a major effort I since learned and because I put so much into it, I got invited to another, and another, and another.  And so on.  In a print exchange you create an edition which you send off and in return you get a print from the other artists participating.  I now have an amazing collection of prints from artists all over the world.  Another benefit is that the print exchanges are almost always exhibited somewhere, galleries, universities, and with Melanie's exchanges, the prints become part of major collections.  These are nice resume items for sure.  By participating in these exchanges, I have learned about some fantastic artists all over the country, and they have learned about me.  It is so fun to cement this knowledge with Facebook friendship and come March, even meeting some face to face at the Southern Graphics Council Conference in San Francisco! 

I recently completed a print for a Melanie Yazzie exchange called Birds and Animals of My Land.  This time (whatever was I thinking) I did a 7 color reduction.  But I really loved doing it. 

 

And now I am working on yet another M.Y. exchange - Animal Mammas and Their Babies.  I printed the first of TWO colors and am happily carving away (my favorite part of the process) in preparation of printing this weekend.

I will post the final version when it is finished.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

I can't believe it has been 3 months since I last posted.  A lot happened with the opening of my exhibition at Five15 Arts for the month of October.  My sister, showed with me and came for the Third Friday reception.  We had such a good time.  I wonder if there ever will come a time when we live in the same city.  She is very settled in California and I love Arizona.  I guess we are lucky we aren't a continent apart. 

I had a great year teaching at the Phoenix Center for the Arts.  The people who work there are just the most fun and best people to work with.  And the students are so open to learning and happy to be there.  This year I topped off my year by participating in the Phoenix Festival of the Arts, sharing a booth with Marlys Kubicek.  It was a fun event and great to see so many people out enjoying the beautiful weather and great deals for art. 

NEED MORE STUDENTS for January Classes!
I will be teaching 5 classes in two weeks.  IF I get a couple more students in the Thursday Monotype class.  This is painting with ink on a plate and then running it through the press.  Immediate gratification for those used to longer processes like oil painting.  I also need two more students in Wednesday night Relief Printmaking.  This class, for beginners, shows how easy it is to begin creating art with little or no drawing experience.  For those who can draw, it is a way to make multiple original prints from a single plate.  Students in this class have created editions for print exchanges where their work is exhibited around the country and the world.

To register, or for more information click Phoenix Center for the Arts Registration. Click on the Printmaking tab to see the classes I am teaching.  I am also running TryMe like classes through Amazon Local - deals end Friday 1/3.  Go to Amazon Local PCA Printmaking to get the deal and then call the Phoenix Center to sign up for one of my 3 hour classes.  The TryMe type classes are for those of you who aren't sure you will like printmaking.  So you get to experience the thrill of pulling your first print in a single noncommittal class.  :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!  I hope it is art-filled!