Red River Trail Detail

This is an update to the previous post. I exchanged the picture below with one where the embossment in the snow areas is actually visible. In this detail the two men in the foreground are carving a snow sculpture of a canoe with voyageurs in it. I thought it was a fitting sculpture for a print depicting the French part of Winnipeg. I based the sculpture on a photograph I found on the internet. Unfortunately I was unable to find the name of the sculptor.

Red River Trail

Red River Trail.

Etching, Blind Embossment, Hand Coloured.

55x85cm. 2011.

To not entirely despair while working on the zoo print, I had to start something new. The Red River Trail is an image I've had in my mind ever since I made the Assiniboine River Trail. The reason was that somebody pointed out to me that in the location of the current Louis Riel sculpture in front of the Manitoba legislature there was initially a different Louis Riel sculpture. Since it was a really controversial piece, displaying a politician in the nude, a bit distorted and abstracted, a new sculpture was commissioned and the old one moved to Saint Boniface. Check out the link if you want more information. Anyways, I always had this second image with the other Louis Riel sculpture as a parallel piece in mind (I did take the freedom to move the sculpture from behind the collége to the shores of the river). In addition, the Assiniboine River Trail was closed last winter dueto bad ice conditions and I spent some time on the Red River Trail, which gave me some new vantage points and new experiences to put in the piece. The car in the river was initially meant as a little toungue in cheek exaggeration since I put a bike in the previous river trail piece, but just after I printed my first proof last week, I came across an article in the Winnipeg Free Press where police pull out two vehicles from the river. That made me chuckle a bit. I really enjoyed working with the buildings of historic Saint Boniface. It's a part of town I haven't spent much time in, but these are the buildings I saw when I biked on the other side of the river or that stood out when I went down Provencher boulevard. During my last visit in Winnipeg a month ago I went for a walk through Saint Boniface to get some more close up inspiration for this print and it was lovely to walk through all the yellow fallen leaves, taking pictures and taking in the surroundings.

El Jardín

El Jardín.

Double-Plate Colour Etching.

40x60cm. 2011.

It has taken me ridiculously long to get the aquatints (the different etched tones) just right on this plate, but I'm finally almost where I want the piece to be. I'm still working on the plate, but I decided to post this proof already so you get to see something new on my blog. It took me weeks to perfect the aquatints again. Even though I'm completely familiar with the processes, a new studio with new materials just adds so many new variables that many things can go wrong. I've scraped large parts of my plate back to a smooth surface over and over and over again to re-etch them. First the aquatint grain was too coarse, then it etched with an odd pattern on the plate (grease streaks on the surface from the cleaning rags), then it etched too dark and now I can't decide where to stop with the editing and I decided to brighten the background a bit.

What I'm currently doing

I've been working on a new print for the past few weeks. It's part of my Paraguay series once again. The memories of my first (and longest) home keep coming back at me and sometimes I spend hours going through photographs and wishing I was there again, at least for a little while. My new print is about the zoological garden in Asuncion. One of my friends works there as a veterinarian and I've gotten a very special tour behind some of the fences last time I was out there, petting the back of a tapir and scratching a capibara behind its ears. (I didn't step into the Anaconda den). I did get spat at by an unbelievably lonely, angry and bitter solitary chimp that I can only pitty. It's a rather poor zoo, but I admire what my friend is doing there to improve the living conditions of some of the animals. In addition to the caged animals there is an extensive park for taking walks. The figure that ulitmately inspired this piece was the old blind beggar playing his guitar in the park on Sunday afternoons with the sticker on his instrument saying "Me siento un rey" ("I feel like a king"). Next to him sat a candy seller listening to him. I will never forget them.

Anyways, I was going to say all these things once I post the final print. My intention here is to post some sort of progress report for those of you who are interested in what I do and what process I go through to get to the final print. The two images I'm posting here are a watercolour sketch as a visual guide for where I need to etch the different tonal values (aquatints). The second image shows my copper plate at one of the stages of etching the aquatints with various areas being blocked out with asphaltum to resist the acid and not etch.

Steel facing plate

I got one of my plates steel faced at the print studio last week. That was a new experience for me and quite interesting to watch. I'm printing a fairly large edition with this plate (75) and after about half the edition I noticed that some of the aquatints were starting to wear down in one corner. I didn't want it to deteriorate more, so I decided to get the plate steel faced. I guess ideally you want to do that before you start editioning, but I thought better now than not at all. During the steel facing process, a thin layer of iron is plated onto the copper plate through an electroplating process. It doesn't change the image in any way, it just hardens the surface and therefore holds up longer to the printing process. Fragile surfaces like the aquatints can wear down during the repeated process of rubbing ink into the surface. I love the carbon coloured look of the plate, but it takes some adjusting with the wiping. I didn't quite know what tone to look for to know when I was done wiping, since I'm used to the reddish background of a copper plate.

Greetings from the Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis

I moved to Minneapolis a few weeks ago and since September 1st I have a membership at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. What an amazing facility it is! Spacious, super clean, well organized...it's a printmakers dream. Being new and being around so many professional printmakers is a bit intimidating, but I hope that'll change eventually. The staff around are super nice, so it shouldn't be too hard. We'll see where things will take me. I'm currently still working on some ideas I brought along with me. I'm hoping to make another one or two prints about Winnipeg before Christmas and I'm also continuing with my Paraguay print series. More about that later. I'm not quite ready to work with Minneapolis imagery quite yet. I think I have to get a little closer to my surroundings first before I can explore them in my work.

Exhibition in Morden