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Monday, February 25, 2013

Highpoint Impressions

After taking things a bit slower for the past few weeks, I just finished a small piece for an exchange portfolio. The print exchange is between 19 co-op members at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking, meaning we each get 19 different prints and it will be displayed at the Southern Graphics Council conference in Milwaukee/Wisconsin in March. I will attend the conference and I'm excited to see a bit more of the country, travel with friends, and of course, get inspired by meeting hundreds of other printmakers. 
The Portfolio theme was Osmosis, with the underlying suggestion to think about how we as printmakers at the co-op influence each others' work. Each one of the figures in my print is part of the co-op and I borrowed image elements from everyone in the piece to compose the landscape. The main idea of the piece was inspired by J.'s prints of the Mississippi and the stonearch bridge in Minneapolis. Above are the St. Anthony falls. I added C.'s rocks and lilypads, B.'s willow tree, P.s trumpeter swans, E.'s flowering hepatica, and a few other details, so the whole piece is put together of other people's image elements, but still very much my own. Oh, and the two people on the plaque in the center of the piece are Cole and Carla, the founders and directors of Highpoint. Thanks guys! Highpoint is a wonderful place to be...as you can see in my print. 

Highpoint Impressions.
Double-Plate Colour Etching, á la poupèe wiping, 
relief roll through stencil. 
18.5cm x 30cm. 2013.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Book Cover - What You Get at Home

I'm a little late with this, but I still want to share it. Winnipeg author Dora Dueck asked me last year if I would be willing to let her use one of my paintings as a book cover for her new book What You Get at Home (Turnstone Press). The book came out last fall and I am honoured that my work is on the front cover. What You Get at Home is a collection of short stories that are partly about a young woman who moved from Paraguay to Canada. While the character's story is quite different from my own, there  are instances where I find my own experiences of strangeness, of not fitting in, of the fear of trying new things, of misunderstandings, in the story.
Dora has a wonderful entry about the book cover in her own blog, which you can see here. The book cover is a painting I did in 2006; it currently hangs in our living room. In 2010 I took the same image and made it as an etching (which you see in the photo in Dora's blog). 


Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Postcards from America

I recently applied to grad school and prior to my application I had a meeting with one of the professors for a portfolio review. She recommended I add something completely different from the rest of my body of work to demonstrate that I am able to do other things besides autobiographical double-plate colour etchings. So, I decided to make work that is more about social commentary and satire that has a little more bite than the work I usually do. I made a small folio called Postcards from America with 5 postcards inside. The postcards are about my experiences (partly personal, partly based on newspaper articles, and partly fictional) I've had since moving to the USA. 
The image side of each postcard is a small 4" x 6" etching with chine-collé. The back side with text and stamps is screen printed. 









Crossing Borders



Only At Dick's



Black Friday Special


Illegal Alien Crossing Ahead



Pelican Massacre