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Sunday, July 20, 2014

My Minneapolis in the Star Tribune


Visual art: Prints at Highpoint showcases Minnesota talent



















  • Article by: MARY ABBE , Star Tribune
  •  
  • Updated: July 18, 2014 

  • SILVER: the 25th Cooperative Exhibition
    Opening Friday: Under the skylights in Highpoint’s spacious workroom, dozens of Minnesota artists sketch, ink and run their plates through the center’s etching presses. Then they check their proofs and start all over, refining their designs until they’re satisfied with the concepts. For the “Silver” show, 37 members of the Highpoint cooperative have turned out a sparkling variety of images, ranging from North Woods landscapes to abstractions and whimsical interpretations of summer, as seen here in “My Minneapolis by Miriam Rudolph, who is obviously a bicycle enthusiast and culture consumer. Note bikers rolling along a Midtown Greenway lined with farmers-market vendors, rowers on the Mississippi near the Weisman Art Museum, the Minneapolis Sculpture garden and Walker Art Center, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts’ Dale Chihuly chandelier illuminating the whole scene. (Opening, 6:30-9 p.m. Fri., free. Highpoint Center for Printmaking, 912 W. Lake St., Mpls., ends Aug. 23, free, 612-871-1326 or highpointprintmaking.org.)

    Dinner with Bouquet






















    Dinner with Bouquet.
    Triple Plate Etching, Relief Roll through Stencil. 
    45.5cm x 45.5cm. 2014.

    My new print is finished and I've started printing the edition. It is high time I got that done since we're moving from Minneapolis to Edmonton in two weeks and I need to start packing. This print is loosely connected to the previous one (Picking Apples) through the theme of 'Small Pleasures'. However, stylistically the pieces look very different I find and they will have to stand as individual pieces instead of as a series like I had initially planned. This is another triple plate print (since I started using three plates I have a hard time going back to working with only two plate and colours); there is a blue, a red, and a black plate. I apply the yellow with a stencil on the red plate; I tried wiping some of the yellow à la poupeé, but it oxidized right away and turned a muddy green so I decided to add all the yellow with the relief roll through a stencil onto the surface of the red plate to keep it nice a bright.
    As you can see I had a lot of fun with the bouquet (I love picking wild flowers); the looser shadows I did as a sugar lift. I also loved putting in my favourite table cloth in this picture with a softground pattern of the weave. As you can see, we love good food and a little bit of beauty around us in our everyday lives. Enjoy!

    I want to share some pictures about the process:




















    Above: Detail of bouquet while stopping out during the etching process of the aquatints - a piece of patience.
    Below: Printing of Dinner with Bouquet; blue plate and red plate with yellow stencil are printed - ready to run the print through the press with the key plate.





    Saturday, July 12, 2014

    Apple Picking






















    Apple Picking. 
    Triple-Plate Colour Etching.
    45.5cm x 45.5cm. 2014.

    It's time to post some new work. Apple season isn't quite upon us yet, but we have fond memories (and still some frozen apple cider) of last year's picking. We'll miss Minnesota's apple orchards! I love harvesting (anything) and having grown up without apple trees, (ok, ok, I had grapefruit, papaya, guavas, mangos,...but no apples), picking apples is still a bit of a novelty for me. Last year I canned some pie filling and cooked jars and jars of apple sauce, but mostly we made gallons of fresh cider.

    I've had the printing plates for this piece finished for a while already, but, because of an upcoming show at Highpoint the presses have been busy and I decided to wait to print till things quieted down a little. I'm working on several new pieces for an exhibition I will have in November in Winnipeg together with my husband Terry. I decided to make a series of narrative work about things we enjoy together. The tentative title for the show is 'Small Pleasures' and will thematically connect his ceramic work and my new prints. Once again, I had a lot of fun working with soap ground to get more painterly effects in my work. I also enjoyed the colour range I got on my last print (Return) with three plates. Thanks to an effective registration system the registration of the plates is working pretty smoothly. I tried to work with a more simple composition without ups and downs and sideways, but I'm not sure yet if I love it. I took some artistic freedom with the cedar waxwings, which I saw up close for the first time last year. What beautiful birds! I think they would be more likely to eat frozen/soft apples and not fresh ones, but I saw them near this apple tree and couldn't resist putting them in. Well, that's it for today. I'll be back with more soon.

    Canada House London

    For some of you this may not be news, but I just got the official letter in the mail and I still want to post this: Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs has purchased two of my prints for the fine art collection at Canada House London. The two prints are Red River Trail and My Winnipeg IV. I am so excited! Just imagine my work has made it all the way to Trafalgar square (which I heard about for the first time in 1995 when I started to learn English with my Dad and British tapes).