McDermot Avenue II

McDermot Avenue II.
Double-Plate Colour Etching, Relief Roll through Stencil, Blind Embossing.
45.5cm x 45.5cm. 2012.

The second print in the McDermot Avenue Triptych portrays the corner of Arthur Street. I had my studio on the sixth floor of the Silpit building for three years (see window marked with a red x and the interior in the upper part of this print). I believe the building used to be a clothing factory and there are still thousands of pins in the cracks between the floor boards. If you enlarge the image and look closely you might be able to see them in the print. I loved working in that studio, sharing the space with wonderful studio mates, looking out the huge windows and enjoying the beautiful tin ceiling (there is a  close up of the embossment below). My reason for leaving the studio was our move to Minneapolis, but unfortunately developers are creeping into this wonderful art district and doubling rent prices in many places. Many aritsts and businesses have moved out already and for lease signs are up everywhere. Soon my old studio will be too expensive to afford for my fellow artists, too. Gentrification is happening in so many places, and considering that the old warehouses have lost their original function already, I don't know if I can complain about the recent developments. It is still sad for me to see the art district slowly loosing some of its art spirit. 

McDermot Avenue I

McDermot Avenue I.
Double-Plate Colour Etching, Relief Roll through Stencil, Blind Embossing.
45.5cm x 45.5cm. 2012.

McDermot Avenue I is part of a triptych about three blocks on McDermot Avenue in Winnipeg's exchange district. I'm just about to finish this series in time for my upcoming exhibition at Fleet Galleries in Winnipeg in November. McDermot Avenue is part of a beautiful historic warehouse district that has become a wonderful cultural center with art galleries, artists' studios, frame shops, and other stores. I cherish the memories of walking down McDermot Avenue past the bronze horse by Joe Fafard and the gossiping women (also in bronze), doing business with Jeff at Fleet Galleries around the corner, which you can see in the upper part of this print, and heading to my studio I had in the Silpit building for three years. 

I have ventured slightly out of my usual square format by rounding off the corners of the ceiling to break up all the rigid horizontal and vertical lines. I simply cut off the corners with tin snippers and smoothed the edges with a file. I had a lot of fun playing with the beautiful tin ceiling patterns that are still part of many of those old buildings. If you look closely, you can see I added a blind embossing above the rounded part of the print to resemble the embossed tin ceiling tiles. Below is a close-up. I drew the design, then worked with it in digital format and finally I got it cut into a linoleum plate with a laser cutter. This allowed me to get a very even and intricate pattern that I could never have carved by hand. I'm very excited how well this worked and perhaps I'll find a way to utilize the laser cutter in other ways, although I don't think I'll ever give up the good old traditional techniques. 

Close-up of the laser cut linoleum plate.

Close-up of the paper embossing at the top of the print.

My Winnipeg III

My Winnipeg III. 

Double-Plate Colour Etching, à la poupée wiping. 

45.5cm x 45.5cm. 2012. 

(I might still change the title and I'll probably post a better picture of the print, but I'm so excited to share this new piece that I'm posting it anyways). 

Downtown Winnipeg is a part of the city I've been wanting to work with for such a long time and now that I've moved away a year ago it finally happened. I used to have a studio in the Exchange District for three years (just below the image's border in front of the central red building with the white trim) with a huge window and a great view of part of what you see in the print. I've also worked at Martha Street Studio (the red building in the top right corner) from 2007-2011. I always loved the 5 minute walk from the print studio to my studio, past the Manitoba Museum, the Concert Hall, City Hall, the Union Bank and Confederation buildings and the shortcut through the old market square. Unfortunately, nowadays the old market square is just a small triangle of green space tucked away behind buildings instead of being the center of the city where everyone gathers. I put the old market square into the center of my map and grouped the buildings around it, in a way referencing how historic cities were built around a central market square. I still don't love the award winning architectural cube that is the relatively new stage at old market square, but since it's there, it became part of this print. The metallic cube seems so stiff and sterile in an otherwise wonderfully dynamic area. I tried to portray parts of Winnipeg's beauties, but also it's not so beautiful sides, like the much debated rail tracks that divide the city, or Winnipeg's city hall (the building in the square with the flags) which appears so austere and uninspiring (I'm not a big fan of 60s architecture). Maybe some day I'll do a piece about Winnipeg's old city hall, a beautiful victorian building which was unfortunately demolished in the 60s to give way to the current city hall.
One question I get from every viewer is 'What is that thing in the bottom right corner?'. It's a new sculpture in Winnipeg at Portage & Main called 'North Watch' by Ivan Eyre. To be honest, I'm not sure what the artist's intention was with this piece, but to me it is some sort of winter god. For years I've been trying to find some Canadian mythological figure that represents winter, frost, the cold or something along those lines to incorporate in my work. The very solid, somewhat intimidating cyclop with his dog, sitting at one of the coldest and windiest intersections in all of Canada seems like a guardian against whatever cold stuff the winter will bring from the North. 

Regarding technique in this piece, I once again I tried something new. I wiped the plates à la poupée, meaning that I use small cloth 'dolls' to wipe a plate in multiple colours (generally I wipe each plate with only one colour). I have one plate I wipe in green and red, and one that wipe half in black and half in a dark purplish blue. 

Wiping the plate à la poupée. You can see the little tarlatan dolls I used for each colour in small sections of the plate.

I'm about to print the second plate (black and blue) after the
first one. Since the black and the blue are quite similar in tone, I can wipe them side by side and let them bleed slightly into each other. On the red and green plate I need spaces between all the shapes to prevent the colours from mixing.

Northern Lake

Northern Lake.

Linocut, reduction print.

30cm x 45.5cm. 2012.

As part of a trade, I was asked several weeks ago to do a smaller, black and white landscape, preferrably of a Northern Canadian lake. A agreed to this somewhat reluctantly, because I felt this work was diverging a bit from what I am currently interested in, but then I saw this as an opportunity to try something new and free myself from my current routines. I decided to make this piece as a linocut, since I haven't worked with linoleum for a while and I always enjoy the carving when I get to it. Secondly, linoleum lends itself so wonderfully for carving water patterns. After a first proof, I decided to make this piece into a reduction print (i.e. printing the plate at one stage, then carving away more surface and printing a second layer over the first). The reflections where too stark in black and white, so I printed the first layer in grey. I'm quite happy how that turned out. The lake was inspired by one near Minaki in Ontario where I went canoing one summer with my family. While brainstorming for this piece, I came across the work of an Australian printmaker (Anita Laurence), who's work I find is in many ways surprisingly similar to mine in terms of structure and imagery. It amazes me how two people from different sides of the world, with completely different backgrounds end up making images that somehow resemble each other. 

Mercado Cuatro

Mercado Cuatro.
Double-Plate Colour Etching, Relief Roll through Stencil.
40cm x 60cm. 2012.

Yikes, this piece got really busy and colourful! But it's a market, so I think it works. Considering it's the Mercado Cuatro in Asunción, I could even call this piece very organized. This is the last image that I will translate from a painting into a print. I sold the painting a couple of years ago (to a wonderful new owner), but I missed it a little and I decided to make it into a print once again. I also wanted to add it to my body of work about Paraguay. I'm still working towards having an exhibition in my home country one day. A trip to the Mercado Cuatro is a must for me every time I am in Asunción. (Well, it's been three years since I visited home last time, so it's been a while.) It is such a wonderful adventure every time. First the trip in a rickety old bus at break-neck speed in crazy traffic along cobble stone streets that rattle your bones and seem to shake every screw loose that still holds the bus together. Then walking, wandering and meandering through the busy and chaotic paths and sidewalks packed from the floor to the sky with everything imaginable: fresh fruit and vegetables, clothes, shoes, bras, underwear, canteens, fabrics, herbs, etc, etc, etc. I tried to take some photographs, but some of the older women waved me off and grumbled quite a bit, so I wanted to respect that and I didn't have the courage to shoot them anyways. One was an older woman balancing a giant bag of garlic on her head. The other one was the old, wrinkly herb seller drinking Tereré and rolling her cigars. But, I saved them in my memory and here they are in my print.
The print was pulled from two copper plates; one inked with reddish ink, the other black. For each plate I cut out a stencil from acetate through which I rolled the yellow and the blue onto the surface of the wiped plate. I describe this process in more detail in an earlier post about Entre Itacurubí y San José if you want to read up on it again.

CCP 3rd Biennial Footprint International

I've also been selected to participate in the "Center for Contemporary Printmaking’s 3^rd Biennial Footprint International. The juror reviewed 329 prints submitted by 187 artists from 14 countries and 24 states. My prints, Dreaming of a Garden and Last Embrace were selected by Donald Sultan, one of America’s most prominent contemporary artists, who selected 88 prints to be included in the exhibition." It's been a good month for me! The Center for Contemporary Printmaking is in Norwalk, Connecticut. The exhibition is on view from June 10 - September 2, 2012. Click here for more info. 

Two years ago I submitted my first 'footprint' (Holding On) to the 2nd Biennial Footprint International and it was accepted. Since then I've made another nine 'footprints' of which I submitted two of my most recent prints. I really enjoy working with the square foot format and it gave me a starting point for this whole series. All ten pieces are currently on display at the Threshold Gallery at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis. See invitation posted on April 22. 

IPCNY New Prints 2012/Summer

One of my prints, Entre Itacurubí y San José, was selected for the New Prints 2012/Summer exhibition at the International Print Center New York. The juror was Shahzia Sikander. In the acceptance letter it says "IPCNY received over 2,500 submissions from artists and presses worldwide. Out of this varied collection of work, Shahzia Sikander chose seventy-eight works by seventy-two artists." I am honoured to have been chosen to be part of this exhibition. The show will be on view from May 24 - July 27, 2012. If you find yourself in New York this summer, you might want to check it out. Click here for more info about the exhibition.