'Best in Show' Award at CCP

A print of mine (Are You There?) has co-won the 'Best in Show' award again at the 5th International FootPrint Exhibition at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, Connecticut. (Juror: Andrew Raftery).

Winnipeg art lives on!

I got such a beautiful letter and picture this week from a grade 1/2 class from Montrose school in Winnipeg. They did a project about the city inspired by my artwork and look what those fabulous artists created! (A special thanks to the teacher Liberty Au and the students from Montrose school).

Art in Embassies Program - Tbilisi, Georgia

One of my prints is now on display at the US embassy in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, through the U.S. Department of State - Art in Embassies program. I was invited by curator Claire D'Alba to display my piece on loan for a two to three year period. The works are installed in the representational spaces of the residence, where many of the ambassador's official functions are held. How exciting! 

For more information check out the Art in Embassies website.

Details of new prints

Recently I've been feeling like a hamster in a wheel. I work and work and work at the studio, but everything seems to progress really slowly. I guess that's what it feels like being in a transition phase. Overall I think my work is growing, even if it's not happening at the rate I'd like to see, but I'm happy with the small steps that I have moved forward. I'm just waiting for the day when things will fall into place and be a little less laborious. In the meanwhile, here are some details of my new work. I've been re-working the studies from my previous post with layers upon layers, printing both on the back and the front of a translucent asian paper. I etched a whole series of plates with figures and one whole series of plates with forest sections, which I now overlap over and over again to create more rich and complex imagery. I still need to resolve the final pieces, but as soon as I do, I'll post them (I'm almost there). For now, here are some of the details.

Studies

Study I. 60cm x 90cm. 

Here are a two of my more successful studies (one detail) that happened while printing my giant plate in various combinations. There will likely be more prints to come, but for now just these two to share what my 'playing process' looks like.

Study II, detail.

Cloud

I have challenged myself once again with scale and I worked on a 3 x 3 foot sized copper plate for the past few months (90cm x 90cm). It was fun to work really loosely with the soap ground and spit bite on that scale. Erroneously I thought I would work rather fast with that method, and while parts of it did go fast, the handling, degreasing, etching, and inking of such a large plate and the challenges of printing it that come along, let alone dealing with oversized paper made me realize it wasn't just a quick sketch after all. Also I'm not entirely satisfied with the piece at this stage and that's why I still only have a proof and not a finished piece yet.
I think the piece is quite self-explanatory on many levels, but I do want to put it into context and share a few thoughts with you. I had just finished reading a book on Food Sovereignty (Food Sovereignty: Connecting Food, Nature & Community, edited by Annette Demarais, Nettie Wiebe, and Hannah Wittman...I can highly recommend it to anyone interested in food production) in connection with my research topic about the deforestation in Paraguay to make space for agricultural expansion. Food Sovereignty is a concept that wants peasants and their countries to take back the right to rely on and grow local food (see movements like La Vía Campesina). In some parts of Paraguay, for example, there are green deserts of soy plantations that continue to displace peasants and rural populations through land grabs. Rather than helping world hunger as the agribusinesses like to claim they do, international corporations grow soy for biofuels and fodder for meat production in the first world, but the product does not serve the population of Paraguay as a food source. It is solely used for export. Instead, the large scale agribusiness displaces many peasants from their land and they most often end up in the capital's slums without any access to growing food, increasing the world's hunger problem.
This is a greatly simplified version of a very complex issue. With my work I try to portray visually the crushing presence of the corporation and the displacement of the people. With a deeply etched copper plate of a screen printed mechanical soy plant pattern, I force the soy pattern onto the damp paper with a blind embossment (see detail below). I'm not sure yet if this is the final version of the piece, but this is more or less how I envisioned it. I still struggle between planning and experimenting more freely. Now that the plan is in place, it is time to experiment more.

3rd International Printmaking Symposium - Kloster Bentlage

In mid November I had the opportunity to go to the 3rd International Printmaking Symposium at the Kloster Bentlage in Germany. Bentlage is a former monastery that is now cultural centre, art gallery and printmaking studio. I spent four highly interesting and pleasant days there, meeting many wonderful printmakers from around the world, showing my new work during an open portfolio, attending lectures, touring museums, art schools, and exhibitions. It was an amazing getaway in the middle of the semester, but my work production has suffered a bit, especially since I added two weeks of personal travel time to see family in Germany. But it was totally worth it!