© Iskra JohnsonToday I found myself waylaid by a wonderful construction site. This must mean the recession is over –these open pits now have stuff in them! A child walking by grabbed the chain link and peered in. “Looks like people are making something.” When does a child make that decoding leap, from “messy” to “must be making something”?
I am fascinated by all the ways you can do silkscreen wrong. You spend several hours preparing and burning a screen and then in a fit of complete stupidity you reach for a bottle of “something” and spray the screen and the “something” turns out to be…. emulsion remover. (It does, in fact, say something about emulsion on the bottle, you just don’t bother to notice the word “remover.”) Before completely throwing up my hands in frustration I sprayed the screen with water, and lo, it turned out I had a very interesting mistake on my hands.
I came home from the print studio at Pratt, (where I am in theory learning “how-to”), and threw some ink in a tray and started wildly printing. Or painting. I am not sure which this is, and am happy not to. Why hydrants, you might ask? I don’t, actually, I just follow them, as if led inexorably by a leash.
But there is this business of artist “statements” and knowing why it is you do what you do. I was talking with a friend and collaborator yesterday about obsessions, and his currently is dams. Yes, he will drive 300miles to find a small obscure dam in order to document its existence. The common theme here is water, and the majesty of infrastructure. As the world teeters bit by bit I do love a piece of metal I cannot lift, put together with a flawless arrangement of bolts and screwplates and circles and cones in a way handed down through hundreds of years from men with rough hands and wrenches. Not only are these articles of urban engineering marvels to look at, but we depend on them to spew water where we want it and to keep it under the ground when we don’t. I imagine a huge force under the earth, the water always there with many-headed ferocity, and only the stalwart little hydrant to keep it in check. I have my own brilliant yellow hydrant in front of my house, and it makes me happy every time I come home and see it there, surrounded by equally yellow dandelions. I feel safe.
This last one is technically silkscreen and digital but in describing it I am being optimistic. I have not yet dared to print the actual blue tint in silkscreen across the top and am testing colors in Photoshop before I jump to the screen.
Tonight Painters Under Pressure, my SPA salon, met at the studio of Ruth Hesse. In addition to being talented printmakers and artists this group of 7 is rousingly funny and has an appreciation for food and politics, both of which take up at least some part of our monthly meetings before we get to the central business of sharing and critiquing our work. I will be doing a detailed profile on the salon at a later time.
This post is an alert to those who may not have heard that Ruth is having her fabulous annual print sale this weekend. Ruth’s East Magnolia studio is tucked into a marine area in view of the water and a dazzling maze of industrial stuff. I’ve got to go back in the daylight. This is an area I have never been to and it seems like a whole mysterious city-behind-the-city that I had never known existed. You can get a map and directions to the studio here. The sale will be from 2-6 on Sunday February 26th, with prices ranging from $35 to $1,000. Below, some quick cellphone snaps of her work and space.
See more of Ruth Hesse’s work at her website.
“Often, my prints live in my To Be Continued folder, where they germinate until I have the right combination of colors and textures to layer on top of them. I live for the moment when discordant elements come together to make something unpredictable and beautiful. That’s what excites me about monotype.
Life is a layering of experiences, be they planned, spontaneous, embarrassing, proud, painful or sublime. Without that layering, there’s no depth. There’s great hope in accepting the difficult stages in life (or the life of a print), placing faith in the process that everything will turn out okay in the end.” –R. Hesse
I have just created a new public Facebook Page for Iskra Fine Art. I will continue posting show openings and news here, but the Facebook Page is a great way to get notices without going to a google reader or other interface. To get updates please click on the link above and click the "Like" button at the top.