Art On The Commons, The Morning After

So, Sunday I experienced my first art fair, Art On the Commons in Kettering, Ohio. It's a pretty big deal around here with about 100 artists juried in, 35 of them local, including me. I'm still thinking about it and trying to figure out what I did wrong and what I did right, and if it was worth the time and effort. Today I'm thinking it was definitely worth it now that I've cleaned up the aftermath of my whirlwind preparations pictured above.

One of my biggest mistakes is evident in that photo...the unfinished and experimental prints. A couple of weeks before something like this is not the time to be trying new things and making new prints, but I just couldn't help myself. When I should have been packaging up prints or reprinting things that I know sell well I was trying out some crazy hand inked collagraphs made from plants, carving and printing a big, yet-to-be-completed reduction print and trying to crank out some monotypes using pieces of lino blocks from previous prints. And there were the three reduction prints that still needed the last impression on over half the prints. I was a printmaking machine and I couldn't stop. I guess, in retrospect, that I didn't want to stop. After all, printing is great and I had a good excuse to be doing it. But the result of my actions was not so fun... two solid days and nights of cutting foamcore and mats and framing, printing up business cards and other collateral at the last minute and almost slicing my finger to the point of needing stitches, and packing my car up like a madman while trying not to bleed on any artwork.

I guess I'm a little regretful that I didn't make the most of the time I had to prepare, which left me a little loopy and not at my sharpest the day of the event, but on the other hand I got to spend the better part of my free time the past few weeks making prints. Or at least trying to. What could be better than that?

One of the craziest things I did during the preparations, though, had to be getting out oil paints and spending half a day painting over a canvas I started 10 years ago, especially considering the fact that I never paint. That is almost tied with the twenty or so hours I spent drawing on two litho plates when I don't know how to do lithography, just because once I started drawing with those litho crayons I really liked it and couldn't stop. I did get one good print from one of them before I ruined the plate, but I guess I can't consider it a good print because it's on newsprint. It was a damn fine litho crayon drawing, though.

Either I have ADD or given an excuse to make some art, that's all I'm going to be doing with every second of time I can find. Anyway, back to the point of the post, the art fair. It went well. I didn't make a huge profit but I slightly doubled the money I had into it, so I can't complain even though I had higher expectations. My expectations were so high, in fact, that I won't have to package up or mat or frame anything for a while, and I can focus on just making art. I've got the business part out of the way through the holidays and I won't have to spend any time or money getting ready for ARTtoBUY at DVAC this year, and I probably have enough packaged prints to start trying to spread them around the Miami Valley...and beyond.

The highlight of the whole thing, though, had to be the people. I just wish I hadn't been so tired and had been more engaging, and I wish I would have remembered to bargain with people who came back for a second look. But it was great to see people I hadn't seen for a while who came to see me because they saw my name in the paper. Also great were the moments when people recognized my work from DVAC and the Cannery, and even better were the three times when absolute strangers came up to me and told me they read this blog and talked about specific posts. How cool is that?

Looking back and writing about it and thinking about it, I would definitely do it all again, in a heartbeat. There's no way I would trade in a few days of crazy-busy for the joy of spending July 2010 making prints and trying new things and meeting people interested in how I print and meeting people who recognize my artwork. I guess after all the years I've spent having my hard work attributed to "artist rendering" that I have to say tonight that it's feeling pretty good to be the artist Andrea Starkey.

Celebrating Two Years of Reduction Printmaking, and Smiling

So, exactly two years ago today I started my first reduction print, these hosta leaves. I know it was exactly two years ago today because it was my birthday and I woke up early on a Sunday morning while everyone else in the house slept in and decided I was going to give reduction printmaking a try. I remembered how unhappy I was with the results as I read this blog post where I refer to it as a "FAIL" and how I put all printmaking aside and waited four months before attempting another.

As I was reading all I could do was smile. It isn't a fail, and for a first attempt and considering the materials I used and the fact that I printed this with my hand and the bottom of a glass and had no idea what a baren was, it's not half bad. I think my expectations were just a little high at the time. I look at the details now and I can see the care that went into every cut and I can remember that initial excitement of what it was like to see what each successive layer would look like printed. Even though this was the print that I wanted to cut up into pieces once it was finished and the print that caused me to put printmaking on hold for months, it was also the print that made me fall in love with the process.

I woke up yesterday morning and I discovered that I had sold my first Hosta print, almost exactly two years to the day that I started it. The best part of selling one of these isn't that I sold one or that someone else liked it enough to buy one. The best part is that it made me take a good look at the print again, and at the past couple of years, and realize that something as simple as the joy I get from carving and inking some lines and and transferring them to paper makes me a lucky person.

Well that and the fact that it did help pay for my birthday dinner.

Catching Up

So, I haven't been a good blogger lately. I think I may have to do some back tracking as there has been quite a lot of activity going on the past few months. The FilmDayton letterpress poster project which consumed a couple months of my life, a variety of new printmaking techniques at my disposal and capturing my attention, my first two Baren Forum exchange prints and my space at the Cannery Art and Design Center filled with prints and pastels are all blogworthy, but they'll have to wait as I'm starting with the most recent Starkeyart news.

The monotype I made Christmas Eve was just awarded the Best of Show at the Dayton Society of Painters and Sculptors annual Kay Smith Memorial Printmakers show. I loved the juror's comment, "The technique transcends monotype." I wasn't trying to transcend anything, I was just missing Alex and Anna on the first Christmas Eve I spent without them and reminiscing about the magic of Christmas when they were the younger. And I admit it, I shed a few tears in the process. This print has a lot of love in it. I'm starting to look forward to the show being over so it can get it back in it's place, because I miss it.

So two juried shows in a row with two awards for the two most NFS (not for sale) personal pieces of artwork I've done. Hmmm. It makes me think that maybe I spend too much time making pretty pictures and getting caught up in projects and new processes that distract me like shiny new toys. They disctract me to the point of un-productivity , because I have been all over the place since I joined the Dayton Printmakers Co-Op, not editioning a thing but just experimenting like crazy. And I've been getting caught up in making things that people will want to buy and not making anything that means anything to me other than the enjoyment of creating it. And sometimes that's not even a joy, just a lot of trial and error. Ironically, both awards came on a day when I had just about decided to give up pursuing the whole "artist" thing and concentrate on being a commercial artist and paying bills.

Maybe it means I should spend more time making art that is meaningful to me, and just toss out trying to sell art. Or maybe I just need to find some ground and direction, because I am all over the place lately, just like this post is all over the place.

20th Annual Dayton Area Works On Paper

So, it was about a year ago when I entered my first juried show, the 19th Annual Dayton Area Works On Paper. To date, my percentages are pretty good, as this year it was the 4th juried show I've submitted to and the 4th show for which I've had an entry accepted. Even better, when the show opens this Sunday I'll be receiving my first award.

When I was trying to decide which three things to enter I thought I should enter similar pieces to show a "body of work" but then I ran into trouble when I really wanted to enter a couple of the new collagraph prints I've been making out of trash. They are interesting and colorful and different from what I've been doing and I like the way they look, but the prints I've pulled thus far have a few little printmaking mistakes were more than this perfectionist could bear. In the end I submitted three unrelated pieces in different mediums, and as soon as I dropped them off I began to question the wisdom of that decision.

But actually they were related pieces of artwork. They were personal. They all meant something to me. The reduction print of the morning view I love whenever I turn right off my street. The monotype of Alex and Anna when they were younger I did this year on my first Christmas Eve spent without my children. The soft pastel portrait of my grandfather I gave him on his final birthday.

I had two of the three selected, and the monotype almost made it in as well. I'm not sure what it means, but I think it means I should keep entering juried shows. And I think it means that making art that you have a connection to might be more important than making pretty pictures. Representing the the things in life that stir your soul and move you and make you smile and make a tear run down your cheek...

And maybe that's what it takes to be an award winning artist.

Road Into Town, Continued Once Again

So, I put the final layer of ink down on my Road Into Town print a couple of Sunday nights ago, giving it just enough time to dry before throwing it into a frame to submit to Dayton Area Works on Paper the following Monday. I've blogged about the making of this one here, here, here, here and here, but I just wasn't able to bring myself to print the final reduction until faced with a deadline. And I wasn't thrilled with the end result, although it did look good matted and framed.

Apparently good enough to get into the show. The Road Into Town is completed at last, or at least version Number 1.

And Now, Something Completely Different

So, I'm not even sure where to begin with this one. I could begin with a description of the proofs I pulled today at the Dayton Printmakers Co-Op on my second trip there. I could talk about the Co-Op, but that needs pictures (blog post soon to come). Or I could start with how I got there in the first place, because thinking your days are numbered can lead to an interesting carpe diem story. Or about how wonderful the idea sounded to me of belonging to this Co-Op when my printmaking professor talked about it in 1987, and that 1987 was the last time I used a press or stepped foot inside a print shop. Or even why 1987 was the first and last time I used a press or stepped foot inside a print shop, which would be a tale of misdirected youth and bad life decisions.

The fact is, I am a little overwhelmed with all of it right now. I know that a year and half ago I brought a brayer and some ink into a classroom of 4th graders for project when I used to volunteer for an art program. I know that the second I put that brayer into the ink something connected. The sound. The smell. The tension of it against the ink. Magic. Life has not been the same since that moment.

When I took that Printmaking 101 class 23 years ago, something clicked and I knew it appealed to all my senses, and I knew I had a passion for it, but at 19 years old I had no idea what that term even meant. Now I know, and I often start to wonder if I I have just wasted 23 years of my life doing commercial artwork when I could have been fulfilling that passion. I like to think that everything I've done to this point was just training for where I am now.

A printmaker. Maybe.

New Year, New Print & Out of the Mouth of Babes Comes Wisdom?

So there it was, January 2 of the New Year, and I had just finished a reduction print and was thinking about clearing up my printmaking mess and putting away the Christmas decorations. Instead I kept staring at the two 12" x 12" linoleum blocks my 14 year-old son had picked out for me as a Christmas present, and he was putting the pressure on.

"Those are big, you need to make something cool!" and "What are you going to print from those?" were just a few of the comments I was getting on a daily basis. He was so proud of himself for picking out a gift he knew I would enjoy that he was beside himself with anticipation of what would come from it.

I've been thinking for a while that I wanted to a reduction print based on this pastel I did earlier this year, with a greenish sky and orange trees, and I decided now was the time. I proceeded to draw out something similar in Sharpie on one of my new Christmas blocks. While I was drawing and looking at the pastel it made me think about what direction I wanted to go. For some reason, I am compelled by the idea of having prints look more like drawings, of having more freedom and expressiveness line. I don't want them to look graphic or like a copy of a photograph, I want them to look in some way representational of what I see, and have some feeling and movement to them, and maybe impressionistic is the word to describe it.

And then I start to think, why am I not just making pastels? This one is pretty decent and it's a hell of a lot easier than printmaking. But, as anyone who prints will understand, there is nothing quite as rewarding as pulling that paper off the block and seeing what you have created even though it does take a lot of planning. Is it possible to make something planned look expressive? Or even more important, is it possible to create and carve something expressively that has to have planning to it? The planning kind of takes some of the freedom out of it for me. So that, I think, is one of my goals this year, to find a combination of spontaneity and planning that is evident in the finished print.

So, as I began to draw out the future print on my fresh piece of linoleum, I had a lot of things running through my head. I was thinking about how it would work out, and how I would carve it and how I would refine the lines before I carved. Then my son came into the room. He said something like "Too bad you can't make a print look like the way you draw." Hmmm.

I've never tried to print the way I draw and sketch. I was getting kind of close to it with that sycamore reduction print I just finished, but that was planned. I've always drawn, and then refined my lines to what I think a print should look like before I started carving. Maybe the key to finding the balance between what is planned and what is spontaneous for me lies somewhere in following the lines that come naturally to me when I draw.

I have no idea how this will go as I follow these Sharpie lines, but it's worth a try. Game on, son. I'll take that as a challenge.