2022 was a BIG PRINTMAKING YEAR for me.
AMBOS LADOS
We kicked off the year with an exhibition of the Ambos Lados International Print Exchange, January 4 - April 29, 2022:
We had a great opening at the Outpost Performance Space in Albuquerque on February 5th:
Lacey Chrisco and Chander Wigton curated and hung the exhibition at the "Inpost," which is the gallery inside the Outpost Performance Space:
Lacey Chrisco was also the assistant curator to Josie Lopez, of the big printmaking exhibition at the Albuquerque Museum -- Printer's Proof: Artists and Printer Collaborations (February 19 - May 15th, 2022). This was a very significant exhibition of high end Master Printers from New Mexico, focusing on the Tamarind Institute:
BUCKET EXHIBITIONS
As a sequel to Ambos Lados we started BUCKET EXHIBITIONS -- to continue exhibiting small framed 8x8 inch prints:
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The BASIC CONCEPT was to have pop-up exhibitions of small prints in casual and smaller venues. We hang the prints in cheap 8x8 inch frames from Walmart, which fit in a 12 quart Igloo cooler from Target. Ten good prints is a good exhibition (the bucket holds 13 frames):
We EXHIBITED 66 small prints in the Axle Contemporary mobile art van in Santa Fe during July:
We also CREATED a lot of 8x8 inch prints, mostly during the Thursday night life drawing sessions at North 4th Art Center in Albuquerque, which I chronicled in a long blog post:
BLOG POSTS
I made a lot of blog posts in 2022 dedicated to prints:
- Prints so far...
- Tortilla Press printing at Hecho Gallery in Santa Fe
- Quick and Portable Printmaking Strategies
- Printmaking Rising
- Print Weekend -- BUCKET EXHIBITION at North Fourth Art Center
- Live Printmaking in Santa Fe -- HerStory
- May 10, 2022 -- Laserpecker 2
- 8x8 -- Print Show in El Paso
- July 10, 2022 -- PRINTED MATTERS Festival
- Fake Prints "Outpainted"
- Silk-screening with newspaper laser cutouts
- Printmaking -- Second Wind
- Marigold Parade -- Artwalk -- Eli Levin
- Prints and Exhibition November
- Printmaking Idea(s)
- AI adjusted Linocuts
- Quelab Print Party
- December 15, 2022 -- Printmaking
HECHO GALLERY
G R A N D O P E N I N G
Rich and I went up to Santa Fe on April 1st, to print live on the Tortilla Press, for the Grand Opening of Hecho Gallery:
During the opening we printed linocuts from Tres Gatos Press of Guadalajara:
I also brought the Tortilla Press to do some live printing at Eric and Meg's wedding in Albuquerque on April 16th, of prints that Eric and friends carved:
Later in the year I helped Henry Morales print during the Marigold Parade in Albuquerque on November 6, 2022:
ODD PRINTMAKING
Halftone Relief Print
Manuel Guerra started the year for me, by printing a linocut for me in his studio in El Paso -- Horned Toad Prints. It was of a figure drawing I had engraved with the laser cutter at Quelab:
I had broken down the first figure drawing of my book into a halftone dot pattern, which made printing it extra challenging. Normally a good relief print has large areas of black, contrasted with large areas of white:
AI Salvage
The AI (artificial intelligence) programs can enhance and salvage a bad linocut:
Linocut platealtered by AI
using Deep Dream Generator
Cutting and Coffee
I am tried to push printmaking into a social event, bringing a portable kit to the coffee houses. The music and pleasant atmosphere helped me get over my resistance to carving. At first I had so much resistance to the chore that I had to make an event out of it to get myself to carve linoleum. I made a kit and took the Rail Runner train up to Santa Fe to go carve at Iconik Coffee on Guadalupe street. Now I find carving a pleasure:
Gallium Etching
Adric at Quelab tried to etch the aluminum business cart with Gallium (element 31), after we burnt off the black coating with the laser cutter. It didn't work, however there is still hope:
EVERYONE PRINTING LIVE
Robert Atkinson made his own Tortilla Press and printed on the street during the FIRST FRIDAY ART WALK, in downtown Albuquerque on May 6th:
Rogo made his own Tortilla Press in Tucson
and took it to print live in Arizona
Sticky Foam
Julianna Kirwin had a live printmaking event in Santa Fe, in front of their HerStory exhibition on the Axle Contemporary mobile art van on May 8, 2022. They cut out STICKY FOAM and inked it up to make relief prints:
Julianna Kirwin wheat pasting the foam prints
on the outside wall of her studio in Albuquerque
Provisional Press
Yvette Serano printed live with her Provisional Press letterpress, made on a laser cutter, to the PRINTED MATTERS festival in Santa Fe on July 10, 2022:
CROSSING BORDERS
We have been exchanging 8x8 inch prints across the Mexican border:
and SKATEBOARD PRINTING
I bought a portable Laserpecker 2, which laser engraves 4x4 inch images on linoleum. Those linocuts printed nicely with the Skateboard Press:
I also want to use the portable Laserpecker 2 to quickly cut out stencils from newsprint, to be used with silk screening to print paper and t-shirts. This is a quick-and-easy way to silk screen without burning an image into the screen with photo emulsion:
DIY PRINTMAKING
Los Tres Gatos of Guadalajara published a DIY Printmaking Guide for printmaking, including making linoleum knives from old umbrellas:
MEETING of the TITANS
I brushed shoulders with some of the those stirring it up with the printmakers in the Southwest:
Manuel Guerra from El Paso (right)
visiting with Henry Morales in his studio in Albuquerque (left)
During the "Son de Allá y Son de Acá" exhibitions in Albuquerque on August 5th, 2022, I ran into a bunch of print heavyweights during the opening at El Chante:
Tim Pauszek, Miranda K Metcalf of "Hello Print Friend,"
Marco Sanchez in the middle,
Juana Estrada Hernandez and friend
FAKE PRINTS
PHOTOPOLYMER PRINTS
I was making some progress using "Unsharp Mask" on my figure drawings in Photoshop, and thought that they were ready to translate into prints. So I commissioned Lincoln Draper at Remarque Print Workshop to make a photopolymer print of one of my drawings:
As with all of my drawings, my lines were too weak to translate well into other mediums.
Earlier in the year I had prepared another drawing for photopolymer printing:
FABRIC PRINTING
We even used fabric ink to print on a t-shirt during the drawing session at the North Fourth Art Center in Albuquerque:
HENRY MORALES STUDIO
Henry Morales invited us to draw the model in his studio in Albuquerque several times -- STUDIO M -- when he would also print for us with his big presses:
Expanded PVC Foam
We discovered that we could draw-and-gouge, with a ball point pen, into expanded PVC foam from Port Plastics or Amazon and print with that plate (provided that the line was gouged deep enough:
Styrofoam Plates
We took the ball point pen idea one step further and gouged into Styrofoam plates and printed on copy paper -- drastically shortening the draw-to-print time. I was delighted with the quick turnaround time, and we actually got some nice prints:
HEAT TRANSFER
Robert Atkinson bought a heat transfer machine so that we make custom heat transfer images online and press them onto clothes:
Our BUCKET EXHIBITIONS project was conceived to show smaller prints through a larger area (the whole Southwest, for instance). However the Open Print Exchange from Germany manipulated even smaller prints, and exhibited them all over the globe, besting us.
If you can't beat them, join them. I submitted my tiny 7x7cm print to the Open Print Exchange #2:
I learned that my friend, printmaker and fellow student -- Ricardo Morales Lopez -- from the San Carlos days (in the Taller of Maestro Flores 1988-1991) had passed away of Covid in 2020:
Ricardo Morales Lopez, a fellow art student ~1990
in the ex-Academia de San Carlos, Mexico City
(was in the same studio
with me and compañero Igor Galvez Buenfil)
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