March 14, 2023

We drew and printed at Sir Henry Morales' studio in Albuquerque:

I hung a pop-up print show

at Henry Morales' studio

• Ellie Weadock
• Rich Hasler
• Cody Kamrowski
• Henry Morales

• Robert Atkinson
• Krrrl (AI print)
• Lyle Toledo Yazzie
• Ilene Weiss

JIGSAW PRINTS

The printmaking after the drawing session was very exciting.  Henry Morales made collaborative prints with both Virgil Velasco and Cody Kamrowski:

Henry Morales on the right,

and first Virgil Velasco

then Cody Kamrowski on the left

After jig sawing a stack of linoleum squares at Quelab, I gave a piece to all three artists. This was also Virgil Velasco's idea:

February 21, 2023

Jig sawed linoleum squares

Henry Morales' linoleum half

Henry carved his linoleum half

from a sketch he made in 1977

PRINT 1  -- Cody Kamrowski and Henry Morales

Henry Morales' (left)

and Cody Kamrowski's (right)

 pieces fitting together

The final collaborative print

of Henry Morales and Cody Kamrowski

PRINT 2 -- Virgil Velasco and Henry Morales

Henry Morales' (left)

and Virgl Velasco's (right)

 pieces fitting together

The final collaborative print

of Henry Morales and Virgil Velasco

PROCESS

Virgil Velasco inking both pieces

of the linocut square

Putting the linocut puzzle back together

We made the first prints with our feet, Skateboard Press Style, using a FEZIBO board:

FEZIBO standing anti-fatigue board

and REI carrying case,

with yoga mat

Virgil printing with his feet --

using the FEZIBO board

on top of the yoga mat, paper, and linocut

The first print came out a bit faint,

perhaps because of the Skateboard Press method

Virgil inked the second collaborative print

between Henry Morales and Cody Kamrowski

Cody Kamrowski printing with his feet

Likewise this print came out faint

When Henry printed with his ancient letter press machine, all the prints came out great the first time, in a very solid black (like the prints posted at the beginning of this blog post):

Henry with his ancient letter press machine

The letter press rolls a lot of pressure on the linocut, so we taped them together so that the two pieces would not separate:

All the prints at the end of the night

Follow-up Idea

As  a follow-up perhaps I should jig saw some linoleum squares in the shape of the Rio Grande, and pass out the lower right halves to Mexican printmakers, and the upper right halves to US printmakers:

Jig sawed linoleum square --

Border Art print collaboration idea

So on March 15th we cut a stack of three 6x6 inch linoleum squares in two, following the shape of the Rio Grande, where it separates Texas from Mexico:

Drawing the shape of the Rio Grande

We secured all three linoleum squares

with binder clips

so that they would not move around

Mitchell cut the stack of linoleum for me

using a scroll saw at Quelab

The cut stack of linoleum squares

I'm going to bring the cut linoleum to El Paso, and maybe they'll pass half of them to Juarez.  Then we could ink and pull collaborative prints from both Mexico and the US.

MY PRINTS

I drew/gouged the model into Styrofoam with a ball point pen to make a printing plate, and the model printed it with her feet:

My Styrofoam drawing

and printing plate

The Styrofoam print came out as good as can be expected --

the lines came out, but not as fine lines

I also gouged into harder Expanded PVC Foam, with both a steel and diamond styli, and that plate came out better than the Styrofoam plate.  However I printed it quickly at home, so the print came out faint:

The faint print at the top

did not look as good as the inked plate at the bottom

I started the session

with a pen drawing